Policy-based evidence-making

From Birth of a Woke Myth by Ian Kingsbury.  The subheading is A new study on mass shootings is a prime example of public health’s growing penchant for policy-based evidence-making.  

Is there any limit to the degree to which “researchers” will discredit themselves to prove their woke bona fides? A new study published in JAMA Surgery suggests not.

The study, “Association Between Markers of Structural Racism and Mass Shooting Events in Major US Cities,” purportedly seeks to understand whether evidence exists that “structural racism” plays a role in mass-shooting events.

To test their theory, the researchers quantitatively examine the correlation between mass shootings and “structural racism.” They define mass shootings as any incident in which four or more people are shot, and they define “structural racism” according to various factors, including the percentage of black population in a major metropolitan area, the proportion of children living in a single-parent household, the violent crime rate, and measures of segregation and income inequality.

The chosen measures of structural racism are the paper’s first obvious shortcoming. Out-of-wedlock birth and violent crime are not phenomena ordained by supposedly pervasive and irrepressible bigotry but regrettable exercises in accordance with free will. “Segregation” and “income inequality”—politicized framings to describe habitation and earnings patterns that differ by race—are much the same, lest someone truly believe that Asians (the highest-earning racial group) are the greatest beneficiaries of structural racism.

The assertion that metro-area demographics are a measure of structural racism is especially problematic. 

Kingsbury takes the study apart.  There seems almost no way that there was any innocent way to have arrived at this empirical and analytical abomination.  The original research comes across as deliberate cognitive pollution.