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From the NRA-ILA . . .

Social science is in the midst of a replication crisis. This means the findings of many published social science papers cannot be reproduced and are likely invalid. A new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) sheds light on the scale of the problem and calls into question the veracity of social science research in general, including that which anti-gun advocates use to push for gun control.

As an issue, the replication crisis came to prominence in 2015. That year the journal Science published the findings of a team of 270 scientists led by University of Virginia Professor Brian Nosek who attempted to replicate 98 studies published in some of psychology’s most prestigious journals. In the end, according to a Science article accompanying the study, “only 39% [of the studies] could be replicated unambiguously.”

In an article on the team’s findings, the journal Nature noted, “John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at Stanford University in California, says that the true replication-failure rate could exceed 80%, even higher than Nosek’s study suggests.”

At the time, the New York Times explained how researchers’ incentives can lead to the perversion of science, noting . . .

The report appears at a time when the number of retractions of published papers is rising sharply in a wide variety of disciplines. Scientists have pointed to a hypercompetitive culture across science that favors novel, sexy results and provides little incentive for researchers to replicate the findings of others, or for journals to publish studies that fail to find a splashy result.

For better or worse, given the political climate, “scientific” results involving guns are inherently “splashy.” Add to that research funding from wealthy gun control advocates like Michael Bloomberg and expressly anti-gun jurisdictions like California and there is an obvious incentive for “sexy results” at any cost.

More recently, Reason magazine did an excellent job of exposing almost all “gun violence” social science for the junk science it is by producing an accessible video explainer on the topic.

Drawing on the expertise of statistician and New York University and University of California at San Diego instructor Aaron Brown and a 2020 analysis by the RAND Corporation, the video explained that the vast majority of gun violence research is not conducted in a manner sufficient to offer meaningful conclusions. An article accompanying the video, written by Brown and Reason Producer Justin Monticello, noted . . .

A 2020 analysis by the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization, parsed the results of 27,900 research publications on the effectiveness of gun control laws. From this vast body of work, the RAND authors found only 123 studies, or 0.4 percent, that tested the effects rigorously.

Reason and Brown examined the remaining 123 studies from the RAND analysis and offered the following . . .

We took a look at the significance of the 123 rigorous empirical studies and what they actually say about the efficacy of gun control laws.

The answer: nothing. The 123 studies that met RAND’s criteria may have been the best of the 27,900 that were analyzed, but they still had serious statistical defects, such as a lack of controls, too many parameters or hypotheses for the data, undisclosed data, erroneous data, misspecified models, and other problems.

Moreover, the authors noted that there appears to be something of an inverse relationship between the most rigorously conducted “gun violence” studies and those that receive media attention. The piece explained . . .

Tellingly, the studies that have gotten the most media or legislative attention aren’t among the 123 that met RAND’s approval. The best studies made claims that were too mild, tenuous, and qualified to satisfy partisans and sensationalist media outlets. It was the worst studies, with the most outrageous claims, that made headlines.

The PNAS paper further undermines the validity of social science research – even in cases where attempts are made to control for bias. Titled “Observing many researchers using the same data and hypothesis reveals a hidden universe of uncertainty,” the paper shows that researchers given the exact same data and hypothesis come to wildly different conclusions as a result of the researchers’ idiosyncratic decisions.

To construct their experiment, the authors assembled 161 researchers in 73 teams and provided them with the same data and hypothesis to be tested. In this case, the researchers were asked to determine from the data whether “greater immigration reduces support for social policies among the public.” To attempt to control for the bias towards “splashy” findings, the researchers were promised co-authorship of a final paper on the topic regardless of their conclusions.

Explaining the results of the experiment, the authors reported . . .

Results from our controlled research design in a large-scale crowdsourced research effort involving 73 teams demonstrate that analyzing the same hypothesis with the same data can lead to substantial differences in statistical estimates and substantive conclusions. In fact, no two teams arrived at the same set of numerical results or took the same major decisions during data analysis.

Even highly skilled scientists motivated to come to accurate results varied tremendously in what they found when provided with the same data and hypothesis to test.

Our findings suggest reliability across researchers may remain low even when their accuracy motivation is high and biasing incentives are removed.

In other words: Much of social science is of dubious value, even when its practitioners aren’t politically or financially-biased.

In attempting to explain the wide variation of results, the authors state . . .

Researchers must make analytical decisions so minute that they often do not even register as decisions. Instead, they go unnoticed as nondeliberate actions following ostensibly standard operating procedures. Our study shows that, when taken as a whole, these hundreds of decisions combine to be far from trivial.

This concept is sometimes presented as the “garden of forking paths.” Each minute decision a researcher makes in working with data or constructing a statistical model can lead to different sets of decisions down the road. These different decisions compound, resulting in extreme variations in results among even well-meaning researchers using the same data.

In summarizing the implications of their findings for social science, the PNAS authors note . . .

Considering this variation, scientists, especially those working with the complexities of human societies and behavior, should exercise humility and strive to better account for the uncertainty in their work.

Anti-gun social science certainly involves “complexities of societies and behavior” and should therefore be treated with the utmost skepticism. Moreover, this call for humility should be extended to journalists and policymakers who trumpet such questionable social science research with the goal of curtailing Americans’ fundamental rights.

 

This article was originally published at nraila.org and is reprinted here with permission. 

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57 COMMENTS

  1. I’ve said it many times. There are lies, damned lies and statistics. And then there are dacian the Dunderhead, and MINOR Miner49 who use all three.

      • Keep someone awake for several days and they’ll confess to anything. Beatings and other assaults are just to satisfy the interrogators.

      • And over half of the remaining 43.784 percent are disproven B.S., just like 100 percent of anything that follows ” in reality ” that is found in a dacian posting.

      • Ever since science was politicized, research scientists have been making it up as they go along. They are no longer scientists but whores who will do or say anything to get their projects funded by Liberals who need this phony science to legislate their agenda.

      • then OW IS IT that those same statistics can be found in twelve thousand different studies and experiments?
        *one explnation: the same three groups of people, same individuals found across all three groups in various combinations, have finded the “studies”. Not a nanogramme of common intent, either, promise promise cross my heart and hope to die…….

  2. Do you know what this means!? It means that Dacian’s “studies” are bullshit! This could alter our understanding of the universe.

    • Dacien’s a troll. His pic even makes that clear for anyone who is looking. He says that stuff to get everyone commenting on his post. I dont believe for a second he believes a word of his own post. Ignore him.

      • dacian was doxxed here years back. He’s been hear under different names. He’s a very disturbed individual from Canton, Ohio.

        He is a pathological liar that would lie even if the truth would save his life.

      • dac is a true believer. Dedicated to the core. Someone who was not a true wouldn’t be able to the charade as long as he had.

  3. Reporting on pseudo-science that isn’t repeatable or verifiable is a feature not a bug.
    We’re all being MK Ultra’d now. Constantly changing “facts” and unreliable “data” to drive popular outrage into political action is part of this.

    It was funny when margarine and butter would alternate years for which was the healthy option but now shitty science and emotional instability are used to destroy economies, wage war and convince a great many people that they’d be better off as subservient entities.

  4. Hell in the the Politically correct woke world we are in right now, even “hard science” is starting to break down.

    The Narrative has become far more important to far to many, than the truth of the matter.

  5. been saying this for years… seriously….. when you try to reproduce the results of anti-gun studies using their same data and hypothesis you can’t. The data its self is ofen cherry picked to fit into some bias, one Harvard study (one dacian likes to post a lot) used ‘gun violence victim information’ for people who did not exist, they were made up names that appeared in police reports and the reports even said they were fake names given them in an attempt to claim shootings happened that didn’t happen … false reports to police are an often used source of data in anti-gun studies, even though no shooting happened the study still counts it as ‘gun violence’.

    none of the anti-gun studies are able to pass independent peer review.. and now you know why they don’t let them be independently peer reviewed.

  6. Along with Gun Control Glorification there should be a science based warning label attached like on cigarettes…

    Warning: The Tyrants Adolph Hitler and Jim Crow Have Determined Gun Control Can Be Hazardous To Your Health.”

  7. It goes way beyond the Second Amendment. When you combine a generation of students (and Ph.D. candidates, and professors) who lack any sort of critical thinking skills and whine incessantly about why their college courses are too hard, with a compulsion to be noticed for any stupid reason, you end up with myriad research projects that aren’t worth the pixels that display them. Climate change is another huge cesspool of pseudo science. But there’s always plenty of money to support popular liberal causes like 2A and climate change.

  8. Carol Browning’s EPA was ordered by a federal court in the ’90s to retract its “landmark” secondhand-smoke rule because it relied on erroneous, contrived, specious, unrelatable and unscientific “studies.” Not that it mattered. Everyone, from public health officials to corporate giants, wished the rule to be true and proceeded as if it had been issued on stone tablets at Mount Sinai.

  9. They’re bad at science because they aren’t trying to be scientists.

    Remember when an Obama admin scientist discarded inconvenient data so they could push climate alarmism at the Paris Climate Conference? Narrative is life.

  10. Been packing the same revolver for a goodly number of years, some days I get two or three rattlesnakes, some days I get a stray dog or coyote, some weeks I get nothing not even a draw, more days than not I simply don’t shoot, but if I need I have it, and some days when I get out of the pick up and the revolver is present folks that were coming towards me go away, other days I get off the horse and the revolver is present people shoot the breeze, other days they go around the long way, what this says about gun violence is that I don’t have any, but if a rattlesnake shows himself he dies, if a stray attacks my livestock he dies, if a coyote attacks my livestock he dies and people are curious about the revolver, others are afraid of it without cause, and some are smart enough to know that if they covet my truck or horse, there will be consequences and they are smart enough not to screw around,…. nearly seventy years of gun violence studies on my part,…. and since I declare my possession when stopped by a cop they simply don’t care and I can stand beside my truck or horse while the revolver is inside the truck or saddlebags they thank me for being overt and do the do and leave when done,…. law abiding Citizens are not the issue, but criminals abound and we are all punished for the few,…. and that is as unconstitutional as gun control laws,…. passed by twits in a place that has strict laws and as many killings as D.C. has,….
    studies abound and all are wrong by the choices of those doing them,….

    • basically I arrived at the same conclusions as Rand,…. by simple observation and adherence to the law, and knowing that, the CDC study is as biased as it is possible to be, being as they deleted any and all self defensive data from the study

  11. It’s enough for the readers of the NYT and WAPO et al for an article to begin with “Studies show…”

    Most people are inclined to believe according to their feelings on a given topic, and glom onto whatever supports their confirmation bias. That is the greatest threat to our Republic

  12. The cold hard horrific facts remain which the Far Right cannot dispute or try to deflect in any way. Last year in Japan they had ONE gun death. European and British gun deaths were way below that of Capitalvania where life is considered cheap and expendable which has on average 40,000 gun deaths.

    In the above cases the Far Right cannot dispute the amount of gun deaths because the amount of deaths don’t lie or distort. Even a child could count the corpses from U.S. needless gun deaths.

      • There really isn’t a good comparison to the US. We’re unique. What we should be doing is comparing the US of today with the US of last year, and the year before, and so on. When we do that, and notice that crime is on the rise, we should ask why. That’s how you make things better. The propagandists compare us to something that isn’t like us to push an agenda. It sounds reasonable to an ignorant fool.

        • “There really isn’t a good comparison to the US.”

          Indeed. A single nation, ~330,000,000 persons. Our overall violent crime rate is higher per 100,000 than Europe, combined. Do categories really matter?

          By citing Japan, and other countries, the gun grabbers are admitting there is an acceptable number of deaths related to firearms…they just can’t agree on a standard.

    • @dacian

      “Last year in Japan they had ONE gun death.”

      Now for the rest of the story – that’s what they report.

      In reality, crime syndicates are shooting it out daily in Japan, and like the U.K. does, the government doesn’t do anything about it or care about it and keep it out of the media as long as it stays among the criminals and they don’t find any citizen bodies with bullet holes. Now whats wrong with this? Its not that some criminals get shot every day in Japan or in Europe or U.K. from being shot…. the problem with it is the gun ban in Japan, like in the U.K. and the rest of Europe, didn’t actually work to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and they have more guns now than they had pre-ban and are still shooting citizens. The reason the governments in these countries do not care is because the criminals keep it among them selves because they know, unlike the democrat run areas in the U.S., that if they shoot a civilian their laws are going to actually do something to them. But they do shoot citizens only they do it quietly and not out in public and then dispose of the body by their favorite method an industrial shredder then the remains of mush are spread across a remote field or down the sewer and voila’ no body no crime and no gun crime report — or sometimes they beat them senseless with the gun or another weapon seriously injuring them and sometimes killing them – and thus you have a lot of gun murder and crime that’s not reported as gun murder or crime or murder because there is no body and a you have scared defenseless citizens that don’t report when it happens to them if they live. Thus you have these nice neat stats showing less gun violence in gun ban countries of Japan and Europe – its a lie.

      You call this “civilized”.

      • I’ve asked him a number of times. Name one crime that was prevented by gun control.

        Apparently he has no answer.

      • to Booger Brain

        quote————-In reality, crime syndicates are shooting it out daily in Japan———–quote

        As usual you make wild unsubstantiated claims. In reality organized crime in Japan seldom use firearms because of the draconian penalties for even being caught with one. Try another lie Booger Brain

        quote———- the problem with it is the gun ban in Japan, like in the U.K. and the rest of Europe, didn’t actually work to keep guns out of the hands of criminals ———quote

        More falsehoods. In reality just as one example. During the London Bridge incident the terrorists were denied even buying shotguns so they restored to knives when they entered a bar and the partons beat the hell out of them with broken beer bottles and chairs. In Capitalvania where life is considered cheap and expendable they would have killed everyone in the bar with an assault rifle in seconds.

        Sorry Booger Brain try another one of your bold face lies.

        quote———–Thus you have these nice neat stats showing less gun violence in gun ban countries of Japan and Europe———-quote

        You finally got something right without even knowing you told the truth.

        • dacian, the DUNDERHEAD. I see you are at it again. EVen when facts are presented in a clear and concise manner you call them “lies”. FACT is that there are more than enough guns in the hands of criminals in Japan. Have you taken one of your “surveys” with the Yakuza? Or any of the other Japanese gangs? I’ll bet they won’t respond any more than like criminals in the US, use your vaulted Universal Background Checks. The fact is that Muslim terrorists did use knives, chairs, and beer bottles on their victims in the attack in London. When guns aren’t available, criminals and terrorists resort to other weaponry. Do you want to ban knives, chairs and beer bottles?
          Again, I ask where is this place you call, Capitalvania?

        • dacian, the liar, You are great at calling facts lies, right? 40 cal presented facts and you call them lies. Typical Leftist tactic, right out of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. The fact is Japanese criminal gangs don’t submit their inventory of firearms. Why don’t you send them one of your surveys and see if they respond. With your connections to your Leftist buds, I’ll bet the Japanese Leftists will be glad to fabricate more “statistics” for you. I doubt any Yakuza clan will provide any stats of any kind for you.
          As to the terrorist attack in London, they did in fact use knives, chairs and beer bottles to make victims out of Londoners and tourists. Guns were not available to them, as they were unable apparently to smuggle any in. How did those terrorists get the AK-47’s on the train in Belgium that the terrorists used when those three Americans, two of which were servicemen, overcame them and disarmed them when they attacked the train passengers? And you claim guns aren’t available in “civilized countries” in Europe?
          I read recently where a 70’s yr old man with a firearm attacked people in Canada. Here is one where a Detroit homeowner fatally shot and intruder. Something you have repeatedly claimed doesn’t happen?
          https://patriotunitednews.com/detroit-homeowner-fatally-shoots-his-attacker-it-was-me-or-him-4/?utm_source=PUN Q4BS2&utm_medium=email&utm_content=subscriber_id:121383496&utm_campaign=The Seized FBI Documents REVEALED… THIS is What the FBI Has on Trump

    • homework for you, Dackie Boy: go and comb Japan’s death statistics and tot up the number of deaths inflicted upon innocents last year, tallied by the instrument used to terminate life. Include suicides, too. Of COURSE they have very few “gun deaths”. No one there HAVE gins.
      Now go and do the same for England. Make sure you include ALL deaths perpetrated by edged tools, blunt instruments (the 6000 cricket bats that were ordered and shipped into London in one week when they outlawed kitchen knives from the stores). Include suicides, but show them as a separate line item.
      Now do the same with the US (hint: our FBI already have those numbers.Keep suicide numbers but as a separate line item by instrument used). Ad yes, tall buildoings WOULD be a cause of death. More specificall, the sudden stop at the bottom when one leaves the support of said tall buildong).

      Stats are often used to lie. And that is precisely what YOU are doing here. bugger off, we’re on to you and your tricks.

    • So what? How many people in Japan own a firearm of any kind? Where is this place you call Capitalvania? I’ve never heard of it.

      • A Great number of japanese Own firearms but they must be kept at the gun club you belong to , you cannot take them home, and there is No Hunting since they have very little game and when I was there, I could keep mine at home since I lived in base housing behind a fence with an armed guard outside the gate, also they DO still have bows and are quite proficient with them also they have the katana sword and many are over a thousand years old, passed down within families, and yes they do have murders just not gun crime,…. dacien,…. you have Obfuscated the facts, maybe we should call you barak,…. since that was his tactic. walter that would be Philly city of “brotherly hatred”

        • Rick, so what you are saying is that Japanese mya “own” a gun, but can’t actually possess that firearm.
          I am aware of their proficiency with kantans and bows. Seems that dacian the DUNDERHEAD fails to mention how many deaths in Japan there are due to a katana, knife or a bow and arrow.
          I wonder why he forgot that? LOL

        • Yes walter That is exactly what i am saying, the Nippon empire would like their soldiers trained early as well, so you may belong to a gun club and they will secure your firearm for you, issue you ammunition, even clean it when you are done, however taking it home is Verboten,
          but in all actuality if the laws on the books were simply Enforced here there would be less crime of all sorts from robbery, carjacking, burglary, and homicide, execution for capitol crimes is an excellent deterrent, ever heard of the fried guy doing the crime again ?,…. and sentences for other crimes should be maximums NOT minimums and cash free bail should not exist at all !

        • we’re not Japan…nor will we ever be..pointless to cite comparisons…they’re fond of control and “order”we’re not…so give it a rest…

        • In Reality Rick does not know what he is talking about. I watched an entire show about guns in Japan, several episodes. They can own rifles and shotguns and yes they can keep them at home. The entire show went through the legal paperwork to get this accomplished.

          And yes they do hunt in Japan. One of the shows I watched was about hunting bears in Japan and the hunters were using shotguns.

        • dacian, the DUNDERHEARD, “reality” is not a word you should be using. Your concept of reality is different from the rest of humanity. They CANNOT keep firearms in their homes. You are lying yet again, or is that still. Bear hunting is ONLY permitted in Hokkaido Prefecture, basically because that is the ONLY prefecture where bears can be found. Under Japanese law, possession of firearms is illegal without a special license. Importing them is also illegal. The same rules apply to some kinds of knives and certain other weapons, like crossbows. Other than the police and the military, no one in Japan may purchase a handgun or a rifle. Hunters and target shooters may possess shotguns and airguns under strictly circumscribed conditions. The police check gun licensees’ ammunition inventory to make sure there are no shells or pellets unaccounted for. However, if you want to hunt with a gun, there’s even more to it than that. You would need a separate gun permit, which is issued by the National Police Agency. Getting a gun permit is very difficult — you need to attend a lecture, pass a written test, and practice gun use under police supervision. Background checks are conducted, and are considerable: not only are you interviewed, but your employers, family, neighbors, and others in your neighborhood.

          You then have to apply to purchase a specific kind of gun, buy it from a licensed dealer, and then take the gun back to the police to show you bought the right one. Shotguns are the “entry level” gun — anyone asking for a rifle would have needed to have a shotgun in good standing for a decade before they’d be considered for a rifle (and they’d have to apply and take more tests and such). Pistols and anything else not obviously used for hunting are completely banned for civilians.

          As you can imagine, all of the mandatory training, applications, tests and safety gear (you are required to buy a gun locker) do not come cheap. This Japan Times article estimates starting costs to be around ¥115,000, plus local fees for actually hunting in that area. Including taxes, that could run you another ¥20,000 or more. To say nothing of how much time and effort it takes to pass all of these tests and get through the red tape. Annual maintenance and supplies can add up to another ¥40,000.

          As younger Japanese tend to be more urbanized than their parents, hunting as a sport is in steep decline in Japan. In 2010 it was estimated that 190,000 people with valid hunting licenses were in Japan (a drop of 2/3 in the last 35 years), and the vast majority of them were issued to senior citizens. As a result, deer and boar populations have been exploding, and causing major damage to agriculture and forest land. The deer are a bigger problem (a smaller local breed known as the sika deer), now numbering over 2.6 million. They have no natural predators left in the wild, with both species of indigenous wolf having gone extinct well over 100 years ago.

        • Walter the Beverly Hillbilly

          You are so damn dumb you even contradicted yourself.

          quote———–Other than the police and the military, no one in Japan may purchase a handgun or a rifle.———quote

          quote———anyone asking for a rifle would have needed to have a shotgun in good standing for a decade before they’d be considered for a rifle ———-quote

          And they do indeed keep guns at home. The program I watched gave the size and quality of the safe and they had to give a sketch of what room and where the safe was located and they were subject to surprise inspections.

          So before mouthing off on subjects you know nothing about research first.

        • to walter the beverly hillbilly

          And by the way the program showed the man’s rifle and shotgun and he did not have to wait 10 years to get the rifle.

        • Dacian, the Dunderhead. Anyone who OWNS a gun of any kind has to store it at his/her gun club. To get the license to be able to buy a gun takes an “act of Congress” and a long time before the perspective buyer even gets a chance. They still can’t get a pistol as they are forbidden in Japan.
          So much for your dribble. I don’t care what your “show” showed. My information comes right from the internet and has to be more authoritative than your “show”.

        • to Walter the Beverly Hillbilly

          Below is from MSNBC News

          After obtaining a gun, the owner must register their weapon with police and provide details of where their gun and ammunition is stored, in separate, locked compartments. The gun must be inspected by the police once a year, and gun owners must retake the class and sit an exam every three years to renew their license.

          AND MORON HERE IS A PICTURE OF A JAPANESE GUN SHOP COMPLETE WITH RIFLES FOR SALE.

          https://www.spoon-tamago.com/2017/10/02/japan-has-guns-theyre-just-really-hard-to-purchase/

        • dacian, the DUNDERHEAD. That’s right, DUNDERHEAD. The gun MUST be stored at a Gun Club as are rifles, and shotguns. And Yep, the police get to not only inspect the gun but account for all of the ammunition which is also STORED at the gun club.
          Now who is the moron, DUNDERHEAD!

  13. Numbers are pure; symbols for other things. What people do with them is less than pristine, objective, independent, unassailable. Human factors regarding how numbers are used cannot be eliminated, and humans are not perfect. Thus, when confronted with numbers, one must ask, “Who says so?”

  14. hey lil ‘d, you’ll never guess what I asked of Santa this year… when he gets to your mom’s house, put you inside of a large garbage bag and load you into his sleigh. Then, somewhere over the Grand Canyon, toss the bag out. Yeah, I know about polluting the environment and all, but it’ll be dark out and no one would dare harass Santa.

  15. There’s nothing new in a source of funding paying for the results it wants. Back when 55 mph was the national speed limit, the federal DOT sponsored a study whose stated purpose was to demonstrate the limit’s effectiveness in saving lives and energy. The results were a foregone conclusion whether or not the data supported them.

    • At that same time, the Fed threatened a number of states found to be not in compliance with holding back Federal Highway funding. South Dakota threatened back with not plowing the interstates, so the USDOT had better make other plans, including leasing property to park their nonexistent equipment on.
      Very soon afterward, the state was found to be ” barely ” in compliance after all.

      • Yes, and that was under a Dem Governor. I have a feeling that the current Governor Noem would order the interstates to be removed

    • the last speeding ticket I got in California was back in the days of the Double Nickel Shuffle. My car was a mid 60’s Typ 3 Karmann Ghia, which had a far higher final drive ratio than those shipped to the US marmet. During the manufactured”fuel crisis” mid-1970’s I dropped a fiftee gallon fuel tank into the (forward) boot, plumbed it with an elecric fuel pump and swith to refill the man tank. I drove from Humboldt County (Eureka) Californoia down I 5 to Orange County. I passed hundreds of closed fillng stations, cruised at 80 mph, and got 42 mpg everage on the trip. Hardly ever saw Smokey, he was havong touble keeping his tanks full too. Same car would only return 30 mpg when doing the shuffle, but up at igher speeds 42 was the number. So by ignoring the fifty five rule I saved dozens of gallons of fuel. One cop local to me tagged me for “70” (more like 78 but he had mercy) and I went to talk to the judge, explaining my mileage at 55 and at 75. The judge was a wuss, greed that even HIS car got better mileage at 70 than at 55, but “the law is the law”.He COULD have dismissed in the interests of justice held in suspense for a year, if I was a good boy it would disappear. He did reduce the fne to twenty bucks but I still got the ding on my record. Later I discovered the older Volvos, that 4 cylinder B 18 and b 20 when tuned propery, would also return 42 mpg but at 85 mph all day long.I tested once in convoy with a friend in his V8 Surburban, at 55 the same car only got 27 mpg. Stady cruise on flat ground. I developed a VERY sharp eye for the BlackAnWhites. Never got another speeding ticket despite tens of thousands of miles at “norm’ speeds (85 mph) I then moved to Canada which have few freeways but most provincial highways were two lane and lightly patrolled.We could get all te fuel we wanted up there, no waiting, but slightly more dear than it was before I moved there.

      I learn3d from someine who had investigated it that the Double Nickel was actually pushed by the hotel and motel lobbies….. 55 makes interstate travel slower necessitating more use of hotel/motel for those travelling interstate. Sick, but seems normal. Just like California’s prersistant 55 speed limits for trucks. Teamsters Unions forced that through the legislature back in the 1960’s or so to pad more hours onto routes for their drivers. Funny how the squeakey special interest groups can terrorise everyone with their power.

  16. When I took bueiness statistics the course had a chapter concerning how numbers can easily be fudged and to take others reviews with a grain of salt. Especially if politics are involved. It was a pretty useful course.

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