{{U}}A new study claiming to document a connection between violence on television and violence in real life is already coming under attack from academics.{{/U}} They say that the author is demanding action on his report before producing detailed findings to substantiate it.
(47) {{U}}Dr. William Belson told the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Birmingham last week that his research suggested that boys exposed to high levels of television violence were 50 percent more likely to commit acts of violence than boys who had not been exposed.{{/U}}
His 110,000 pounds survey, paid for by CBS, the American television company, studied more than 15,000 London boys aged between 12 and 16. He closed his paper with a call for immediate action on his recommendations to reduce levels of TV violence and specific kinds of violence which he claimed were more damaging than others. His recommendations were enthusiastically endorsed by Mrs. Mary Whitehouse.
Social scientists familiar with the field have a number of specific queries about Belson's work. (48) {{U}}They pointed out that a statistical technique invented by him and central to his research has been criticized by some academics in the past.{{/U}} Robin MrCorn, of the Mass Communication Research Centre at Leicester University, says," Self reporting—asking the subject to give his own account of the evidence is notoriously unreliable. Studies have put the possible error as high as 20 percent, and we don't know what checks there were in this work. The fact that Belson paid the boys may' have had an influence. Without the full data, it can't be checked."
McCorn adds:" His questions on the programmes go back 12 years. If the boys were aged between 13 and 16 it means the oldest was only four years old when the first programmes were broadcast. How reliable is the memory of a child that young likely to be on the programmes he watched? Dr. Belson may have answers, but we just don't know."
(49) {{U}}The Nelson affair highlights the difficulties faced by researchers into television violence-problems so severe that at least one British group has withdrawn from the field completely. "It's impossible to do serious scientific work in his area now," says Robin McCron.{{/U}} "It has moved out of the academic world and it has been taken over by pressure groups and politics."
Indeed, experience in television research in America reveals how treacherous this field has become. (50) {{U}}Results of nervous projects there have been found, at worst, contradictory, at best, inconclusive.{{/U}}