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This is the research leader. Good points on the visuals. I am discussing with Microryza what the appropriate visuals are to convey the urgency of this research in a way that is also appealing to non-academics, while making it clear that we are proposing hypotheses, NOT guaranteeing answers that please one group or another!
I love the idea of taking equal amounts of money from pro and anti gun groups :) The 'look' on the page is a work-in-progress, as a scientist I have no experience with crowdfunding and am trying to find the right 'balance' between making my page as dry as an academic research proposal, and something catchy enough that would interest the non-academic. Howver, even if you suspect I am biased, it would be extremely bad for my career to do biased or bad research (all the data we will use is secondary, and we will be sharing a great deal of it it on this site too -- so anyone with good statistical skills can double-check my findings). At the end of the day, my research will have to stand up to scrutiny both in peer-reviewed journals and other scientists who want to 'double check' my results.
Agreed. The approach we used in our earlier gun study and will also use in this study is to try and control for cultural differences across states using various standard econometric techniques (fixed effects, lagged dependent variables etc). Otherwise it would be foolish to just eyeball Massachusetts and Mississippi and assume what works in one will work in the other!
Hi This is Pia Sen, the study leader. Your point is excellent. Actually, in our earlier study published in Preventive Medicine, we looked at that question -- whether people just 'substituted' other means of violence for guns. We did not find evidence indicating that is the case. That's why its no longer a primary research question in this round, but it is something we will revisit as part of specification checks.