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To: conimbricenses
Your own links betray you on this one. Let's examine:

Nope.

1. The original Tueller article. What does it contain? A completely anecdotal guesstimation in a trade magazine based on the author's experiences. It doesn't even pretend to be scientific, and most of the article is devoted to its real purpose: discussing how officers can improve their response time and better defend themselves.

Straw man. No one said that the Tueller drill was a hard and fast rule. Even Tueller stated that it was important to recognize that the "21 Foot Rule" isn't really a "rule." You are the only one who seems to be taking that position and then applying it to others. (IOW: Constructing a Straw Man.) However, his point on reaction times is scientifically valid and documented. Unless you want to suggest that human reaction is instantaneous. Why don't you provide some documentation for that assertion? Oh wait, you can't.

2. Lewinski's website. First a little bit about Lewinski - he's a notorious pro-police shill who gets paid $425 an hour to serve as an "expert witness" for hire in defense of cops facing criminal prosecution for excessive force, and rakes in over $100,000 a year giving testimony to help get cops off the hook. He is best known for developing an absurd pseudo-scientific theory to explain away cases where police shoot somebody in the back on the specious claim that they were probably looking backward and shooting while running away. Lewinski's academic credentials are highly suspect, to put it mildly. His "doctorate" is in "police psychology," a pseudo-scientific field that was invented by law enforcement agencies themselves and wasn't even recognized as a legitimate specialization by the APA until it granted a "trial period" in 2008 after intense lobbying from law enforcement. Equally telling, he isn't even a real Ph.D. in the normal sense. He got his "degree" from the Union Institute - a degree mill in Cincinnati that grants "Ph.Ds" over the internet. The Union Institute does not even have accreditation to grant degrees in psychology. It also has a long history of legal and accreditation trouble over granting unaccredited Ph.D's that misrepresent their field.

Ad Hominem. Pretty pathetic one at that. Typically when one resorts to Ad Hominem tactics, one has automatically conceded the debate. You spend paragraphs attacking Lewinski because you are incapable of refuting any research he does with real points.

3. Moving on to Lewinski's research, it's junk science and nothing more. The "Forced Science Institute" is his own self-funded organization, which also serves as an in-house publisher for his stuff and which is not subjected to the rigors of the scientific peer review process. He has a long history of being on the losing side of excessive force lawsuits, and offering testimony well outside his own highly questionable "expertise" - for example medical forensics, a field in which he has absolutely no training. Nor does he have any academic credentials that would allow him to properly analyze human biomechanics as his "high speed camera" research purports to do. Contrary to his tendency to portray himself as "groundbreaking," this type of research is something kinesiologists and other fields that specialize in biomechanics perfected decades ago...through established and peer-reviewed scientific standards, in which Lewinski has absolutely ZERO training. His research in this area is of little more value than if it was conducted by a random guy on the street with a stopwatch and a camcorder from Wal-Mart - to the point that he likely doesn't even know what he's looking at or how to properly interpret human muscle reactions.

Surprise, MORE Ad Hominem. Apparently since you can't attack the research, you attack Lewinski. It's a pretty juvenile tactic, and quite obvious as to what you are doing. Where are the peer-reviewed studies that back your assertions? Can you point to your expertise in this field? What exactly are YOUR credentials? I suppose the Lewinski rigged the cameras too? (Why does everything always boil down to "ITZ A KONSPIWACY!!! with you people?).

So where does that leave us? Back where we originally started: the Tueller Drill is junk science, and your "expert" Lewinski only proves that further.

If you are such an expert, please provide documented evidence that the Tueller Drill is junk science, and then provide your own research into this area to show what the "real story" is. Until you can do that, you've done nothing but throw out wild accusations at others, all while hiding behind the anonymity of the internet. So "internet expert", are you going to put up or shut up?

361 posted on 07/13/2010 1:11:07 PM PDT by freedomwarrior998
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To: freedomwarrior998
I'm not saying that Teuller himself made his advice column into a hard and fast rule. Rather cops misinterpret it as if it were a hard and fast rule to guide their decision to use deadly force, and to justify a nearly paranoid concern for "officer safety" in any situation where the suspect is within 21 feet. I have explained that distinction many times now, thus it is you who committing the straw man by continuing to misrepresent what I have said.

It is not an "ad hominem" to point out a clear and well-documented conflict of interest by a guy who is being passed off as an objective, scientific "expert" to strengthen his opinion. The fact that Lewinski has a sizable direct financial stake in protecting police officers accused of misconduct substantially biases his "research" into police tactics.

Nor is it an "ad hominem" to point out that there are serious and substantive problems with the claimed credentials of a guy who passes himself off as an expert. You presented Lewinski as one such expert and said he is doing "scientific" work that validates your position. I have only demonstrated that:

- Lewinski is not a credentialed psychologist despite professing to practice a type of psychology
- The type of psychology he purports to practice is not an established or widely recognized subfield of the discipline
- His "doctorate" on which he stakes his "expert" opinion is from a highly suspect degree mill internet college with a long history of accreditation problems
- Lewinski frequently ventures out into areas of science well beyond his claimed expertise including medicine and human biomechanics, despite having no evidence of formal training in the scientific standards of these fields
- Lewinski appears to have ZERO scholarly publications in reputable, peer-reviewed scientific journals in any discipline. His only published work is done in-house from the "Force Science Institute" that he runs and funds himself Taken cumulatively, these factors are more than sufficient to completely discount Lewinski's research up to and included the purported results of his camera study, which were conducted without any training in human biomechanics and do not meet the scientific standards of that field.

Returning to the Tueller drill, science works on proving an affirmative, not disproving a negative. If you wish to assert its scientific validity then it is incumbent upon YOU to provide that evidence. So far you've only produced a notorious practitioner of junk science who isn't even credentialed to conduct the studies he purports to be doing. Feel free to try again though.

368 posted on 07/13/2010 1:36:11 PM PDT by conimbricenses
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To: freedomwarrior998
What exactly are YOUR credentials?

They're none of your business, save to say what I have already noted - I am confident that they well exceed the typical GED-toting, ITT Tech educated cop.

On the other hand, you have present a guy - Bill Lewinski - as a credentialed expert on the biomechanics of human reaction time. Yet as I have already shown, Lewinski lacks any credentials in that area of study, his other claimed credentials are highly suspect, and his purported research is self-published and not subject to peer review or any established scientific standards. So while credentials are relevant to this discussion, I'm not the one that needs to be demonstrating them.

369 posted on 07/13/2010 1:41:12 PM PDT by conimbricenses
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