A Further Plea for Caution Against Medical Professionals Overstating Video Game Violence Effects

In reply: We thank Dr Murray and his colleagues and Dr Ferguson for their interest in our article. Debate in scientific literature is important for the field to advance and for all sides to be heard. One of the senior authors of our article, a law professor (T.D.), thinks it is important to remember that the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which was at issue in the case of Brown (formerly Schwarzenegger) v Entertainment Merchants Association, allows the medical profession and the population at large to engage in vigorous substantive debate.1 We think that the letter from Ferguson speaks for itself. In this reply, we focus on the letter from Murray et al entitled A Plea for Concern because they express more disagreement and concern with our article and its premise. Unfortunately, their letter enforces the points we made in our article that some in the scientific community are acting in an overly emotional, biased, academically dishonest, and ipse dixit (legal term for something asserted but not proved) “I am the expert” manner that hampers medicine's credibility and objectivity in our courts.