Postscript to the preceding

 Per my last post: not only were there plenty of unsubstantiated assertions throughout this latest MAHA report, but this especially caught my eye:

 Asked about rising gun deaths in children, Kennedy called it “a complex question” and claimed — without evidence — that psychiatric drugs and video games could be among the reasons for gun violence.

That bit caught my eye since it truly stuck out like a sore thumb. The video game and aggression assertion is one with which I have long been familiar. I may be a minor player in the media violence research space, but I do keep up with the literature (and I do still occasional publish new work on the weapons effect or weapons priming effect, which is at least adjacent to research on video games and other media). There is no evidence that violent video games have any connection to gun violence. Markey and Ferguson spend some time debunking that claim in their book Moral Combat, and although published several years ago, is still current enough for me to cite it. It's unclear even if there is all that much of a causal link between playing violent video games and the sorts of mild aggression we can ethically measure in your typical psychology lab. 

Unfortunately, this is apparently the best the US federal government can do at this point in time. That does not bode well for policy decisions nor does it bode well for the trustworthiness of its assertions regarding any social science claim. At this point, my recommendation is that we can safely dismiss claims about video games, for example, made by the US federal government, as they will likely be made up without any supporting empirical evidence, and given this government's lack of transparency, I would not even trust any alleged empirical evidence I could attempt to concoct. This is the sad state of science in the US. It did not have to be this way.

As an aside, I will note that much of the media violence research space is and has been needlessly politicized for a very long time. Those responsible for politicizing that research know who they are. What has been accomplished, as near as I can tell, is that policymakers will simply cherry-pick the studies that fit their preconceived conclusions. We have a responsibility now more than ever as scientists to follow the data where it leads us and to accept the findings we obtain, whether or not they fit our particular pet theories. I'm just some obscure social psychologist. I don't have the platform nor do I have the sort of editorial power to make sure that media violence research is done competently and honestly, but I hope those who do have that sort of influence use that influence wisely. If nothing else, we can be there as truth seekers and truth tellers to point to the facts when our government has given up on the truth. Hey, but on the bright side, at least the latest MAHA report didn't have fake citations and might have been cobbled together by actual persons instead of relying entirely on AI (yes, I know - gallows humor).

PS: Here is a screenshot that summarizes the state of research on media violence from FORRT's website: