Drawing Interpretations

One quote from Ch. 8 really stuck out to me and seemed to capture the essence of what this whole chapter was about. In regards to differing conclusions drawn from a public opinion survey about stricter weapons control, the statement is made, "The major difference between the two reports is not in the findings, but in what is said about or concluded about the findings: what aspects of the evidence are emphasized or de-emphasized, what interpretation is given to a finding, and what implications are drawn from the findings" pg. 230. This quote does a good job of highlighting the problems that can arise when trying to draw conclusions from particular data. The problem of drawing accurate conclusions from any data set is made more difficult in my opinion by media sources that present only selected portions of the data, or selected findings that fit with the agenda of the media source. Furthermore, research bias can be particularly dangerous in causing conclusions to be drawn that cannot be fully supported by the data itself.