In light of the recent Supreme Court decision overturning the California law that would have made it harder for minors to buy extremely violent video games, people have been asking me about the author of the New York Times op-ed piece that appeared on Monday. Ms. Olson and her husband Lawrence Kutner have been pooh-poohing the significance of the research on media violence for years. When their book Grand Theft Childhood came out, I wrote a critical review of it at the request of the editor of PsychCentral.com. It was initially posted, but then taken down because of complaints by the book’s authors. A shorter version of my review later appeared in the Journal of Communication, an academic publication. My original review is available on my web site. You can judge for yourself whether these researchers’ claims make sense.
