FMJ yaw and upset performance

[JASmith]

My wife did a master's in school nursing a few years back. My own experience and education has been in the technical arena where testing and statistics means verifiable, repeatable and quantitative measurement. Imagine my shock and dismay when I found that much of the statistics developed in education and the psychological arenas are derived from anecdotal reports.

Yes, it appears that appropriate controls and qualitative measures can be imposed on a body of anecdotal reports so that they generate actionable insight. Biggest challenge is eliminating bias from the assessment.

I remember reading the gun magazines and books of the '50s when the .17 caliber craze first got started. There were discussions of the effect of the tiny bullet on donkeys. For example, a chest hit resulted in "the blood coming out as a single organ." It sounded like we had found a magic pill and my younger brother even bought one.

A long time and a fair bit of experience later I will admit I'm biased in favor of a larger bullet -- and that that bias is largely due to having seen a whole host of anecdotal reports from both the hunting and the military world. I cannot say, however, that my own reading and study is an appropriate statistical analysis.