Undeniable Evidence

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Reprinted from Wound Ballistics Review; 4(2), 1999: 3, 15-16.

Editorial
By Martin L. Fackler, MD

We continue to get requests from our law enforcement members for more help in educating others in their departments about handgun ammunition effects. They tell us that some of the "believers" of the Marshall - Sanow "data base" are, most unfortunately, administrators responsible for their department's bullet selection. Other members are just outraged that a cop and a reservist cop would succumb to the temptation of money and fame to fabricate a "data base" that would endanger the very lives of their law enforcement colleagues. These members are frustrated that Marshall & Sanow have gotten away with their deception for so long despite publication of irrefutable evidence exposing the absurdity of their purported methods and the obvious fiction of their "data base". We must agree that this doesn't say much for the intelligence or integrity of the popular gun press editors or their readers.

We are in the happy position of solving this dilemma in this issue of the Wound Ballistics Review. We received a review of the Marshall - Sanow "data base" over time from IWBA member Maarten van Maanen of the Netherlands.¹ We are presenting his unique, elegant, straightforward, yet simple analysis as our lead article. Maarten van Maanen has demonstrated conclusively that the Marshall - Sanow "data base" contains impossible results that totally discredit the claims made for it by its authors and their advocates. Unlike earlier analyses, van Maanen's approach is so simple and straightforward that it can be followed and completely understood by anyone. Following van Maanen's article is "Undeniable Evidence," which outlines a revelation that pinpoints the motive for the "smoking gun" detected by van Maanen. It increases immensely the strength of van Maanen's findings. Finally, we have included a unique statistical analysis of the Marshall - Sanow "data base" by Duncan MacPherson.² It demonstrates that even that part of the "data base" that has not been shown to be obviously impossible by van Maanen is so statistically improbable that no rational person could believe it. Unlike previous statistical analyses which dealt with only part of the Marshall - Sanow "data base," MacPherson addresses and discredits their entire "data base." MacPherson's analysis is more complex than van Maanen's, but is explained so fully and clearly that motivated readers will easily be able to follow and understand it. Such clear and undeniable evidence will certainly brand any remaining "one-shot stop" supporters as members of a lunatic fringe. We believe that most of our readers already knew from previous articles and their own evaluations what the first three articles of this issue should now make clear to their less gifted colleagues. We encourage them to make this overwhelming evidence available to their law enforcement administrators, popular gun press editors, and others with a need to know it.

Readers familiar with the Marshall - Sanow history will remember that in 1992, Law and Order published an article by Sanow. Shortly thereafter, editor Bruce Cameron apologized to his readers for printing Sanow's article, describing it as "information that has proven to be in error" as well as printing three letters refuting Sanow's claims. Unfortunately, the NRA has failed to live up to Mr. Cameron's journalistic standards. The February 1998 issue of the new NRA magazine, American Guardian, contains a "one-shot stop" article by Marshall. When the nature of Marshall's "data base" was made known to the NRA, they were extremely embarrassed at having been taken in. Mr. E.G. Bell, Jr., executive editor of NRA Publications, however, has apparently chosen to do the "bureaucrat shuffle," hoping that delays will cause the problem to go away without having attention focused on it. Yes, publishing a retraction is always embarrassing, but failing to retract the article reflects adversely on the integrity of the entire NRA. Retracting the article and apologizing to readers for publishing it is the only honest course of action....

Endnotes

van Maanen, M: "Discrepancies in the Marshall & Sanow 'Data Base': An Evaluation Over Time." Wound Ballistics Review, 1999; 4(2): 9-13.

MacPherson, Duncan: "The Marshall & Sanow 'Data' - Statistical Analysis Tells the Ugly Story." Wound Ballistics Review, 1999; 4(2): 16-21.

Undeniable Evidence
By Martin L. Fackler, MD

Introduction

Most evidence is questionable to some degree. Every now and then, however, a piece of evidence comes along which is not. The presidential semen on Monica Lewinski's dress was such undeniable evidence. The "more than 100%" bullet effectiveness statistics found in the Marshall - Sanow "data base" by Maarten van Maanen is such undeniable evidence.¹

From the outset, those with training in statistics, those schooled in scientific method, those with experience in scientific research, and even those laymen who do their own thinking, have believed that the "one-shot stop" statistics published by Marshall were not collected as claimed, but simply made up -- fabricated. As time went by, with each new publication swelling the "data base," evidence of the fabricated nature of the statistics became stronger. But still, Marshall's claims were believed by many; and they received continuing support from the popular gun press -- notably Guns & Ammo of the Petersen Publications group that printed the first articles on "one-shot stops."^2,3

Although support declined as the Marshall - Sanow claims showed new flaws with each succeeding publication, a lingering base of support has continued. Now, however, van Maanen has presented evidence so compelling, and immediately recognizable as undeniable, that it is difficult to imagine many remaining "believers" in the Marshall - Sanow camp. Sadly, however, there will always be "believers"; primarily those with meager intellectual gifts and those so inherently indolent that they will accept the word of some "expert" for anything that would require the least amount of thought. Maarten van Maanen has provided clear, undeniable, easily understandable evidence that devastates the Marshall - Sanow "data." Marshall & Sanow's victimization of the ignorant and indolent, which lasted nearly a dozen years, has at last come to an end. Faced with van Maanen's elegant, yet simple, revelations that require no more than grade school arithmetic (subtraction and division) to verify, I suspect that even Marshall & Sanow's staunchest supporters will be running for the hills. The clear, easily understandable, well documented, and undeniable facts will brand any remaining supporters as intellectually challenged in the extreme -- they will, quite literally, be laughed at.

The Smoking Gun Blows Another Puff

Table 2 in van Maanen's article shows a striking cluster of false data in the .38 Special four-inch barrel listing; three of the 12 listings show "more than 100%" bullet effectiveness, and six show an impossible fewer shootings listed in 1992 than were listed for the same cartridge in 1988. This is impossible because Marshall & Sanow have claimed that their "data base" is a list of all shootings that met their criteria for inclusion. Once listed, a shooting cannot evaporate; each succeeding list must have at least as many shootings as the previous list. That the majority of Marshall & Sanow's impossible results should occur clustered in the listing of results from the .38 Special cartridge alone is indeed strange: and they all occurred in cases in which the cartridge was fired from a handgun with a four-inch barrel, while none occurred when a two-inch barrel was used. For such a bizarre finding there must be a reason. Let me share with you what I believe it to be.

No thinking person can help being struck by the extreme regularity of the near identical results of Marshall's two .38 Special listings in his 1988 paper³: the 12 bullets listed showing exactly the same order of effectiveness when shot from a two-inch barrel as when shot from a four-inch barrel -- with every one of the effectiveness percentages in the four-inch barrel listing being three to five percentage points higher than the same load fired from a two-inch barrel. These results virtually shout to anybody with training in statistics, or experience in research, or even anybody with an open inquisitive mind and a modicum of common sense. What they are shouting is that not only are these results fabricated, but they are made up by somebody with no knowledge of statistics.

I composed a handout entitled Too Good to be True which discussed Marshall's bizarre .38 Special listings, and their significance. I gave out these handouts during talks to various law enforcement and firearm instructor groups, beginning in 1989, although this information was not published until 1992.⁴ Undoubtedly, some of these handouts found their way to Marshall. Thus alerted to the suspicions raised by his too-close-agreement of results, I believe Marshall attempted to avoid such a problem, in his first book co-authored with Sanow,⁵ by doctoring his "data." I believe Marshall thought he could escape future criticism by adding variation to the four-inch barrel list of .38 Special shootings alone to eliminate the close agreement with the two-inch barrel list. Marshall & Sanow also changed the way they reported the two barrel length lists in their 1992 book: listing those from a two-inch barrel as before, but making the second list "all" .38 Special shootings. By changing to that irrational presentation format, they apparently sought to discourage comparisons between the two-inch and four-inch lists. I guess they forgot how easy it is to reconstitute the four-inch list simply by subtracting the two-inch numbers from the total. I believe Marshall & Sanow neglected to correlate their doctoring of the four-inch barrel list with previous statistics -- and fell from the "too good to be true" trap into the even more incriminating "impossible numbers" trap. The cluster, nine of 12 in the four-inch barrel list showing more than 100% bullet effectiveness, or impossible decreases of the number of shootings over time, stands out like a spotlight in van Maanen's Table 2.

Summary

In my view, van Maanen's findings of impossible "more than 100%" bullet effectiveness, and impossible fewer-shootings-at-a-later-date numbers in the Marshall - Sanow statistics removes any doubt that their "data" can be anything but fabricated and fraudulent. Even more revealing than the existence of these impossible results is this cluster in that small part of the statistics where Marshall & Sanow have a compelling reason to add increased variation -- to try to avoid a recurrence of the "Too Good to be True" suspicions generated at that point in the past. This indisputable fact increases immensely the strength of van Maanen's evidence.

References

van Maanen, M: "Discrepancies in the Marshall & Sanow 'Data Base': An Evaluation Over Time." Wound Ballistics Review, 1999; 4(2): 9-13.

Marshall, EP: "The Lethal Truth About Handgun Stopping Power." Petersen's Handguns, 1987; 1(1): 32-37, 85.

Marshall, EP: "One Shot Stopping Power." Petersen's Handguns, 1988; 2(6): 24-29, 68-71.

Fackler, ML: "Marshall - Sanow Can't Beat the Long Odds: Wound Wizards Tally Too Good to be True." Soldier of Fortune, January 1994: 64-65

Marshall, EP; Sanow, EJ: Handgun Stopping Power: The Definitive Study. Paladin Press, Boulder, Colorado, 1992.

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