Thrawn,
Associative traits are NOT a clear indication of causal factors. The study must remove all other potential causal factors for the bad traits you list for it to be a truly effective argument based on causality from spanking. Hell there is not even at this time a clear indication of the cause of GOOD intelligence much less poor intelligence. IQ on the face of it is open to subjective determination as some rather intelligent people do not test well.
Second factor is to quantify the level of corporal punishment in the study cases of the children. If they are not ranked as to the severity (which admitedly would be damn hard) then you do not have a valid causal relationship. You are comparing open ended values and trying to draw a conclusion. Hardly valid.
Third problem is the validity of the data itself. Are they taken from police reports, hospital visits or a more subjective source. What is the rate of follow up observatioms? Are they one time events or continuous. Age of starting vs ending corporal punishment etc. for those included.
You can claim all you want but the fact remains there is a vast amount of data that corporal punishment is not the root cause of the worlds ills. Past society in America alone in the last 200 years is a clear example of that. Spanking , and yes child abuse itself, has existed throughout history. The majority of the aberant behaviours exibited to day are not new but they do seem more prevalent. Some could say that might be due to the reduction of spanking due to the "PC" factor of just the more recent discussions and stigma attributed by the oponents of spanking.
In conclusion let me remonstrate that there are 3 classes of liars. Liars, damned liars and statisticians.
