I'd also add, there's a definite "confirmation bias" of many magnum shooters that guides them to only seek out those sources that confirm their pre-existing biases, while ignoring all others in contradiction.
That argument can be used for the anti magnum crowd too. Refer to the last post by Mule Deer which reminds me of a comment my old boss once made. We worked on military funded research projects and he told me that any monkey can collect data, but the real challenge is interpretation. He has a PhD from MIT so I tended to listen a lot.
As for myself, I know confirmation bias isn't problematic. I was a magnum shooter and took elk with various ones as I previously explained. I still own a 300 Mag. If I had such a prejudice I would have been looking for reasons to stay with the magnums I started with.
Data and interpretation, great point! Alas and problematically, killing animals rarely fits into neat little qualification boxes.
However, you seem to have pretty strong ideas on killing elk so you must have a lot of experience on the subject. And since I don't know you it would be great to hear about your personal elk hunting with both magnums and non-magnums.
Also, does your MIT/PhD boss hunt elk? What does he think?
