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Homicide rates in the United States have been dropping and are the lowest since 1906 or so.

http://www.ricknevin.com/uploa...

It will likely be impossible to ever confirm this but I believe the dramatic reduction in crime rates can be attributed to reduction of lead in the environment.

It is difficult to confirm, but lead was phased out of alcohol on different dates in different parts of the country. By looking at the on time sequence of phase out with the time sequence of onset of crime rate reduction, we could see if there is any correlation. And Rick Nevin did look. He found a correlation. Leaded gasoline was a significant cause for the crime. (Just stay away from the home page. Unless you are ready for a sudden on slaught of geocities meets blogger kind of traumatic experience.) http://www.ricknevin.com/uploa... http://www.ricknevin.com/uploa...

It will likely be impossible to ever confirm this but I believe the dramatic reduction in crime rates can be attributed to reduction of lead in the environment.

It is difficult to confirm, but lead was phased out of alcohol on different dates in different parts of the country. By looking at the on time sequence of phase out with the time sequence of onset of crime rate reduction, we could see if there is any correlation. And Rick Nevin did look. He found a correlation. Leaded gasoline was a significant cause for the crime. (Just stay away from the home page. Unless you are ready for a sudden on slaught of geocities meets blogger kind of traumatic experience.) http://www.ricknevin.com/uploa... http://www.ricknevin.com/uploa...

That would only be clever and have a point if you followed it up with something the counters the dozens of studies that link lead to violent crime.

Just post that makes you a tosser.

Start here and maybe you will learn something
http://www.ricknevin.com/uploads/Nevin_2000_Env_Res_Author_Manuscript.pdf

You must be a genius. just rattling off that without reading any studies or understanding the affects of lead on the brain.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=study+lead+crime&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ei=L12CUtzwHceRiALr0oGQAw&ved=0CCwQgQMwAA

http://www.ricknevin.com/uploads/Nevin_2000_Env_Res_Author_Manuscript.pdf

If you're willing to believe these graphs, then decreasing lead use correlates with decreasing crime and teen pregnancy not just in the US, but also Canada, Britain, and Australia. Furthermore, increasing use of lead correlates with increases in all of those things in all of those places.

Hopefully nobody is claiming that lead is the only factor in these things, but it's hard to imagine that any factor (e.g. abortion, policing, economics) correlates better with both increases in the past 100 years and decreases in the past 40 years in so many countries!

dom

The statement about mean IQ is somewhat accurate. However, there are subtle issues going on here. IQ is to some extent impacted by early childhood nutrition :, how much children are subject to disease http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/277/1701/3801, http://www.economist.com/node/16479286, toxin exposure http://www.ricknevin.com/uploads/Nevin_2000_Env_Res_Author_Manuscript.pdf and stereotype threat (essentially there's evidence that reminding a group about negative stereotypes about the group can cause them to perform more poorly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat ). So the problem with 11 isn't so much that it is false (the statistics are very robust) but that they likely don't reflect actual differences in underlying intelligence except at a very broad level. In this case, one could actually respond that the issues of nutrition and disease aren't that relevant if one cares about the actual intelligence of the individuals one is interacting with; their functional intelligence is likely higher than their tested intelligence, since stereotype threat can plausible explain most of the remaining difference. So in this single issue he is hitting on a potentially true statement, but even that statement is somewhat misguided. And most of the rest of the article, including the other bits you quote, is just appalling.