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Crime Reduction Linked To Lead-Free Gasoline
Hugh Pickens writes "Even low levels of lead can cause brain damage, increasing the likelihood of behavioral and cognitive traits such as impulsivity, aggressiveness, and low IQ that are strongly linked with criminal behavior. The NYTimes has a story on how the phasing out of leaded gasoline starting with the Clean Air Act in 1973 may have led to a 56% drop in violent crime in the US in the 1990s. An economics professor at Amherst College, Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, discovered the connection and wrote a paper comparing the reduction of lead from gasoline between states (PDF) and the reduction of violent crime. She constructed a table linking crime rates in every state to childhood lead exposure in that state 20 or 30 years earlier. If lead poisoning is a factor in the development of criminal behavior, then countries that didn't switch to unleaded fuel until the 1980s, like Britain and Australia, should soon see a dip in crime as the last lead-damaged children outgrow their most violent years."
So does this mean with all the lead paint we are seeing in toys now, we will see another spike in violent behavior.
It couldn't be related to the fact that we have more criminals than ever cooling their heels in prison?
painting my kids toys with lead based paint!
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
Wow, imagine the reduction if we got rid of gasoline altogether.
(Note to slashdotters, I'm joking)
Interesting - but couldn't this be a correlation != causation issue? Also it seems to imply that violent or criminal behavior is due to organic brain damage. Is that a given?
Of course I haven't read the paper
No more heavy metal on your ipods!
This smacks of the same great scientific thinking as "Decrease in Pirates Cause Global Warming." There are so many other factors that would show a similar upward/downward trend as crime over such a long time period. For example, a decrease in the quality of writing in Simpsons episodes has matched a decrease in the violent crime rate.
...Freakonomics correlated the drop in crime rates with the legalization of abortion. Which sounds more sound of a theory to you?
Disclaimer: I seriously don't want to start a flamewar or anything, please keep it civil.
The legalization of abortion also occurred in a similar time frame and also has been attributed to a large statistical decrease in violent crime. http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-10490717_ITM
Are both studies wrong? One study? More bending of statistics to make up for science? Anyone specifically in the know?
"Don't feel bad for me child; I'm the monster that hides under your bed."
Correlation obviously is not proof. The Freakonomics folks attributed the drop in crime to Roe vs. Wade, based on the same kind of correlation.
Global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are correlated to the shrinking numbers of pirates since the 1800s.
Arrrr!
I seemed to remember something I read awile back, that one thing that middle-eastern mothers (I'm assuming like Iraq and such) put some sort of face paint on their children's faces. It was shown to contain very high levels of lead. I can't confirm or deny this since I can't remember where I saw it, but maybe there's something to that, and they're violence levels?
- Kc
-- Kevin C. Redden kcredden@ gmail 392992
I thought I remember reading in Freakonomics that that drop was associated strongly with a rise in Abortions, not in lead gasoline. Could be a combination of both though, or it could be that everyone has now noticed that there is an association between crime drop now and stuff that happened during the 70's, with researchers jumping on the bandwagon to find the smoking gun. Either way, good thing I was born in the 80's.
I'd like to know if forcing your beliefs on other people is worth twice as much crime? Is making cheaper, more effective paint worth twice as much crime? Personally I'd say no to both of those but I'm sure half the country disagrees with me on the first point.
My work here is dung.
Of course I haven't read the paper In another famous study, the decrease in number of pirates has been linked to global warming...
Bow-ties are cool.
Well now there's a theory that can be disproven if crime does not decrease in coutries with later date lead regulation. It sounds a bit farfetched as stated in the summary, but I can imagine lead as one of many many factors that cause a person to become likely to commit a crime.
It was addition of the G-23 paxilon hydrochlorate that the feds required be added to the gasoline.
We just haven't seen the uptick in cannibalism yet.
... the crime wave will recede from Eastern US cities like Baltimore, where every single property in the entire city was painted with lead right up until the ban in 1978. Thing is, lead paint was used because of its durability, so there is no guarantee that these cities are even in the downward part of the curve yet, as the paint may just now be starting to chip and find its way into children's lungs/guts.
The incidence of bellbottoms fell off precipitously in the late 1970s as well.
My understanding is that "unleaded" gasoline is not lead free; rather it has a lower lead content than "leaded" gasoline. Can anyone confirm/deny this?
SYS64738
Levitt's book is cited in the first paragraph of the paper, which is very interesting, but rather hard to understand on a (very) brief reading. Essentially, she says that lead contributes 56% to the drop in crime, while the availability of abortions contributes 29%.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
Maybe it's not lead free gas. Many other events took place in 1973. It could be any of these things (or none of them)would be equally responsible for a drop in violent crime:
January 3 - CBS sells the New York Yankees for $10 million to a 12-person syndicate led by George Steinbrenner.
January 14 - Elvis Presley does a concert in Hawaii for over a billion people live worldwide.
January 22 - Former United States President Lyndon B. Johnson dies in San Antonio, Texas.
January 22 - Roe v. Wade: The U.S. Supreme Court overturns state bans on abortion.
January 27 - U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War ends with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords.
February 11 - Toronto: Construction on the CN Tower begins.
February 11 - Vietnam War: The first release of American prisoners of war from Vietnam takes place.
February 12 - Ohio becomes the first U.S. state to post distance in metric on signs. (See: Metric system in the United States).
February 13 - The United States Dollar was devalued by 10%.
February 16 - The Court of Appeal of England and Wales ruled that the Sunday Times could publish articles on Thalidomide and Distillers Company, despite ongoing legal actions by parents (the decision was overturned in July by the House of Lords).
February 21 - Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 (Boeing 727) is shot down by Israeli fighter aircraft over the Sinai Desert, after the passenger plane is suspected of being an enemy military plane. Only 5 (1 crew member and 4 passengers) of 113 survive.
February 22 - Sino-American relations: Following President Richard Nixon's visit to mainland China, the United States and the People's Republic of China agree to establish liaison offices.
February 26 - Edward Heath's British government publishes a Green Paper on prices and incomes policy.
February 27 - The American Indian Movement occupies Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
February 28 - Polling day in the Republic of Ireland general election.
March 1 - Dick Taverne, who had resigned from the Parliament of the United Kingdom on leaving the Labour Party, was re-elected as a 'Democratic Labour' candidate.
March 3 - Tottenham Hotspur win the Football League Cup final at Wembley, beating Norwich City 1-0 in the final.
March 7 - Comet Kohoutek is discovered.
March 8 - In the 'Border Poll', voters in Northern Ireland endorse remaining in the United Kingdom. Irish nationalists largely boycotted the referendum.
March 8 - Provisional Irish Republican Army bombs explode in Whitehall and the Old Bailey in England.
March 11 - Sir Richard Sharples, Governor of Bermuda, was assassinated in Government House.
March 17 - Queen Elizabeth II opens the modern London Bridge.
March 17 - Many of the few remaining United States soldiers begin to leave Vietnam. One reunion of a former POW reuniting with his family is immortalized in the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph Burst of Joy.
March 17- Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, one of rock's landmark albums, is released.
March 20 - British government White Paper on Northern Ireland proposes re-establishment of an Assembly elected by proportional representation, with a possible All-Ireland council.
March 21 - Lofthouse Colliery disaster in Great Britain.
March 22 - United Kingdom government announces that the Channel Tunnel could be finished by 1980, costing £366m.
March 23 - Watergate scandal (United States): In a letter to Judge John Sirica, Watergate burglar James W. McCord Jr. admits that he and other defendants have been pressured to remain silent about the case. He names Attorney General John Mitchell as 'overall boss' of the operation.
March 29 - The last United States soldier leaves Vietnam.
March 31 - Paramount's Carowinds opens.
April 2 - The LexisNexis computerized legal research service begins.
April 3 - The first handheld cellular phone call made by Martin Cooper, who conceived the phone, in New York City.
April 4 - The World Trade Center officially opens in New York City with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
How about decreases in crimes by people who were never born, because their parents could get a legal abortion? And other family planning that made more kids who'd become old enough to commit crimes instead the product of more educated, well adjusted families? Also prenatal care and other health in ghettos.
The Civil Rights Revolution of the 1960s made a generation that came of age in the late 1970s through 1990s (and still coming today) a lot more well adjusted.
--
make install -not war
Correlation does not imply causation.
Correlation very much implies causation. It does not, however, prove causation. At least get your semantics right...
Finally, an excuse to start dumping saltpeter into fuel tanks..
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
That's an adverb. What you are looking for is impulsiveness.
Personally, I think the most likely cause is one of:
* Reduction in the use of slide rules. With calculators it's easier to get a job as a clerk.
* Increase in CPU speed. Too much time playing games == less time being bad.
* Global warming. It's getting too hot to commit crime.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
We offer evidence that legalized abortion has contributed significantly to recent crime reductions. Crime began to fall roughly eighteen years after abortion legalization. The five states that allowed abortion in 1970 experienced declines earlier than the rest of the nation, which legalized in 1973 with Roe v. Wade. States with high abortion rates in the 1970s and 1980s experienced greater crime reductions in the 1990s. In high abortion states, only arrests of those born after abortion legalization fall relative to low abortion states. Legalized abortion appears to account for as much as 50 percent of the recent drop in crime.
Or, you can read the book "Freakonomics" for a less technical explanation by the same authors of that paper.
http://www.amazon.com/How-Misuse-Statistics-Gregory-Kimble/dp/0134361962
Written by my favorite Psych professor but so good that it used to be required reading in Statistics classes.
Some of the examples used to hammer home that correlation != causation make it entertaining to read.
Lets blame it all on the lead in gas, and the lead in paint.
There is no way the person who did it can be responsible!
Filed under junk science.
I'd like to know if forcing your beliefs on other people is worth twice as much crime? Is making cheaper, more effective paint worth twice as much crime?
You mention that abortion might be linked to a lowering in crime. I'd like to mention another fact, that abortion is a proven risk factor in breast cancer.
Irrelevant, you may say, but it is another instance of 'forcing beliefs', but from the other side of the coin:
The American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation continue to deny the link between induced abortion and an increased risk of breast cancer. They make no effort to publicize (or they wholly ignore) the increased risk of breast cancer associated with oral contraceptive use. link.
Many of these groups are promoting their own beliefs that an abortion is an important right over the free flow of information (and oral contraceptives), letting women know that it increases their risk factor for the second most fatal form of cancer, according to the ACS. The knife slices both ways, and people die in both cases.
It only implies causation for those with a pretty poor understanding of one of:
science
correlation
causation
the word imply.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I'm going off on a conspiracy tangent, but here's a thought: *if* it was that easy for lead in gasoline to negatively affect people, couldn't it be just as easy for a people in power to make their citizens more docile and peaceful to a fault through other chemicals?
I question the timing. Giuliani is taking credit for the drop in crime in NY during his tenure as mayor (personally I think it was mostly Bratton - the police Commissioner). Guiliani is the leading GOP candidate for President '08. So, the NY Times and publishes a "study" that the drop in crime in the US was due to phasing out lead in gas. How convenient, expect more of this stuff as the '08 campaign heats up.
[Insert pithy quote here]
I know the crime rate is also tied into drug use. I can't help but wonder if, as more addicts die earlier, this can also lead to a lower crime rate.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
if criminals are criminals because of exposure to lead, doesn't that make them victims themselves? i smell lawsuits! and lookie lookie, we got another reason to slam the oil companies!
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
No one is saying that they person isn't responsible.
I would rate this science as 'good', not great, or perfect, but certianly needing a closer look.
The effects of lead on people is pretty well know. Based on other studies I have read, I believe it is not implausible that those effect would lead to more violent behavior.
Just bacause a study doesn't agree with your subjective view doesn't mean it's junk.
Gueass what? thousands of factor go in to making a person. children who are abused often grow up to be violent adults. As adults they should be responsible for their action, that doesn't mean their childhood experiences didn't influance who they became.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Maybe this explains why the Romans would invade everyone they could reach.
All that lead for all those years...makes me want to punch somebody!
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, By Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
Notice, no link. Not astroturfing this (or am I? Hmmmm...). The books thought on the crime drop was that legalizing abortion helped a lot. I don't remember if it was violent or overall crime, but basically by allowing women that couldn't raise a child properly (unsupportive father, family, community), less kids were raised at risk of becoming criminals.
Of course, I might just like it because the idea would rub certain members of my family the wrong way. I'm bad like that.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
Does this explain disco music?
Technoli
maybe BOTH are factors?
I know, Crazy idea that something might not be 1 or the other, but a little of both.
I summary I say: Terrorist use bombs. Bombs came about bacause of science, therefor scientist are terrorist;which is why the bush administration has no need to use science.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The book Freakanomics makes a good case for crime reduction based on the Roe v Wade - the legalization abortions. The logic goes that majority of kids who are not aborted end up being much more suspetible to crime. Another reason for reduced crime is increased police presence.
The drop in crime is actually due to LEGOS; the wonderful mental stimulating plastic brick toys which were launched in their plastic form in 1963. Yes, that is 10 yrs before the noted 1973 statistical start time. However, it took approx. 10 yrs for said toy to fully populate the American market.
Thus, the statistical analysis clearly proves that LEGOS are directly responsible for the current drop in crime.
And why would this be? Because LEGO itself is derived from the term "Play Well". The millions of kids that grow up playing with LEGOS just seem to continue to "play well" even into adulthood.
- Saj
Roe v. Wade. Reduction in unwanted kids results in less criminals. More abortions for all!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
These statistical correlations are fact. The conclusions might not be, but given the local variations in lead reduction and corresponding reduction in violent crime she makes a much better case than you.
There is a difference between cynicism and skepticism.
Perhaps western society has just enjoyed a greater awareness of what exactly is good and bad for the planet and other people over the last 30 years? I mean, when I think of great things that happened in 70's America I'm automatically reminded of black equality, the hippy movement, and the discovery of the extent of the environmental destruction of our planet. The Clean Air Act was just a consequence of this kind of social shift in priorities. Isn't it quite likely that the same people who started these movements have just raised their children to be nicer, more conscientious citizens?
"If you want a vision of the future, Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever." - George Orwell, 1984
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:FX7fM0XdTiEJ:pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/DonohueLevittTheImpactOfLegalized2001.pdf+abortion+crime&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us
The Scientific Method:
.... but that's the whole point. That's what makes this real science - somebody sticking his neck out in public, opening himself to the possibility of being wrong.
i) Observation
ii) Theory
iii) Prediction
iv) Experiment
In THAT order.
An awful lot of "science" these days seems to forget about the last two items - and they're the most important.
Will the prediction turn out to be true? Who knows
No sig today...
What you are looking for is impulsively.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
... riiiight!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
If you've read Stephen Levitt's Freakonomics, he attributes a large portion of the drop in crime to Roe v Wade. He states that there were a lot less unwanted children after that point, and those are the people who are most likely to end up as criminals. There's more to the discussion including that part of the drop could be attributed to increases in numbers of police and other things. It's an interesting read even if you don't agree with it.
Google "levitt debunking". It seems to me that Levitt's arguments are quite weak.
You don't need to speculate about what the paper says. It's linked right in the article summary! Have a quick scan to see how she has derived her data.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
That the decrease in crime in the 90's was clearly due to trickle-down economics. Even though it was implemented by Ronald Ray-gun in the 80's, it clearly had such dramatic and sweeping downstream effects that the reduction in 90's crime must have been due to it.
No other possible explanation, move along now.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Abortion Reduces Crime Moderate this "Offtopic" along with all the other abortion posts, but it has to be brought up in light of the posts referring to the discredited Freakanomics abortion theory. http://www.lifenews.com/nat2550.html by Paul Nowak LifeNews.com Staff Writer August 30, 2006 Chicago, IL (LifeNews.com) -- A new paper by two prominent economists will challenge a claim in the best-selling book Freakanomics that legalized abortion has reduced crime. John R. Lott Jr. and John Whitley, affiliated with the University of Chicago, have written a paper challenging the pro-abortion claims made by Freakanomics author Steven D. Levitt. Lott and Whitley expect their paper to be published in October in the journal Economic Inquiry, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. In his book, Levitt argues that the ready availability of abortion since its legalization in 1973 resulted in fewer unwanted children and therefore less crime in later generations. He cited arrest records to claim that abortion would account for a 1% reduction in crime each year over the next two decades. Lott and Whitley are challenging Levitt's assumptions, pointing out that Levitt did not consider all the factors affecting the crime rate, including the increase of children born out of wedlock since the Roe v. Wade decision. According to their research, ready access to abortion has made women more likely to engage in premarital sex, and as a result more children are being born to single women. They point out that 5 percent of white children were born out of wedlock from 1965 to 1969, compared to 16 percent in the 1980's. Black children born out of wedlock increased from 35 percent to 62 percent in the same period. These children of unwed mothers, statistically more at risk of becoming criminals, are responsible for the increase of murders by 700 cases in 1998 alone, according to Lott and Whitley. Such a dramatic increase carried a financial price tag of $3.3 billion in "victimization costs," according to their paper. Lott and Whitley are not the first to challenge Levitt's popular book. In November 2005, Christopher Foote, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and research assistant Christopher Goetz, told the Wall St. Journal the data Levitt used was faulty. Foote said there was a "missing formula" in Levitt's original research that allowed him to ignore certain factors that may have contributed to the lowering of crime rates during the 1980s and 1990s. Foote also argues that Levitt counted the total number of arrests made when he should have used per-capita figures. After Foote adjusted for both factors, the abortion effect simply disappeared, the Journal reported. "There are no statistical grounds for believing that the hypothetical youths who were aborted as fetuses would have been more likely to commit crimes had they reached maturity than the actual youths who developed from fetuses and carried to term," the Foote and Goetz say in their report.
studies link the drop in crime to people not breaking the law.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
Is one data point really enough to call it correlation? If they had compared it to other regions that didn't have the ban on leaded gasonline, that might have shown something.
When Disco was at its peak, so was crime committed by persons aged from late teens to early 30's at its peak in the mid-late 1970s.
Now we're seeing an upsurge in violent crime being perpetrated precisely by the very same age groups and subcultures of people who are hooked on "rap music" (sic, oxymoron).
To a much smaller degree, but still closely correlated enough to form a measurement, was the industrial/dance/synthpop music period that was big in Europe during the 1990s, but the crime levels then were suppressed enough by too many of the adolescent and 20-something aged males who lived on a steady diet of this music poisoning their brains with massive amounts of MDMA and porking each other up the wazoo that subdued their violent criminal tendencies.
It's listening to too much steady, driving, thumping rhythm of these kinds of music that drives the urge to commit violent crime.
It is the other way around for suuuuure; increased number of crime increases the usage of lead-based gasoline. ...or something.
"Also it seems to imply that violent or criminal behavior is due to organic brain damage. Is that a given?"
Yes, in some cases it is.
For example, frontal lobe damage pretty consistently results in the following
"Other features of frontal lobe syndromes include reduced activity, particularly a diminution of spontaneous activity, lack of drive, inability to plan ahead, and lack of concern. Sometimes associated with this are bouts of restless, aimless uncoordinated behavior. Affect may be disturbed. with apathy, emotional blunting, and the patient showing an indifference to the world around him. Clinically, this picture can resemble a major affective disorder with psychomotor retardation, while the indifference bears occasional similarity to the "belle indifference" noted sometimes with hysteria.
In contrast, on other occasions, euphoria and disinhibition are described. The euphoria is not that of a manic condition, having an empty quality to it. The disinhibition can lead to marked abnormalities of behavior, sometimes associated with outbursts of irritability and aggression. So-called witzelsucht has been described, in which patients show an inappropriate facetiousness and a tendency to pun."
http://www.ect.org/effects/lobe.html
Many of the described changes in behavior parallel criminal behavior very closely.
Which brings up an interesting point, if an individual acquires some type of damage that causes them to mimic criminal behavior, are they in fact, criminals?
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
I was born in 1952, and was grown before lead was phased out of gasoline. My IQ was measured at 142 (although who knows, it could possibly be higher if I wasn't exposed to lead). But how old is Stephen Hawking? Or any of the other guys that make me look like I have Downs Syndrome?
OTOH my oldest daughter, born in 1985 (after lead was phased out) has a measured IQ of 65 (although I stress MEASURED - I strongly suspect autism). The doctors blame her low IQ on having the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck at birth. Her sister's IQ is 130.
My oldest daughter (IQ 65, Forrest Gump's was higher) has shown no criminal inclination whatever, despite (or because of?) her IQ. Has any correlation, let alone causation, been shown between low IQ and criminality? I would guess that it's the dumb ones that get CAUGHT. I've said many times that if I were evil, I could be a very rich man.
Now, when I was a kid there was a family down the street with two very severely retarded children. The cause? Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. My guess is that gasoline caused very little if any retardation; lead poisoning would have been from paint (also phased out) rather than gasoline. There are just too many causes of mental retardation to blame the gasoline.
Also, lead isn't the only thing in gasoline that can damage brains. There is benzine, tolulene, all sorts of nasty stuff that will make you stupid.
-mcgrew
PS: You retards talk of Darwin when some dumbassed moron does something stupid, but I know a woman with 14 kids, 13 of them still alive. How many kids do YOU have? In the Darwin contest, assuming my two kids are the only ones I have (there could be a whole lot in Asia; also assuming that my two kids actually carry my genes) she's kicking my ass in the Darwin contest, and her IQ is average at best.
I hadn't heard that line before...
Playdo is a counter to lead causing violence. As a child I ate plenty of lead pencils and plenty of playdo and have had no violent encounters. So Playdo must be a counter to the voilence causing agent within lead.
These statistical correlations are a complete crock. There are a million things that have changed over the last few years that could also be attributed.
One that was done piecemeal (so regression analysis could be performed) and which produced a strong signal under such analysis: Allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons for self-protection against criminals. This drastically lowers the overall violent crime and injury/death rates (even if you DO count any crooks shot in self-defense as a "victim").
Interestingly, while many thought it might produce a short bloodbath (until criminals got the message that some of their victims might be armed), that didn't happen. Instead the violent crime rate just dropped, as criminals moved to less-armed areas, switched from muggings, armed robberies, carjackings, "hot" (occupied-dwelling) burglaries, to things like burglarizing UNoccupied homes and stores, or just found legal work. Rapes dropped like a rock, too (though they went up somewhat in nearby areas that hadn't yet liberalized their own laws.)
Turns out the crooks weren't SO stupid that they couldn't see the writing on that wall. And even those who didn't get the message right away usually weren't dumb enough to keep attacking, rather than run away, when they found themselves looking at the wrong end of a pistol.
(When Florida changed to non-discretionary CCW (i.e. the license has to be granted if the applicant jumps through the correct hoops and doesn't have a criminal record), one gang switched to hitting tourist in rental cars, on the assumption they'd be unarmed - both by airport regs and lack of a permit. Florida fixed that by removing the requirement that rental cars have distinctive markings/licenses and by issuing concealed carry permits to tourists. B-) Interestingly, even during the peak of the rob-the-Florida-tourists boom a tourist had less chance of being robbed in Florida than in California.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
This dude claims that the precipitous drop in crime in New York City is not entirely attributable to Rudy Giuliani, but may actually be due to NYC's decades-long efforts to eliminate lead exposure among children. Apparently he has been studying this topic for some time, and has found identical correlation between lead exposure and criminality in studies from nine different countries.
Breakfast served all day!
I wanna see the state by state data. It might explain something that's been bothering me for some years now...
China is taking care of this problem with their usual efficiency, so stop giving them a hard time.
Reminds me of my comment on various religions.
They can't all be right -- But they can all be wrong.
-AC
...think of the children? I mean after all, today's children should have just as much opportunity (and motivation) to rape, pillage, and maim as previous generations!
That's one I like to trot out when people get going on correlation bullshit. Clearly videogames reduce violent crime. Why? Well the drop in crime matches nicely up with the videogame revolution. As videogames continue to get more popular and mainstream, crime goes down. Clearly they must be causing the reduction then!
Fun stat to pull out on the "videogames make kids violent" crowd.
Re:Yet again it bears repeating...
Correlation does not imply causation. While the correlation may be very strong, causation cannot be assumed without ruling out many other potential contributing factors.
How many people have to post this needless gibberish over and over again? Is it some sort of karma whoring?
I mean, the effing SUMMARY got it 100% right:
"Even low levels of lead can cause brain damage, increasing the likelihood of behavioral and cognitive traits such as impulsivity, aggressiveness, and low IQ that are strongly linked with criminal behavior."
We know lead causes brain damage, and we know brain damage can lead to agressiveness, violence, etc.
"The NYTimes has a story on how the phasing out of leaded gasoline starting with the Clean Air Act in 1973 may have led to a 56% drop in violent crime in the US in the 1990s."
Key words: MAY HAVE LED TO. Its a hypothesis. Good.
They aren't asserting causation. They are noting a correlation, and using reasoning to form a hypothesis. So far so good.
An economics professor at Amherst College, Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, discovered the connection and wrote a paper comparing the reduction of lead from gasoline between states (PDF) and the reduction of violent crime. She constructed a table linking crime rates in every state to childhood lead exposure in that state 20 or 30 years earlier.
Documenting the correlation. Even better, its not anecdotal. We're collecting real empirical measurable evidence.
If lead poisoning is a factor in the development of criminal behavior, then countries that didn't switch to unleaded fuel until the 1980s, like Britain and Australia, should soon see a dip in crime as the last lead-damaged children outgrow their most violent years."
A useful prediction? Can it be? Holy shit. Its the full on scientfic method in action. Observe World, Formulate Hypothesis, Test Hypothesis.
I grant that is not the best possible test of the hypothesis, because its not a closed experiment, and its not really repeatable, and a lot of unknowns can get in the way, but we take what we can get. Human-centric sciences like medicine and psychology, or sciences like astrophysics or evolution don't have the luxury of perfect experiments - we can't raise humans in isolated bubbles, nor send a selection of stars into identicale blackholes nor watch a million isolated generations of people --
All we can do in these cases is come up with hypotheses and models, make predictions based on those models to see if we can find examples / counter examples in the observable world.
Overall, its good science here. If the dip in crime occurs where they occur when they predict it, it obviously it won't prove or disprove the hypothesis but it will add significantly to the body of evidence that supports it. If it doesn't occur then we'll have to refine or discard the hypothesis. If ultimately the hypothesis is junk it'll eventually get tossed out. Science is full of wrong hypothesises, but they are the best we have at any given time... that's how it works.
So what exactly do you object to here? That you felt the need to drone about the difference between causation and correlation. It seems everybody involved already got that memo.
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
Bottled water?
Damn, does this mean the remaining criminals are smarter?
Alcohol...I always wondered what pregnant mothers drinking alcohol did to contribute to kids mental abilities.
I mean we hear about how bad it is to drink while pregnant, but in the past, say the middle ages (or dark ages), alcohol was the safest thing to drink.
I wonder how much IQ jumped when it was fashionable to not drink. In particular, say when Victorian women didn't drink (but the men did), how much did that influence the next generation of thinkers....
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
Additionally, there was a map printed which showed the areas of the city in which children have high levels of lead exposure and then overlaid this map with city crime levels. The similarities are striking.
We may never be able to make a direct link between criminality and lead exposure as a child, but the amount of data that keeps coming in is strong enough that we must keep lead as far away from children as possible.
Lead has also been associated directly with delinquent, criminal, and aggressive behavior.
And it MUST be the lead that's doing it. After all, it COULDN'T POSSIBLY be any other factor. Couldn't be, say, poverty leading to lack of opportunity for legal employment, recruitment and harassment by criminal gangs (leading to violent self-defense and/or joining a gang), and living in older substandard housing (which is far more likely than newer buildings to have lead paint.)
Now if you want a correlation-implies-causation argument try this one:
Prison guards have noticed that a very strong predictor of violent behavior in a prisoner is whether he sits down to pee - with the sitters being the totally violent fruitcakes. Theory is that these are the guys who were raised COMPLETELY by mother alone, with no male role model (even a boyfriend who interacted with the kid rather than just visiting mom) to teach them that "real men channel their aggressive impulses and pee standing up".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I remember when a Chineese paper copied an Onion article and ran it as real news.
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2002/06/53048
Earlier 'research' was conducted by a Rick Nevin. This 'scientist' also stated:
"Rick Nevin examined the association between blood lead levels in U.S. children and IQ changes over several decades. He concluded that "long-term trends in population exposure to gasoline lead were... remarkably consistent with subsequent changes in violent crime and unwed pregnancy," and that paint and gasoline lead levels correlated with changes in murder rates. Improvements in children's IQ scores over several decades, as measured by the Cognitive Abilities Test, also showed a strong correlation wi ith declining blood lead levels."
http://www.crimetimes.org/00c/w00cp4.htm
Now who would have imagined?
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
I would caution against the level of pride you have displayed regarding it.
If I had a bird, I suspect he wouldn't let me line his cage with that "study" (which wasn't a study, but in fact, an editorial about a study).
You know when all those people scream "correlation does not equal causation"? They're talking specifically about "studies" like the one your editorial references.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
i) Observation
As lead was removed from gasoline in the US, the violet crime rate fell.
ii) Theory
Lead poisoning was leading to violet crime.
iii) Prediction
Variation between states in the removal of leaded gas, lead to a variation in the drop of the crime rate.
iv) Experiment
Compare the phase out of lead in different states with the crime rate (this paper).
As you can see, this is a science paper and follows the scientific method. It's not the author's fault people in Slashdot can only write, but not read.
Reading the article, they already control for abortion, the average crime rate per year, the average crime rate for individual states, and even the effects of people moving from one state to another. The lead level measurements were finer grained than "lead existed before this date, then, everyone stopped using it"- they included state-by-state, year-by-year measurements in their lead data, adjusting for population density (as a surrogate for traffic density).
This was a sophisticated analysis; I wouldn't call it, as some commenters above have, "junk science". It would be surprising for their observed relation to hold, but their interpretation be incorrect. It would be interesting for someone to really come up with an alternative explanation of this paper's observations.
As a side note, I'm pretty sure that by now most lay people, and everyone reading this forum, is aware that correlation does not imply causation. And I'd be willing to guess that the vast majority of scientists have been aware of this elementary statistical fact for some time. It's likely that scientists take many potential influences into account before submitting for publication. So can we please exercise some restraint in the future and actually read the article before denouncing it as "junk science" because, as everyone knows, correlation is not causation? I am emphatically not asking people to take what the researcher says on faith, but if you decry the article without reading it, then your words are essentially noise.
You're welcome, America! ;-)
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
There are techniques to take some account of these factors. According to the NYT article, the study's author "uses small variations in the lead content of gasoline from state to state to strengthen her argument." So we have: 1) a correlation between violent crime and presence of lead in the environment, 2) support from state-by-state comparisons, 3) lead poisoning is linked to brain damage resulting in violent behaviors. Is that enough? Probably not - but it's suggestive, and with such sensational claims I expect there will be plenty of peer review.
You're also accusing the result of being a "pet theory". It may be. It may be that many or most scientists cheat. But we shouldn't assume - with no evidence whatsoever - that any particular scientist is acting in bad faith. Do that, and we'll find scientists living down to our expectations.
You may find the study "hard to believe", that it could "prove anything you like". If you don't examine the method, your complaint could also be leveled at any study you like. If you want better science, make specific criticisms - unless of course you don't want science at all.
Lead levels in the Roman Empire would be worth a look.
They already were.
Body loads of lead were very high in the later periods - especially among the upper, decision-making, classes. To the point that lead was believed to have been the major cause of a lack of fertility among the upper classes and the decline of those families.
Turns out it wasn't the lead plumbing - where the lead pretty much stayed in the pipes. They had figured out that if you put a lead liner in wine bottles the wine stayed sweet as it aged, rather than turning sour. But that's not because it DOESN'T turn to vinegar - instead the vinegar (acetic acid) reacts with the lead to form lead acetate - which is so sweet it's also called "sugar of lead". And it's REALLY well absorbed by the body.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Clearly the study is wrong because it suggests that we should take care of the environment. Only communists and sex perverts, leftists, push environmentalism in the USA. It's bad for business and freedom, and it's a direct assault on our property rights. Can you say "spotted owl"? Communists and socialists -- same thing -- have taken over our news media and our universities. Congress should cut funding for the groups responsible for finding out such crap.
Better dead than red, or socialistic like those Europeans. And all those Chinese that are getting killed by environmental problems just show that our system is better and more humane than theirs. Because God's on our side. Let's keep it that way!
Freakonomics - abortion reduced crime No Lead gas reduces crime. My sex drive also peeked just before the drop in crime during the 90's. My desire to commit crimes also diminished during that period. Any other /.'s have the experience?
iv) Experiment
Compare the phase out of lead in different states with the crime rate (this paper).
Faulty experiment does not follow the scientific method. A read Experiment would have been to expose a segment of the populace to lead again and see if crime rates go up in the segment. Otherwise, you can just pick any change that occurred in all states and correlate it to crime rate say that it's responsible.
So we need to reintroduce leaded gasoline and ban it again several times in order to confirm with experiment that it does indeed lead to higher crime rates.
Another thing to add is that the Legalization of Abortion is contibuting to the failing of Social Security since this program relies on young people to pay for the benefits of retired people.
And volunteer to be first.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
That'll screw up his whole anti-gun agenda....
Hmm, maybe not - there's lead in them that bullets....
I think this is the data from that study: http://www.exstatic.org/images/pirates_vs_gw.jpg
So I should drink leaded gasoline in order to score chicks?
Bow-ties are cool.
"Although they may behave bizarrely everything they're doing is "voluntary"."
That statement betrays a gross ignorance on your part to exactly what is happening in a Schizophrenics head.
It is clear after reading your replies that you have no real idea what you're talking about.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
Children born in 1973 would also be the first generation that had ready access to video games. The ability to exercise violent impulses in pixels rather than blood seems like a more probably hypothesis.
Take that, Jack Thompson!
That's like saying the increase in global warming is in direct relation to the reduction of pirates.
Another sign of FSM...
In other news, researchers concluded that the end of piracy is correlated with the rise in the average temperature world wide.
I'm no expert, but I would imagine that the amount of lead you'll absorb by handling a small toy covered in lead paint is going to be at least several orders of magnitude less than what you'd be inhaling from the emissions of every car, truck, and bus on the planet (and at 1970s emissions standards) every day.
I doubt it, lead in paint is, well, trapped in paint. Lead in fumes gets slowly, constantly delivered to your bloodstream through your lungs. So I can see how even small amounts can be more dangerous that way.
A simpler explanation- video games: http://cairnarvon.rotahall.org/pics/violentgames.jpg
So this means we need to re-introduce lead paint into half the nation, and ban abortion in one half the lead-paint region, plus half the non-lead paint region, to get a full 2-factor experiment?
(Seriously, though, did either of these researchers take the mobility of people into account? E.g., were all the crooks long-term residents of the area?)
Well worth reading: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20000320/kitman - "The Secret History of Lead: Special Report"
Basically, there was no point in putting lead into gasoline in the first place, and it was known to be poisonous from the early days. The story
bears some similarity to that of the tobacco companies -- one can hope the infamy will one day be alike too.
another nail in the coffin of the green-bashers.
DDT, asbestos, dioxins, fungicides, herbicides, heavy metals: stop fucking with the environment!
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
It has been shown that there is a strong positive corrolation between ice cream consumption and the murder rate. Does this mean that one causes the other? No. it's because both numbers tend to incease with hot weather wikipedia.org. Just because two things line up does not mean that one is caused by the other.
Hmmm.... The Scientific Method may be more accurately summarized as follows:
1. Observe
2. Develop Hypothesis
3. Make predictions based on hypothesis
4. Test predictions by experimentation
Remember: a Hypothesis is not the same as Theory
Less lead in gasoline leads to less crime?
This is BS. The violent crime reduction is due to the decrease in disco music, everybody knows it, and the correlation is just as strong as for leaded gasoline. Stronger even. Less Travolta-wannabe dancers, less thumpa-boom noise, less crime, that's a no brainer. At least, works for me. It takes seriously bad rap to be half as annoying as 70s disco.
Why, take me for instance. I am positively humid-eyed when I hear Abba nowadays. But when "Dancing Queen"c ame out in 76, I stopped liking it after the 175th time it was played in a week. At the 203th time, I went berserk and killed anyone wearing a bell-bottom around me. My analyst understood me and got me outta jail. Later, he died of a coke OD. These days, you cannot pull that kind of crap anymore. Less analysts, less dummy judges. And the coke-head massively died. They often were violent, you know.
Seriously, most of the ambiant lead comes from pigments and inks, especially downwind from incinerators. That's why ambiant lead did not decrease much after leaded gas was phased out.
Oh, and in the 70s, jailing violent criminals was indeed considered "unprogressive", which resulted in less of them being locked up. Naaah, cannot be a factor.
Fantasy: http://ferrisfantasy.blogspot.com/
Listen, shitforbrains. Why should the costs of registration be shifted onto me just because /. refuses to adopt some kind of single sign on technology? This isn't 1994.
I will ask for the third time: Do you have a link to back up your quote? Yes or no.
My query is legitimate. And you would be a better person for it if you would just say, "yes, here is the link..." or "no." Much better than hiding behind character assassination.
P.d. The causation in question by definition cannot be proven it's not falsifiable, therefore: junk science to be put next to all the bullshit the social "sciences" try put push down our gobs. Social "Science" = State Sanctioned Opinion Manufacture.
HAD
I didn't see anything in the paper about the effects of an aging population. There is plenty of evidence that violent crimes are primarily carried out by 15-29 year old guys. I would be more interested in his conclusion if I saw a graph showing that lead levels explained crime reduction better than simply changing demographics. As the baby boomers age, fewer of them commit crimes, the population ages, and the 15-29 year olds have to commit many more crimes to get to the same crimes per capita over the entire population.
I read an article not too long ago about a guy who developed a brain tumor. By all accounts, he had normal sexual drives/impulses 'til then. As the tumor developed, he developed pedophile-type sexual urges/desires.
After the tumor was removed, he no longer reported any sort of pedophilia-type desires.
Just something to keep in mind for those of us (like myself, btw) who tend to come down on the side of free-will rather than determinism, that maybe we don't have all the answers yet, eh? Let's face it, our understanding of the brain isn't even as advanced as pre-Newton physics. So on what basis can any of us say who's to "blame" for criminality?
Also, don't you think "junk science" is a bit harsh? Unless you know something about the person's political beliefs/potential bias that was absent from the article? The link between lead exposure and behavioral changes and neurological effects isn't exactly earth-shattering original research either. While this correlation-type study hardly constitutes proof, I hardly think it's up there with the global-warming-deniers or intelligent design Christians, is it?
Unless you use the pejorative "junk science" to describe things that you don't already agree with or something.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
P.p.d. Why does this even make it to a headline? 1. The great majority of newspaper journalists' background is in the social "sciences". 2. The great majority of politicians' background is in the social "sciences". 3.The social "sciences" have trouble admitting that all their "research" amounts to little more than opinion (not more valid than mine, yours or George Bush's) due to the fact that the only method available to their opinion manufacturing operation is induction, which has been known for some time as a method that yields little to no correlation between propositions and reality as experienced by humans due this time to the fact that inductive propositions are not falsifiable. There are people who still wonder why our societies are in the sad state they exists: social "scientists" run the government, the economy (economists are social scientists) and the media. I rest my case.
HAD
- Violent crime was low from the 1930s to the 1960s, and lead fuel and paint were used quite frequently.
- Lead paint and leaded gasoline were common in Japan until recently, and violent crime is significantly less than the US.
- The argument that brain damage causes violent crime is questionable at best.
- From the 1980s on courts have been tougher on crime, the result of which is that criminals are actually spending more time in prison than out, thus committing less crime.
Okay, now let me get off my soapbox.
Wow, now there's a well constructed argument. I'm not even sure how I could possibly respond to that.
Why should the costs of registration be shifted onto me
Costs of registration? You mean the 2 minutes of your time? Yes, I can see that your time must be immensely valuable. But considering you've already answered three captchas, and previewed three messages, you could have registered and acquired an ID by now in that window of time.
Yet instead you choose to remain anonymous. Its OK, though. The cost of your choice is that nobody will read your comments beyond what I have highlighted in my replies to them. With your comments left scored at 0, I could just as well claim you to be using derogatory speech in them, and that comment could likely pass as credible to most readers.
But you're already doing that, so I don't even have to go to that length.
Have a nice day. And if you would ever like to have your questions answered, feel free to register like the rest of us. In case you don't already know, you can still register and not subscribe, hence paying nothing. Thats what I and many, many, others have done.
Or you can keep filling out captchas and the rest of the community will continue to not see your posts. There's a long list of slashdot people who don't read any anonymous coward postings anymore, and you're demonstrating why.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Yes, but the difference with lead exposure is that there's a well established, causal relationship between lead exposure (especially as a child) and neurological and behavioral changes.
Now, I'm not a neurologist, but I'm pretty sure that you can't say the same thing for "Reduction in the use of slide rules, Increase in CPU Speed, or Global warming".
So, it's not just causation here. It's a known physical process (lead poisoning and it's neurological effects) combined with correlational statistical data that says "we need to look into this!"
I think you're probably going overboard on your point-of-view: Sure, it's fine to say that correlation != causation, but it does however, suggests or implies causation. Correlation doesn't _answer_ any questions in any meaningful sense, it merely says "there might be something to this!". It's too bad that far too often stories are presented in the media as if correlation = causation, but that doesn't mean that correlation studies have _no_ value.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Why is it that economists think they can just research whatever the hell they feel like without having the right credentials? It really bothers me how they make all social scientists look bad by pulling whatever they want out of their asses?
For the record, there is more to science that the "hard" sciences, and plenty of theories in the social sciences that can be falsified, that are testable, and are not correlational.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
But, everybody runs for Hokey-Pokey!
Down in the prison number nine-nine-nine
he's a-working like a bee in a hive
He's still dreaming of Hokey Pokey
Helps to keep that boy alive
Helps to keep that boy alive...
Although lead free gas is more expensive, you save on maintainance. Plugs now are good 100k miles because they don't build up lead deposits. To keep the lead from building up downstream of combustion ethyl bromide was added to the gas. This broke down during combustion liberating bromine which would react with the lead to form lead bromide which was volitile enough to exit the exhaust system. It also formed HBr (hydrobromic acid). The HBr degraded the oil which is why cars used to need much more frequent oil changes and also chewed up the exhaust system. Less frequent oil changes, plug changes, and exhaust system lasting longer equaled the extra cost of the the unleaded gas.
Not to mention protecting the enviroment.
Of course lead was removed from gasoline since it poisons the catalytic converters, the heck with kids. Hard to believe we were so ignorant.
Actually, I find this observation more compelling because it maps across years better. Essentially the US had higher incarceration rates in the 40's and 50's when you take mental illness hospitalization and prison rates together. In the early 60's, the mental hospitals started to empty out and it was made quite difficult to commit somebody (I know some people were committed that shouldn't have been).
Here is the article
http://volokh.com/posts/1177939981.shtml
Here is the larger version of the chart:
This chart shows mental illness hospitalization vs. prison rates over time. It is not on the graph, but the big crime spike in the 60's through the nineties lines with emptying the hospitals before they were all put in prison instead. As the incarceration rate increases in the 90's the crime rate drops.
http://volokh.com/files/bernardharcourt-volokh_graph.1.JPG
Congratulations. Three times you have been asked to conjure up a source for your quote, and three times you have failed. I'm starting to wonder if you even had a source at all!
/. account, I'll mod your posts as -1 Troll, just because you are.
We'll let the ages decide. As of now, I will post a reply to every one of your posts from here to eternity, directing readers to this thread and asking, "is damn_registrars to be taken seriously?" I'm doing the same thing with UbuntuDupe.
And, if and when I do get a
P.S., and this is where you tell yourself "gee I'm a fuckwit," it takes longer than two minutes to create another username/password for a site. It takes a bit of time to memorize the new password. See, smart people -- as opposed to you, the cumstain that unfortunately never made it to the bedsheets -- use different passwords for each site, so if one site is compromised the crackers don't have the one magic password to everything. You need your Internet license pulled, sonny.
Read Freakonomics, they author says it was the increase/legalization of abortion which made a generation of wanted people that did less crime.
Correlations are proven.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Not to say if somebody is right or wrong but...
I briefly read the study and he does take age into account. He uses body weight (not absolute numbers) and finds a correlation between body weight in adulthood and diet soda consumption rates at age 22 (peak soda age) using Pepsi/Coca-Cola data. The weight for those who grew up before diet soda were flat and rise in synch with consumption of diet soda. He also points out that weight dropped the most in those states that had the greatest diet soda consumption.
Clearly we can all see that consumption of diet soda makes you fat.
I wonder if these people took into account NASCAR and car-racing fans. Those cars still use leaded gasoline, and to further the problem, a lot of times they all sit in a crowded grandstand, inhaling the fumes as the cars go by.
So, what's the correlation of NASCAR fans to criminals?
There's already an established correlation between NASCAR fans, degenerate southerners and retards... now we need to see how many NASCAR fans are criminals.
Though religious, I'll try to answer your question. Pregnancy is the result of human intervention, without which a human wouldn't have developed. Thus, not getting pregnant is the absence of any intervention. Early-term abortion is human intervention killing a human organism that would have naturally tended to develop into a "full" human.
At least Cornell keeps churning them out.
You mean people like Wolfowitz and Coulter?
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
I strongly object to the fact that I was not clever/observant enough to suspect a connection and, even if I had "discovered" a correlation, I'm too lazy to do even one tenth the work these folks did.
If these folks aren't as lazy as me,... well, they must be pretty foolish!!!
Endofargument/QEDdddd
No, no ,no.
People these days want someone who is resolute, holds to his convictions, and is never wrong. That's why so many people hate science, because it can be wrong. Religion on the other hand can decide something and, thanks to faith, never have to admit that it might be wrong. Eventually, if they are just plain wrong, an offshoot of the original religion can take over ("reform") and act like they were right the whole time.
Step 3. Profit!
Abort a criminal. Flush your cum rags.
P.d. The causation in question by definition cannot be proven
Cannot be proven using any sort of ethical or moral treatment of human beings you mean?
it's not falsifiable,
There's all kinds of stuff we can do.
We can monitor the crime rates in other countries and see if they also all display the same crime dip the same distance from when they banned leaded gas. In cases where they banned it after the us, we'll have to wait for a while.
It also suggests lab animal experiments like like monitoring aggression levels in rats, mice, and pigs when exposed to lead vs control groups that are not.
Perhaps we can look for a similar dip in violent crime 20-30 years after lead was stopped being used in cans. Compare the historical violent crime rate of the children of people/families/towns in the lead mining/refining industry vs the general population.
therefore: junk science to be put next to all the bullshit the social "sciences" try put push down our gobs. Social "Science" = State Sanctioned Opinion Manufacture.
[shrug] Social sciences, meteorology, climate study, geology, etc all naturally move forward slower and make more missteps than, say, basic chemistry or semi-conductor research due to the nature of the problem domain.
And it should be recognized by everyone that a 1 year study of a social problem can't yield the quality of results that a 1 year study of a problem in chemistry can.
But that doesn't make it junk science.
From the Washington Post (and a little less subtle than the NYT):
"Although crime did fall dramatically in New York during Giuliani's tenure, a broad range of scientific research has emerged in recent years to show that the mayor deserves only a fraction of the credit that he claims. The most compelling information has come from an economist in Fairfax who has argued in a series of little-noticed papers that the "New York miracle" was caused by local and federal efforts decades earlier to reduce lead poisoning."
[Insert pithy quote here]
According to their research, ready access to abortion has made women more likely to engage in premarital sex
Not true...
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/19/national/main2282940.shtml
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
I don't believe it's the lowered lead levels that caused a reduction in crime. It's the spread of internet access. Those low-IQ types can now be found updating their MySpace profiles, uploading videos to YouTube or writing entries for their personal blog.
We know lead causes brain damage
This is true. I've gotten much smrtr since drafting with percils was replace by CAD. I've also been abel to pay closeer attention to details,
Are you trying to argue against the results provided in the study? I can't tell from what you've posted, since you don't actually make an argument.
This author works for the National Bureau of Economic Research. She also works in the department of Economics and Amherst College. The way this study is presented is how ALL economic papers are written. Have you any idea how hard it is to set up an "experiment" for economic theories? The best approximation is to capture time series data that someone else has collected (usually for other purposes), and then to analyse it. The "prediction and experiment" you mentioned is exactly what she's doing in her paper. She's taking data (experiment) and doing statistical analysis on it. As for sticking her neck out, she wrote this paper to be peer reviewed! What else do you want?
Ok. This is getting a liiiittle bit offtopic, but I've gotta put in my US$0.02.
I'm from northern California (Santa Cruz, specifically) and I grew up in Georgia, where some people are still waging the Civil War. The only thing that I take from the southern side of the Civil War arguments for/against secession is states' rights. According to the Constitution, those powers not explicitly given the Federal government are reserved for the States (silly me; I left my pocket Constitution at home so someone else will have to quote which article/section that is). Although Congress is tasked with the regulation of interstate commerce, this does not (at least not to us strict constructionists) give them the right to regulate the sale of items in an individual state.
Precedent: gambling, automobiles with emission control systems only required in CA, sex toys (oh yes; I just went there), etc etc etc.
While I was living in California the US government sent agents to wreck up marijuana farms that had been authorized for State use. If you have a prescription for marijuana, and you sell it to your friend in Nevada, you have clearly violated federal law. If you consume it for your own medicinal use, as you are authorized to by the State of California, I don't see what the problem is. After the raids, the city council of Santa Cruz gave out muffins to anyone who had a prescription on the steps of City Hall, and there wasn't a damn thing that the Feds could do about it.
The Federal government has every right to regulate whatever they want if it truly is interstate commerce. They also have an obligation to act for the greater good of the Nation as a whole, and I think a lot more than just 20% of americans realize that the marijuana prohibition causes more problems and more anguish than it prevents. The other 80% (or whatever it really is) just haven't seen someone who's suffering greatly have their pain eased by physician-prescribed and physician-monitored marijuana use (full disclosure: my father died of cancer when he was in his early fifties; he would have died sooner had he not been given a certain miracle drug that regulated his appetite and reduced the damage to his body done by chemotherapy/radiation).
Also... I think you probably should read The Federalist Papers, specifically Federalist 64, 65, 41-43. A lot of people forget what our forefathers were really thinking, but it's all there.
If Lead has had such and effect, I wonder what effect injection Mercury straight into a small infant must have.
,but since it's introduction in Children's Vaccines, the Autisms rates are almost 1%!
From the CDC web site:
Thimerosal is a mercury-containing preservative used in some vaccines and other products since the 1930s.
The CDC saids it doesn't cause and harm
The Law requires all infants and small children to be injected with these mercury-containing Vaccines on a regular basis!
Worse they can not enter school and it's considered child abuse not to have them injected. They will take the kids away to a foster home and have them vaccinated against the parents will.
It is just mind boggling that there could even be a debate about forcibly injecting potentially harmful heavy metals to our kids.
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2004/02/17/cdc_knew_mercury_in_vaccines_induces_autism.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/od/science/iso/concerns/thimerosal.htm
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
A 100-year study of a social problem will yield the same result as a 10,000 year study of the same problem: an unfalsiable opinion as valid as yours or anybody else's.
[pirouette] To say that any of the social "sciences" have "moved forward" at all is an error. Induction, although a useful tool for hypothesis formulation, is not a method of knowledge validation. The so-called intellectual product of the social "sciences" is comparable to that of astrology.
HAD
Do you really have nothing better to do with your time? You really want to try to do that? You're welcome to try, but how you would expect that to have any impact, being as better than 90% of AC posts likely go unread?
And, if and when I do get a
I guess that shows you don't know how moderation works here. But I'll let you enjoy your fantasy at the time.
gee I'm a fuckwit,
You're too kind, really
use different passwords for each site, so if one site is compromised the crackers don't have the one magic password to everything
And what makes you think that I use the same password for every site? What makes you think you even know what other sites I use? And for that matter, why would it matter if someone figured out my password for slashdot, anyways? It's not like its tied into my SSN or something.
You need your Internet license pulled, sonny
Have you been hanging out with Sentor Ted Stevens or something? Internet license? I'm really quite entertained by your comments now.
it takes longer than two minutes to create another username/password for a site
Actually, the form takes very little time to fill out. And they'll give you a randomly generated password that you can use immediately, if you'd like. Then you can substitute in something better at a later time.
Hey, you've also now called me three different vulgar names. Impressive, you must really have a lot to say and a really important point to make that you need to swear in order to do it.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Something else interesting happened in 1973: Roe v. Wade
There's a theory that with a decline in unwanted children, there are less adults who had crappy childhoods and grew up to be criminals.
Often in Error, Never in Doubt.
The money is on page 69 of the pdf. That is to say, a fairly convincing graph of lead consumption and behaviour.
Crime levels haven't really fallen, it has just been outsourced to Iraq
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwQvRgGxHgc Watch closely what happens towards the end of this clip.
HAD
I find it interesting that hobbyist have been directly exposed to lead fumes from soldering for decades, with no apparent ill effect. In fact, they go on to become great technicians and engineers.
Talking heads who use science (junk science or good science) like *that* are the problem. Not the science itself.
We saw the same talking heads argue about tobacco the same way.
That doesn't mean there wasn't good research going on.
Today its videogames and global warming. But climatology is real science. Its hard science (meaning its hard to do) and our models are still pretty rudimentary, and they are complex systems so real predictions are hard to make. That doesn't mean useful predictions can't be made.
Same goes for the social sciences. Even physics can't reliably predict the position of pool balls after a break. Complex systems are just that: complex. Useful predictions can still be made, even if you can't say the 3 ball is going in the side, and the 7 will be in the corner... unfortunately that's what the talking heads report.
I'll bet the average kid who has a few of these lead painted toys still gets less lead intake than any slashdotter.
I strongly suspect that a lot of my toys had lead paint, but it probably wasn't an issue 28 years ago. Never mind the lead based paint that is probably a few layers of paint below what is there now in the very room I'm sitting in now.
Lead has been around forever...
"low IQ that are strongly linked with criminal behavior." I find this hard to believe. Couldn't it be that IQ has nothing to do with one's predisposition towards criminal behavior, but rather with one's propensity to get CAUGHT committing a crime (and thus influence statistics such as these)?
I appreciate your point but beg to differ: the existence of "talking heads" presupposes the existence of induction-based "sciences". Talking heads tend to steer away, if not completely avoid, meddling in the "hard" sciences because of the little leeway there is for creative interpretation of the knowledge they produce.
An airplane flies, or flies-not.
Even though one may make useful predictions in regards to pool balls, one would have a hard time making such predictions if the objects under study, in this case: shiny round balls, had volition of their own. The mere fact that human behavior arises from the subject's volition makes it unpredictable in any useful sense.
Trying to predict the behavior of a group of humans -let alone a society of humans!- in any useful way, although extremely tempting, is a ridiculous enterprise which lends itself to charlatanry.
On the other hand, the legitimization of induction-based "science" as a culturally-valid institution makes it easy for a politician to say that a study made by psychologists "undeniably proves" that violent games make people commit violent acts.
Ounce for ounce, the social "sciences" are a burden upon modern society.
HAD
It doesn't. However, privatization of the prison system goes a long way. Once there are major economic incentives for lobbied money to maintain, or increase, a large prison population, then it becomes business as usual.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
What happens to the developing brains of the people who don't end up autistic, but retain some sort of less noticeable brain damage.
Brain damage has been strongly linked to both sociopathic and psychopathic behavior.
You need psychopaths to fuel an evil empire. Good people cannot be trusted in positions of power, if you want to build an evil government. Imagine Cheney needs to hire somebody to oversee some element of his power support structure. Frontline's recent documentary, Cheney's Law had a great example of what happens when you fail to hire a similarly sick personality for a post in your government; you get resistance! (The guy had to be pressured out so that corrupt laws would pass). The more psychos you have available, the easier it is to build the Dark Empire.
-FL
If you look at the chart, the most disturbing trend is the fact that the violent crime rate has increased since 1970 while the murder rate has decreased. Is this related to the obesity epidemic? We are no longer capable of chasing down our victims and finishing them off?
... as they say on the other site.
Heavy metal incites youngsters to crime, we all know that.
* Origin: XBase BBS (2:490/4100) Well the good old days may not return and rocks might melt and sea may burn.
"Even low levels of lead can cause brain damage, increasing the likelihood of behavioral and cognitive traits such as impulsivity, aggressiveness, and low IQ that are strongly linked with criminal behavior. " Now we know what caused Rudy Giuliani in the 90's
I'll see your hokum and raise you a boondoggle.
I've read on heavy metals and lack of some fatty acids :The more healthy the person is,probability of crime is less.
can influence brain development heavily.
Common sense
Yes, before the introduction of tea and coffe in europe, alcohol was the only efficient way to clean drinking water, however, it was used in small amount (usually only 1-2) so people stayed on a steady 0.2g/l. It was therefore far less dangerous than a night of heavy drinking when someone could easily reach 2g/l.
ready access to abortion has made women more likely to engage in premarital sex, and as a result more children are being born to single women
Out of wedlock births have risen dramatically, but there is not a shred of evidence that this is the result of "ready access to abortion".
That statement alone completely discredits the U. Chicago economists: their reasoning is shoddy and tendentious.
A report has been released recently showing that female breast implants are causing men to live longer lives. Studies have shown that since the year 1800, both of the number of breast implants and the average life span of men has increased dramatically. Since the two happened at the same time, one MUST be linked to the other!
And they said zombies weren't real!
Post hoc ergo propter hoc
Non-news at 11. . .
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They still use leaded gasoline in China. What's their crime rate like?
If you are such a jackass, I wonder what kind of ass-tastic post you might make?
Idiots like you are the cause of eradicated diseases making a comeback. Autism sucks, it happens, we don't know why; but we do know for sure that not vaccinating kids will result in a lot of death and disability in the long term.
You can't take the sky from me...
Ocham's Razor would doesn't apply here as there are an infinite many possible things that could affect the crime rate, it could be linked to Global warming making more hotheads for all we know. Lead poisoning is dangerous, but there are a lot of other things that were going on back then that could be linked to crime rate (and the computer gaming one has a correlation btw). It's extremely easy to find something that might be related, you could say it's Birth rate (lower rate -> less kids to be violent), culture (gangster culture takes the kids who would be doing really bad crimes and gets them doing simply vandalism), the internet (allowing you to be verbally violent without repercussions since Al Gore invented it), etc. Ocham's razor simply says that the simplest correlation of two possible is the correct one, the simplest correlation is most likely either Culture or Birth rate, not lead poisoning.
As for the testable theory, having a theory that can be tested in 10 years doesn't do anything for the factuality of it today. Yes it does make it a testable theory, but it doesn't make it true which is the problem.
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
However, there are reasonable explinations for the correlations between gaming and violent crimes, that do not require one to cause the other.
The really aren't for violent crime and led paint.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
Also what about Roe vs Wade, the 1973 supreme court decision that legalized abortion? Poor women could now easily abort fetuses that would have otherwise grown up to be socio-economically disadvantaged youth in single parent families.
I've also heard that Romania hasn't phased out leaded gasoline. Yet its (violent) crime rate is quite low. Just another data point.
The study reeks of abused statistics.
In other news, ethanol has been linked to the increasing violence of the 21st century, as well as all those that preceded it.
Give me a break...
"What qualifies your as more valid opinion?"
If I tell you, the caveat is that you will avoid that ridiculous "argument from authority" crap. Mostly because it's not valid if you actually ARE an authority.
I have a BS in Psychology, and a Masters in Behavioral Psychology, with 4 years as intake coordinator at a residential treatment center (inpatient, for emergencies) and 6 years private practice as a behavior analyst. I would estimate I have treated upwards of 50 individuals in crisis, with another 50 or so in various stages of onset (this is just schizophrenics).
"Schizophrenics as I am led to believe are still thinking however there is disconnection with what they perceive or how they think and the world around them."
Not really close.
To use a geek analogy, Schizophrenics are on the holodeck, only they don't know it's the holodeck, and they don't get to choose the program.
So, an example would be, an individual sees all blondes as satan, genuinely believes they're satan, and reacts as though satan were genuinely in the room with them trying to eat their eyes (or something similar).
When a schizophrenic is in a full blown break, they are, for all intents and purposes, in their own reality, and the events that they see are REAL to them.
You would have a VERY hard time finding a credible practitioner who would categorize a schizophrenic who is having a break as being in any kind of control of their actions. I doubt that you could find any, frankly, but the state of psychology these days means I wouldn't be too surprised if you did.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
Actually, on pointless shit like slashdot and message boards that don't matter at all, there's no reason to not use the same password across all of them. who the fuck cares if that gets compromised.. congrats you can post as me on slashdot and the vnboards and a few of the other boards I post to? Um.. ok, boy, that'll really ruin my life.
Separate passwords are for important things. That include personal / financial information. Slashdot doesn't fall under that definition, not even close.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
I am not advocating against vaccines, just the crap they put in them.
But if you'd read my post you'd know that.
Let see how great you think they are when you watch your 3 year old that is speaking and writing into a retard that can hardly walk in just 2 days after getting vaccinated. 16 years later he still can hardly speak and can not write.
I know first hand on this one.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso