America's Real Criminal Element: Lead 627
2muchcoffeeman writes "The cause of the great increase in violent crime that started in the 1960s and peaked in the 1990s may have been isolated: lead. This leads directly to the reason for the sharp decline in violent crime since then: lead abatement programs and especially the ban of tetraethyl lead as an anti-knock agent in gasoline starting in 1996. There are three reasons why this makes sense. First, the statistics correlate almost perfectly. Second, it holds true worldwide with no exceptions. Every country studied has shown this same strong correlation between leaded gasoline and violent crime rates. Third, the chemistry and neuroscience of lead gives us good reason to believe the connection. Decades of research has shown that lead poisoning causes significant and probably irreversible damage to the brain. Not only does lead degrade cognitive abilities and lower intelligence, it also degrades a person's ability to make decisions by damaging areas of the brain responsible for emotional regulation, impulse control, attention, verbal reasoning, and mental flexibility. Another thing that stands out: if you overlay a map showing areas with higher incidence of violent crime with one showing lead contamination, there's a strikingly high correlation."
False Lead (Score:5, Funny)
False Lead
Re: (Score:3)
You can already buy them.
They are mandated in California for hunting already I think or soon will be.
Re:False Lead (Score:5, Funny)
Good idea. We wouldn't want bullets to have any long lasting health effects.
Re: (Score:3)
I personally don't want to eat lead with my venison.
Re:False Lead (Score:5, Informative)
It can become a huge problem, particularly for shotgun pellets, which by their nature are scattered indiscriminately. If you shoot a duck, maybe two pellets kill the duck, and the other hundred go directly into the waterways, and therefore the food chain. Not cool. I believe steel shot is presently being encouraged to improve this?
Re:False Lead (Score:5, Informative)
Lead-free shot is required at least in Wetlands Managed Areas in Minnesota.
Goes back to where it came from - The ground (Score:5, Funny)
Funny, but it is really for the environment not the target. Most bullets pass through and then end up in the ground eventually.
Where do you think the lead of the bullet came from?
The ground.
Roman Empire (Score:5, Informative)
And didn't help lead to the downfall of Rome as well? I believe they had a lot of lead in their wine containers.
Re:Roman Empire (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Roman Empire (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, were they so much more advanced than the rest of the world because they drank so much lead?
Re:Roman Empire (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
That is very impressive considering that the parts of Europe not colonized by the Greeks or Romans were still in the tribal stage of civilization at the time.
An alternative viewpoint is everyone other than crude barbarians either got merged into the empire or got the "Carthage treatment" so yeah, pretty much if everyone on multiple continents is either wiped out or forced to merge, the remainder is pretty much going to be the dregs of society. The last kid picked at gym class isn't likely to be an athletic prodigy.
Re: Roman Empire (Score:4, Interesting)
Weren't the Romans unable to conquer germanic tribal 'barbarians'? If I recall correctly that wasn't for lack of trying.
Read ur Gibbon etc...
The romans were geniuses at "doin stuff" with coasties. They knew exactly what to do with coastie farmers and merchants in warmish climates. Oh boy did they ever, they built a whole empire out of them. They had no idea what to do with forest dwellers and prairie horse riders. at all. Like a cultural blindspot.
The german campaigns were rome's Vietnam. Well either that or the isle of brittania. They never lost a battle (well, with one isolated very famous incident in the Tuetenberg forest), at least until centuries later in the demographic collapse when they were hopelessly outnumbered. They always lost the war, (almost) never lost a battle. And every time they won, they looked at their hard fought land, said WTF and went back home, until they had to do it all over.
Every generation or so for centuries it was something like:
"Look guys, we've won ourselves some trees"
"Oh? Olive trees? No?"
"Well WTF are we suppose to do with them? F it lets go back across the Rhine to civilization."
As for the horsemen thing they never really figured out what to do with the Parthian empire either, as I recall Hadrian simply gave up conquered horsemen land. Yeah the rich romans had horses, they had no idea what to do with cultures where everyone was a horseman.
They've got a well deserved rep as master administrators... of warm coasties. They were a belly laugh as administrators of forest dwellers and horsemen cultures.
Re: Roman Empire (Score:5, Informative)
I disagree with your simplistic analysis of Roman Imperialistic effectiveness: "warm coasties".
Lets see? What was Gaul when Caesar conquered it. His own histories, as well as Gibbon, et al, indicates there was much forested areas. The same goes with conquering the Dacian tribes, and the Dalmatian provinces. Those were heavily forested, yet closer to Rome. When Augustus conquered the Germans all the way up to the Elbe, the reality was, it wasn't really economically feasible to maintain those areas once all the slaves had been "monetized". As you say, it was nothing but trees...
The failure at Teutoburg came in a big part from Arminius subterfuge, and once the damage was done The Senate wasn't too keen on spending the money to subdue a region with little economic value, unlike the "warm coastie" regions with much higher economic value.
Regarding Roman problems dealing with the Persian cavalry, that would be more of a military tactical issue, where The Romans didn't really have an effective method for defeating units who could fire ranged weapons from afar, as the Roman Military was much more effective at close combat.
Re: Roman Empire (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the best explanations of this I have heard comes from John Keegan. Basically, Rome was able to conquer settled, agriculture lands. There was enough civilization that Rome could coopt the local government to extract taxes to build roads, raise armies etc. With its forests Germany did not have the large densely populated settled areas that Rome needed for success.
Scotland with it’s cattle headers and it’s a different story. Each clan it’s own. Most of the wealth is on hoof – so it disappears into the wilderness. Less impressed with roads because cattle don’t need roads. Etc. Rome gave up and built a wall.
Re: Roman Empire (Score:4, Informative)
As I understand it, between 400 and 900 AD Scotland was invaded and largely conquered by invaders from Ireland. The Picts were largely annihilated or absorbed. So really the "Scots" the Romans new didn't get civilized, they got wiped out.
Re: Roman Empire (Score:4, Interesting)
And it seems not to have worked for the Germans, but not because they were monotheists. No. It was because Germans required ongoing successes from their gods and their leaders. Romans did not only killed off the top brass of the enemy, they took the children of the next-in-line hostage to Rome, and educated them there, thus holding their parents back from uprising and creating a new pro-Rome generation of local leaders.
But for German tribes, a leader who was not getting them enough booty, was worthless, and they either overthrew him or just deserted him and went for the next tribe with a more profit oriented leader. So most German tribes were not necessarily big family clans, they were a collection of all the people who decided to join the tribe for their personal gains. Whenever the Romans thought to have captured the right hostages from the most influencal clans, the conquered German tribe either dissolved completely and the people joined other tribes, or they just toppled the ruling clans and replaced them with new ones.
And interpreting the local german gods as an aspect of Roman gods didn't work either, because Germans didn't have a fully hierarchical pantheon. If a German prayed to lets say Odin, and Odin didn't help, the German just stopped to pray to him and went for the next god. It was no use to declare Odin the german version of Iuppiter, and the Emperor in Rome the earthly incarnation of Iuppiter. If praying to the Emperor didn't get the expected success, Germans just shrugged and went for the next one. Germans were loyal only to successful warlords, and only as long as they were successful. No way to ever reconcile that with the thoroughly organized patria-et-familia-system of the Romans.
Thus Germans, differently than most other conquered tribes and people, were never allowed to become Roman citizens. Intermarriage between Romans and Germans was forbidden. Germans became foederati, contracted tribes, paid to keep the peace at their assigned part of the Limes, and paid to help the Emperor in his military campaigns.
When Rome didn't pay up for the services, German tribes didn't hesitate to ransack the next roman town and look for other places to settle. The Franks plundered the northern parts of Gallia in 257 AD. Alamans ransacked Augusta Treverorum in 275 AD. Constant attacks by the Saxons forced the Romans to built a chain of forts on both sides of the English channel around 300 AD, the Litus Saxonicum. The Visigoths laid siege to Milan in 402 AD, and finally plundered Rome in 410 AD.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Roman Empire (Score:5, Funny)
Well, apart from the indoor plumbing, flush toilets, aquaducts, surgery, repair, public baths, enclosed sewage systems, roads and bridges, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Re:Roman Empire (Score:5, Insightful)
The Romans were advanced. They had indoor plumbing, flush toilets (of a sort) and aquaducts that could transport water for hundreds of miles (most stretches of the aquaducts were enclosed in water mains similar to what we have today)
You know why we call this "plumbing"? Because it was done with plumbum, the latin word for lead.
Re:Roman Empire (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Roman Empire (Score:5, Informative)
And didn't help lead to the downfall of Rome as well? I believe they had a lot of lead in their wine containers.
That is one of the theories, yes.
Re:Roman Empire (Score:5, Funny)
And didn't help lead to the downfall of Rome as well? I believe they had a lot of lead in their wine containers.
They had a lot of lead in their plumbing. (Which is a nice pun for the classically educated. ;-))
Re:Roman Empire (Score:5, Informative)
It's not a pun. That's the Latin origin of the word.
Re:Roman Empire (Score:5, Informative)
It's not a pun. That's the Latin origin of the word.
I know, that's why I wrote it. But how does that make it not-a-pun?
UPDATE: After carefully checking with a few dictionaries, it appears that the designatum of the English "pun" is strictly narrower that the common translation of "pun" in my native tongue, which means more like "word play", with the narrow sense of "pun" being represented with a transliteration of the French word "calembour". It just shows that you learn a new thing every day!
Re:Roman Empire (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Roman Empire (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently the romans were not poisoned by lead...
From wikipedia:
"The great disadvantage of lead has always been that it is poisonous. This was fully recognised by the ancients, and Vitruvius specifically warns against its use. Because it was nevertheless used in profusion for carrying drinking water, the conclusion has often been drawn that the Romans must therefore have suffered from lead poisoning; sometimes conclusions are carried even further and it is inferred that this caused infertility and other unwelcome conditions, and that lead plumbing was largely responsible for the decline and fall of Rome. In fact, two things make this otherwise attractive hypothesis impossible. First, the calcium carbonate deposit that formed so thickly inside the aqueduct channels also formed inside the pipes, effectively insulating the water from the lead, so that the two never touched. Second, because the Romans had so few taps and the water was constantly running, it was never actually inside the pipes for more than a few minutes, and certainly not long enough to become contaminated. The thesis that the Romans contracted lead poisoning from the lead pipes in their water systems must therefore be declared completely unfounded."
Freakonomics? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Any research done into the mass shootings in the last couple of decades will show a very strong correlation between anti psychotic pharmaceuticals and those shootings. But we aren't banning those drugs, just the guns the drugged up nuts were using.
http://www.wnd.com/2013/01/the-giant-gaping-hole-in-sandy-hook-reporting/ [wnd.com]
Let us blame, if anything, behavior altering drugs for people's behavior.
Re:Freakonomics? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gun control mitigates the damage criminals do, and significantly raises the difficulty of getting enraged and killing someone with a particularly lethal weapon at hand.
Not really. You could kill more people with a gallon of gasoline and a couple of bike locks than I could with all the guns I could carry.
The worst mass murders have always been committed by means other than guns, even in the US. Most such killings are committed with guns but there is no reason to think the perpetrators wouldn't just move on to the next most convenient methodology if they couldn't obtain firearms.
The UK and germany for example have much higher violent crime rates than the US (and a lot of that is stabbings, and football hooliganism), but much lower murder rates because criminals in those places try and stab rather than shoot.
One huge problem with that old canard is the correlation between firearm murder rates and firearms regulations in various areas of the US. Areas with more guns in the hands of more law-abiding citizens have less crime, not more. If you're worried about being killed with a gun, the last place you want to live in the US is an area like DC or Chicago with strict gun control laws.
You can mutter about post-hoc fallacies and correlation not implying causation, but the reality is that gun-control proponents have very few statistics they can cite to advance their cause, and a lot of statistics they don't dare cite.
Ultimately it's very hard to separate cultural effects from the effects of firearms availability. This is true both within the US and between different nations as a whole. I won't go too far down that path because I don't have time to defend myself against accusations of bias and worse, but I will say that as a middle-aged male in an economically well off, culturally-homogenous area, any gun control measures that affect what weapons I can own are not going to make you any safer.
Re:Freakonomics? (Score:4, Insightful)
Most gun deaths are spur of the moment killings because someone lost their temper. You don't bring a gallon of gasoline to a card game because you might get mad and want to kill everyone. You do carry a gun for "protection". Almost NO mass killing are unplanned, so yes, gun control won't stop mass killings, but it does make them harder to do.
Re:Freakonomics? (Score:5, Insightful)
and significantly raises the difficulty of getting enraged and killing someone
And so we have another legislative push to curtail "assault" rifles. Except ... even the FBI points out that far more people are killed with hammers, and with bare hands than with rifles. It's about murderers, not tools. Guns are harder to get now than they were 50 years ago - so what's changed? Culture.
If you're right, and more control means less murder, how do you explain the recent relaxation of gun control in Washington DC, and the substantial drop in murder with guns? How do you reconcile that with very restrictive gun control in Chicago, and a very, very high murder rate? It's about people, not gun (or hammer) control.
Nope, coding error (Score:5, Informative)
Donohue and Levitt botched the study [wikipedia.org]: a programming bug meant they failed to control for things they thought they were controlling for. Furthermore, they accidentally predicted the total number of arrests instead of the arrest rate, as they should have.
Re:Freakonomics? (Score:5, Interesting)
I would love to hear a scientific (not political) discussion of how they screwed up.
Well, one could start by looking into the seemingly disproportional effect lead would have to have on males vs females if their theory were to hold any water.
The offending rates for females declined since the early 1980's but stabilized after 1999. Offending rates for males peaked in the early 1990's, fell to record lows,and stabilized in recent years. Female murder rates show no characteristic peaks related to the peak exposure to lead.
Chart Here. [usdoj.gov]
Data here [usdoj.gov].
so... (Score:5, Funny)
That settles it then (Score:5, Funny)
Curious (Score:3, Insightful)
Admittedly inspired by an XKCD comic, are they sure the violent crime/lead contamination map isn't just a slightly variant on a population density map? The more people, the more cars, the more lead contamination potential, etc.
Re:Curious (Score:4)
I think the most damning piece of evidence here is when they compared the restrictions on leaded gasoline across different states, and then also across different countries, and in all cases they've got the same pattern of a ~20 year time delta between the lead emissions curve and the violent crime curve.
Gasoline? (Score:3)
New NRA slogan (Score:3)
Guns don't kill people
Bullets kill people
and of course bullets are made of lead
Maybe... (Score:3, Informative)
Contrast that "study" to John Lott’s study that looked at every single city in every single county for all 50 states for an over 20 year contiguous time frame. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Guns,_Less_Crime [wikipedia.org]
Evidence supports it (Score:3)
Most victims of violent crime have been found to have large amounts of lead inside them.
What about poverty? (Score:4, Interesting)
Another thing that stands out: if you overlay a map showing areas with higher incidence of violent crime with one showing lead contamination, there's a strikingly high correlation.
Some of the cheapest land in Dallas is right by the old lead smelters, where you couldn't build without millions of dollars of decontamination. The poor live around there, the rich moved elsewhere. So I'd like to see an overlay with SES (socio-economic status) and the lead/crime maps.
Maybe it's the low inflation rate? (Score:4, Interesting)
Every time the homicide rate goes up or down, we all cast about for causes. The usual suspects, the economy, policing, and number of prisoners, do not work out. The changes are usually national, while policing and prison policies differ over the country. Crime rates were low in the Depression, are low now, in our deep recession and were high during the prosperous 80's.
The historian David Hackett Fischer, in his book "The Great Wave" (one review here [bookwormhole.net] ) using over 700 years of British records shows that the homicide rate and inflation are closely correlated. High inflation, high crime, low inflation low crime. It certainly holds for the examples above. Fisher himself concedes that correlation is not causation, but it rules out the usual explanations.
The Question not asked (Score:4)
Although this discovery does not explain all violent crime, it seems to indicate something that will need, should need addressed: very likely none of the CRIMINALS during this time voluntarily or willing took lead to induce their psychosis. They were poisoned; by their environment, by society, by ignorance. At the very least, this raises a interesting "mens rea" situation. Certainly, if someone suffered a blackout from fever induced by severe food poisoning while driving home from the restaurant, ran off the road and killed someone, we wouldn't lock them in a cage and call them "animals". However this study is basically saying that very large numbers of people were inadvertently poisoned, made sick, causing neurological damage, and they were then treated to some of the worst, inhumane treatment (prison, electrocution, lethal injection) that any ill human being has ever endured.
So the question is: when is America going to start realizing that prison as a "deep dank hole" is an inhumane basis of punishment rooted more in religious dogma (making people "suffer" for their sins) than in true causality--neurological (and quite inadvertent) defect? Is there any reason for prisons to be such cold, horrific places? Certainly we can look back on the asylums of the early half of the 20th Century with contempt; yet we, societally, accept prison rape and beatings, isolation and estrangement as fodder for comedy. I am no advocate of a plush lifestyle for those convicted of horrific crimes, but neither am I tolerant of such treatment of those who are neurologically incapable of making better, more rational decisions. We need to STOP putting people in prison for stupid crimes (drugs, financial crimes) and confine the use of "corrections" budgets to making safe, healthy places for the sick to live out their lives under proper (medical, if necessary) care.
Evolution of ideas by testing on half the states (Score:4, Interesting)
In fact, use of leaded gasoline varied widely among states, and this gave Reyes the opening she needed. If childhood lead exposure really did produce criminal behavior in adults, you'd expect that in states where consumption of leaded gasoline declined slowly, crime would decline slowly too. Conversely, in states where it declined quickly, crime would decline quickly. And that's exactly what she found.
This is why I continue to think that experiments should be performed on half the states at a time, especially if we're not sure about something. For example, the idea to drop working hours to 50-75% of what we have is a 'risky' plan, but could make people much happier. So we try it out on half (or some fraction of) the states. Another idea is to try fluoride in water at 0.1ppm, 1ppm, 2ppm. Similar experiments can be used for chlorine or ozone (I'm not making any judgements on those or saying that conclusions haven't already been reached by the way).
By experimenting on half (or some fraction of) the states like this, we create a kind of 'evolution', where we can filter out bad ideas, and keep good ones. Or at least more likely be able to do so.
Re:Another possibility (Score:5, Informative)
You know, except for the whole fact that we know lead sequestering directly affects mental function in ways that cause the individual to become more violent.
Re: (Score:3)
Except that the connection between lead and violent behavior isn't just a statistical correlation, but someone that we actually know how and why it works. It's called science: look into it.
Re:Another possibility (Score:5, Funny)
Except you've made a leap transforming beers to hammers. Your premise do not actually support your argument (which is obviously intentional) and you suggest it is similar his argument and then proceed to beat that strawman down. You follow up with a false dichotomy suggesting that either your argument is valid or his cannot be valid.
The problem is that his argument is supported by his premise where yours is not.
is leap is that lead is proven to cause people to become violent, therefore it is reasonable that the documented decline in known sources of lead poisoning could be related to a reduction in violence. This logically follows and his premise is supported.
Bullets are known to cause death. Therefore it is reasonable to suggest that the bullets I'm firing into the crowd might be responsible for the dead people in the crowd.
Cannabis is known to get you high. Therefore it is reasonable to suggest that the marijuana found in the stoned teenagers posession might have been what he used to get high.
Now lets try yours:
Bullets cause death. Knives cause death. Therefore bullets are made of knives.
Cats have claws. Dogs have claws. Therefore dogs are made of cats.
Re:Another possibility (Score:5, Funny)
I only consume unleaded ice cream. Am I still susceptible?
Depends if it's fluoridated or not. There's a reason I only drink rain water and grain alcohol, you know.
Re:Another possibility (Score:5, Funny)
> There's a reason I only drink rain water and grain alcohol, you know.
You're a hick ?
Re:Another possibility (Score:5, Funny)
Re:lead concentration = poverty (Score:5, Insightful)
its not lead its the upbringing of people out of poverty
Except that the rise in the standard of living of the poor does not match the decline in crime.
Re:lead concentration = poverty (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:lead concentration = poverty (Score:4, Interesting)
And your wording of the issue is insane. It's not like they have toys on the shelf separated out "leaded" and "unleaded".
I haven't read the article yet, but I'd imagine there is a delay in crime based on development time. You don't show someone a lead pipe and then they go out and hit someone with it. But you put unsafe levels of lead in an expectant mother, and raise the child with extra lead, and then crime will increase when he's 15+.
Re:lead concentration = poverty (Score:5, Interesting)
There was lead in paint for two reasons. Pigment and anti-fungal.
White lead paint was fairly high in lead and was pretty bad for kids that ate it. All the other colors only had a trace for it's anti-fungal properties. Initially they replaced the anti-fungal lead with mercury, not sure if that's still true. There was an argument for removing the lead pigment but leaving the traces.
Re:lead concentration = poverty (Score:5, Informative)
Wikipedia: Lead paint or lead-based paint is paint containing lead, as pigment, with lead(II) chromate (PbCrO4, "chrome yellow") and lead(II) carbonate (PbCO3, "white lead") being the most common. Lead is added to paint to speed up drying, increase durability, maintain a fresh appearance, and resist moisture that causes corrosion.
Also, as might be expected by those who have handled tin-lead solder, lead is soft and flexible. This helps lead paint adhere for a long time on surfaces with differing thermal coefficients of expansion.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They called it Wilding in NYC like when the central park jogger was raped and beaten
... as if that was a real thing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_Jogger_case#Convictions_vacated
Re:lead concentration = poverty (Score:5, Interesting)
That's dumb. Poor people from the early 80's might not have had X-boxes, but they did have video games (Atari, Intellivision and Odyssey systems spring to mind, not to mention arcade games which were just taking off). Plus (and this applies even if you go back before the 80's) there was still TV, books, magazines, radio, and so on. Sorry, but 20th-century crime rates can't be blamed on a lack of entertainment options for the poor. At least not by anyone who 1)is being honest and 2)knows what the fuck they're talking about.
Re:lead concentration = poverty (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody in a right state of mind is going to rob or kill a random someone just because they're bored.
However, lead poisoning causes brain damage, which can lead to psychosis. And the study shows correlation between violent crime rates and lead concentration.
If it were just a matter of being bored, I would fear for the world. That would imply that we're all rapists and murderers, and that unless we're significantly distracted by our 'stuff' we're prone to rape and murder out of sheer boredom. That's not really the case though. For the most part, people don't rape and murder eachother, except under pretty significant mental distress or disorder.
A study like this is useful because it might bring up other ways of investigating criminal trends. Could there be something environmental that causes mental health issues in a population? Drug/alcohol abuse? Lack of health care opportunities? Birth defects caused by some environmental source? Toxins from some environmental source?
Dismissing it as "people just have more x-boxes so they probably don't get bored and kill people" is pretty pointless. Does poverty factor into it? Maybe. But can we tell if poverty instigates the crime, or if the mental degradation caused by something like lead poisoning (or drug/alcohol abuse, or mental deficiency from birth) both instigates the crime and makes the person have a more difficult time caring for themselves leading to a life of poverty?
That's not even to say that bringing people out of poverty doesn't help the situation. It has a mental effect (reducing stress by making available necessities). But why weren't those people in Central Park just happy to play chess? It's not just that they had nothing better to do, it's more likely that they had a problem that went ignored.
Re:lead concentration = poverty (Score:5, Insightful)
False. "Wilding" in general, and that famous NYC case, were totally fictitious bullshit made up by wild-eyed media and cops. The convictions of the juveniles were overturned years later, when a single man confessed and also had DNA evidence confirm it. Ken Burns had a documentary on their story at Cannes just last year. Exemplary case study of the great fraud that is our law-enforcement and security apparatus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_Jogger_case [wikipedia.org]
Re:lead concentration = poverty (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to mention the spectacular semi-permanent decline in the economy since 2007 has not resulted in a permanent spectacular increase in crime.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd bet if you measured the unprosecuted crimes committed by bankers, lawyers, insurance agents, and politicians, you'd find that the crime rate is actually quite high.
Re: (Score:3)
So did the number of poor people suddenly rise in the 1980s and 1990s and fall back in the 2000s?
'Tis possible.. of course, a greater possibility is that whoever posited this theory is a fucking imbecile who fails to realize that correlation does not equal causation.
I'm never for lack of amazement at the number of highly educated people who, for all their worldly knowledge, still can't comprehend the concept that while ceteris paribus is fine for discussing abstract theories in the classroom, it does not apply to the real world.
Re:lead concentration = poverty (Score:5, Informative)
Except that the neurological effects of lead poisoning are well known, and include lower IQ, increased aggressiveness, and poor impulse control - practically a recipe for making someone more inclined to commit criminal acts. And if you read the article you'll see that several different studies show the same correlation:
1) National crime rates rose and fell with a high correlation to the rise and fall of leaded gasoline 23 years earlier
2) Individual states phased out leaded gasoline at different rates - their crime rates likewise fell at correlated rates
3) A study of other nations shows that Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Finland, France, Italy, New Zealand, and West Germany (all those named in the article) all show the same high correlation between crime rates and their own leaded gasoline use and phase-out, with not one nation studied failing to show it.
4) Studies of ongoing effects show that cities (and even neighborhods, in the case of New Orleans where the data was available) with high lead contamination correlate extremely well with high-crime areas, even when neighborhoods have been long since gentrified.
That many studies all seeing an extremely close correlation suggests that there is almost certainly something to it.
Re: (Score:3)
greater than 90% of violent criminals arrested during those two decades were all cigarette smokers
Citation Needed.
Nearly 90% violent criminals arrested [usdoj.gov] during those two decades were MALE. ;-)
Cigarettes and/or Lead exposure was not gender specific, yet murder statistics are.
So put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Re:lead concentration = poverty (Score:4, Informative)
The neurological effects of lead are known and reproducible. Translating individual effects to society effects is an exercise in statistics because you can not create isolated control groups in society without adding extraneous and often unmeasurable effects.
There is almost no such thing as an absolute scientific proof in sociology. The best you can do is lower the error bars of your statistical model of highly correlated qualities.
Re:lead concentration = poverty (Score:5, Insightful)
But, if you subdivide across multiple countries, states, and cities where the lead in gasoline was phased out at different times and the 22 year correlation remains consistent, it becomes highly unlikely that you will find something(s) else that can account for the change.
And, as you said it is statistical because clearly every child exposed to lead during those time periods did not become a criminal. Some just suffered from losing a few IQ points (or whatever intelligence measure you care to use). But, you take a large group of people that have all the other risks for becoming criminals and add lead on top of that and you get a significant rise in crime.
Re:Correlation, Causation, blah blah (Score:5, Informative)
Except it isn't just simple time correlation. There is also spatial correlation (areas with different lead contamination, different countries) and for individuals there is causal link between lead poisoning these behavioural problems.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You didn't even bother to read the full summary let alone the actual article did you?
Re:Correlation, Causation, blah blah (Score:5, Informative)
Except we do know very well that lead exposure at a young age DOES result in poor impulse control, lower IQ, and a greater tendency towards violence.
Re: (Score:3)
This is not just correlation.
Among the many studies that have been done they have shown a biochemical mechanism for brain damage and impaired brain function from lead ingestion. These are classic instrumental variable studies, not simple correlation.
Re:Correlation, Causation, blah blah (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
You're actually suggesting slashdotters should read the article before commenting? What is wrong with you people!
I don't think it's wrong to suggest people read the article. I think it's wrong to expect people have read it. As articles go, this was quite a long one. I was as skeptical as anyone when I saw the article, but after reading it, I'm mildly convinced that the author is right. They did a ton of research, looked at multiple countries (with different timelines), looked at multiple occurrences of lead increases, and it all looks good.
Re:Correlation, Causation, blah blah (Score:5, Funny)
http://xkcd.com/552/ [xkcd.com]
Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'.
Re:Correlation, Causation, blah blah (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you read the linked article in full? They have more than a simple correlation. They have multiple correlations cross-culturally, and at every level of analysis examined, national, state and neighborhood. It's also backed up by the neurobiological research about the effects of even small quantities of lead on the brain.
Yes, it is correct to be skeptical of claims of causation from correlational data. That's what additional research is for to check for other possible causes is for. That additional research has all supported the claim of causation, to a far higher degree than any other claimed cause.
Skepticism simply for the sake of skepticism is not a virtue. If you demand a high standard of proof, it behooves you to be ready to accept the claims of those who actually manage to meet that standard of proof.
Re:Correlation, Causation, blah blah (Score:5, Insightful)
You're kidding? Is this the first time you've read Mother Jones?
Re:Correlation, Causation, blah blah (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would is it absurd that a substance which has been shown to cause increased aggression and lower impulse control and lower intelligence would have any effect on "violent crime"?
Sure it's not a proven fact, but absurd seems a stretch.
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Did a reduction in colour TV use also correlate with a reduction in violent crime? Did the rise and fall in number of space launches correlate with the rise and fall of violent crime levels?
Show your correlation if you really think it matches as well as this one.
Of course correlation doesn't prove causation, but you don't disprove it by pointing out a bunch of other things that don't correlate at all.
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Exactly! How could they be so stupid not to think of that!?
Oh wait. They did. They repeated the study in different countries that got rid of lead at different times. They repeated the study in different US states that phased lead out at different rates. They repeated the study at the city and even neighborhood level wherever there was accurate data on lead and crime levels. Then they tracked kids for decades, measuring lead levels and their rate of criminal convictions. And at all levels in all locatio
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Obviously, cows reduce violent crime.
The cow moo does sound awfully like a Buddhist monk chanting for inner peace. Perhaps there is a soothing effect?
Re:Another chance for criminals to blame someone e (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Another chance for criminals to blame someone e (Score:4, Informative)
RTFA:
Mother Jones writer Kevin Drum wrote that obviously the millions of children who were exposed to high levels of lead didn't all become criminals, but he notes that those on the margin may have been "pushed over the edge from being merely slow or disruptive to becoming part of a nationwide epidemic of violent crime."
Re:Another chance for criminals to blame someone e (Score:5, Insightful)
So just because you didn't become a criminal, means there can't be a correlation?
You're a sample of one. Your experiences, while important to you, mean nothing in isolation when it comes to statistics.
If one person in a hundred were to die a year in car crashes, and we changed cars to have different tires and suddenly ten people died a year, but you lived, that doesn't mean that the death rate didn't go up 1000%. You were just lucky and lived.
The article quite succinctly discusses how lead might take borderline violent people and trigger their latent violence. It's an interesting article. It seems you weren't a borderline violent person. Yay for you!
Re:Another chance for criminals to blame someone e (Score:4, Insightful)
basically anything except their own half witted feckless personalities
And now we know that lead causes people to develop half-witted feckless personalities.
Re:Another chance for criminals to blame someone e (Score:5, Interesting)
The uncomfortable truth is that there is very real evidence that society poisoned those people and THEN punished them for the natural consequences of that poisoning.
We're talking about data here (not the plural of anecdote) and it is statistical, not 1to1.
Before you try to make something out of the statistical nature, note well that radioactive decay is statistical in the same way.
I predict that this will be almost entirely ignored because it IS an uncomfortable truth, it presents a non-punitive measure to fight crime that doesn't fund the police, it suggests a level of liability against GM and the oil companies that they could NEVER pay off (and worse, much of the money is due to poor people) and finally, it significantly shrinks the pool of people that others can feel morally superior to while dumping on them.
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I got there because the dangers of lead have been known since BEFORE TEL was introduced into gasoline and those significant risks were pointedly overlooked.
Meanwhile it's still a poisoning even if it was entirely unintentional.
Like I said, it is an UNCOMFORTABLE truth.
Re:Another chance for criminals to blame someone e (Score:5, Interesting)
The specific risks and effects of TEL were known as early as 1923, when the inventor took a prolonged vacation to cure lead poisoning. Here are excerpts from the wikipedia article for Thomas Midgley, Jr. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley,_Jr [wikipedia.org].
[...] In December 1921, while working under the direction of Kettering at Dayton Research Laboratories, a subsidiary of General Motors, Midgley discovered that the addition of TEL to gasoline prevented "knocking" in internal combustion engines.
[...] In 1923, Midgley took a prolonged vacation to cure himself of lead poisoning. "After about a year's work in organic lead," he wrote in January 1923, "I find that my lungs have been affected and that it is necessary to drop all work and get a large supply of fresh air." He went to Miami, Florida for convalescence.
[...] However, after two deaths and several cases of lead poisoning at the TEL prototype plant in Dayton, Ohio, the staff at Dayton was said in 1924 to be "depressed to the point of considering giving up the whole tetraethyl lead program." Over the course of the next year, eight more people would die at DuPont's Deepwater, New Jersey plant.
[...] On October 30, 1924, Midgley participated in a press conference to demonstrate the apparent safety of TEL. In this demonstration, he poured TEL over his hands, then placed a bottle of the chemical under his nose and inhaled its vapor for sixty seconds, declaring that he could do this every day without succumbing to any problems whatsoever. However, the State of New Jersey ordered the Bayway plant to be closed a few days later, and Jersey Standard was forbidden to manufacture TEL there again without state permission. Midgley himself was careful to avoid mentioning to the press that he required nearly a year to recover from the lead poisoning brought on by his demonstration at the press conference.
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Like I said, it's an uncomfortable truth, but it is just as certain as nuclear radiation. It's not even controversial from the standpoint of scientific analysis.
The population under study is huge. For a statistical analysis, you couldn't ask for a bigger sample to look at.
Surely you're not going to try telling me lead is a sweet treat we should add to lollipops? It is known to be harmful and the kind of harm it is known to do exactly matches the problem behaviors. The levels in the environment match the cri
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Your theory is a very good one. Not that I think it's likely to be correct, but it's good in that it's easily testable.
Which happened first? Banning leaded gasoline, or the drop in crime? People aren't going to ban leaded gasoline in anticipation of crime rates dropping and having a more secure, better standard of living tomorrow, the vast majority of arrests happen within hours or days of the crime, and every last one has a report. Dates of where leaded gasoline was used are also well-documented.
Now, you m
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Biting? Who ever did that? That's what your pocket knife was for.
As for more aggressive, well... I guess I could understand that conclusion. We were there to catch trout. Fly fishermen were apparently there to show off to other fly fishermen.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
And read the fucking article where he stresses that this is correlation.
After you have a lot of correlation and look at other studies, you start making guesses about causation.
Your witty Slashdot one-liner tells me every time you see stats, you just say that. RTFA, this isn't some loose correlation with nothing to back up his suggestions.
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Take ADHD trends; even as blood lead levels have been dropping the diagnosed rate of ADHD has been rising steeply, up 66 percent in just the past 10 years. And despite the rise in ADHD, crime rates are still falling.
Wait, so blood lead is dropping, and crime is dropping, and you say that's proof lead doesn't cause crime? I'm lost. Or in this article do they say that lead causes ADHD and ADHD causes crime? Maybe lead causes crime, and ADHD is not related to lead or crime.
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the diagnosed rate of ADHD has been rising steeply
Yeah, but that is poorly controlled and does not really say much. It is equally possible that people have discovered that ADHD medications can give them a competitive edge in cognitive tasks, and are simply working harder to convince doctors to prescribe such medications for them or their children. For many doctors, coming into the office, staring out the window, and talking about how hard it is to focus on your schoolwork will be sufficient to get a prescription for Adderall or Ritalin.
It is still b
Re:Some real lead haters out there. (Score:5, Funny)
What a crock of sh*t! I grew up around lead, lead pipes in the house, lead paint, lead-acid batteries, etc. I haven't tried to kill anyone, and last I knew, I had a very high IQ (well, at least in HS, many, many years ago anyway), so this study is BS! We need lead in every day life. We need lead in solder, batteries, electronics, weights, etc. Lead is a very important metal, we can not do without it.
I am so sick of these environmentalist freaks, so sick.
So sick you wish to do them violent harm perhaps? :)
Re:In other news. (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately, nobody has been able to serve papers, and they're not clear on jurisdiction.
And, randomly, Buddha wasn't a world creator. He was a mortal man like you and I -- there *is* no specific creator in Buddhism. Depending on who practices it and where they come from, Buddhism isn't even technically a 'religion' [buddhanet.net].
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Lead paint. Don't forget the lead paint.
I grew up in houses with lead paint and I don't have any problems (twitch, twitch). But then I was raised in a culture where chewing on the woodwork was not considered proper play behavior for a child. That and my mom actually cleaned the house on a regular basis.
Re:I'll Take Abortion for 1000, Flaimbait (Score:5, Insightful)
However, there statistics are far from a perfect match. If it were, we would have reverted back to pre 1950's crime levels. We haven't, we're not really even close.
Because all the lead that has accumulated from burning leaded gasoline while it was widespread has just magically disappeared away?
This group seems to believe that just because "the statistics correlate almost perfectly" that they have a cause.
They happen to believe that they have a cause because they have came up with a simple rule of correlation based on two data sets, and then went on to see if it applies to a dozen different unrelated ones (matching the dates of introduction of leaded gasoline and the ban on it in various countries across the globe) - and they found that the correlation still holds in all cases that they've measured so far. In other words, they've made a prediction, and found that it matches the facts. That's hard science.