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Exposure to air pollution is linked to an increase in violent crime

economist.com

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Re: Exposure to air pollution is linked to an increase in violent crime

#91

Post by rockinghigh »

djhaskin987 wrote: post #73
PeterStuer wrote: post #35

For all those commenting on 'aren't more polluted areas just more criminal due to other factors", as far as I can tell the researchers examined crime rates for the same place and find correlation with whether there was more Ozone and PM 2,5 on a particular day or not. So they are not comparing clean air neighborhoods to highly polluted neighborhoods, but the same neighborhood on different days. https://www.sciencedai…

> correlation An interesting result, to be sure, but correlation does not imply causation.

These studies only report on the evidence of a statistical relationship and not a guaranteed causal link. They also don’t use correlation but usually some sort of regression that includes other factors like temperature to remove some of the effects of these variables.

Re: Exposure to air pollution is linked to an increase in violent crime

#92

Post by csallen »

johnfactorial wrote: post #60
PeterStuer wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The researchers made no claims on the physiological, mechanistic relationship of how exposure to pollution leads someone to become more aggressive; their results only show a strong correlative relationship between such crimes and levels of air pollution. The researchers were careful to correct for other possible explanations, including weather, heat waves, precipitation, or more general, county-specific confounding…

> their results only show a strong correlative relationship The paper's abstract says "The results suggest that a 10% reduction in daily PM2.5 and ozone could save $1.4 billion in crime costs per year, a previously overlooked cost associated with pollution." In my opinion this is a statement of a causal relationship, not merely a correlation. I wonder why they didn't reverse that relationship, too, and propose that v…

> I wonder why they didn't reverse that relationship, too, and propose that violent crime increases pollution.

Probably because you can easily rule out that possibility using common sense, whereas causation in the other direction is at least thinkable and worth investigating further.

Re: Exposure to air pollution is linked to an increase in violent crime

#94

Post by rockinghigh »

navigatesol wrote: post #56
chris123 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eating prison for also associated. Correlation does not equal causation.

> Correlation does not equal causation Say what? You should write these scientists and explain, I'm sure they've never heard of this concept!

I’m also surprised by how many people use this meme to dismiss any research. It’s not like researchers just use the Pearson coefficient.

Re: Exposure to air pollution is linked to an increase in violent crime

#95

Post by tekmate »

BurningFrog wrote: post #88
blurbleblurble wrote: post #80

It's such a typical kneejerk "skeptical" reaction at this point to be like "oh well maybe correlation doesn't imply causation" as if there are no causal relationships ever in life itself. But really if the rationalists just took a few seconds to think about it maybe they'd find a some plausibility in the notion that exposure to harmful pollution could trigger a stress response; stress is intimately wrapped up with ag…

Well, I think it's a fact¹ that a large majority of "science" stories that go viral turn out to be wrong. So the rational approach to them is "what might be wrong with this one?". ¹ Citation Missing

from my experience, when science stories that go viral turn out to be wrong it's some secondhand reporting by people misunderstanding or misrepresenting the actual firsthand report

Re: Exposure to air pollution is linked to an increase in violent crime

#96

Post by fedups »

I'm not sure about how much causation is being captured here, but I don't doubt the effect directionally. Here's a paper that came to similar conclusions, which I think captures causality better

https://www.nber.org/papers/w25489

Basically it compares performance of students who transferred into schools upwind vs downwind of major highways. Unsurprisingly, those who ended up in downwind schools saw

> decreases in test scores, more behavioral incidents, and more absences

Re: Exposure to air pollution is linked to an increase in violent crime

#97

Post by mjlee »

PeterStuer wrote: post #35

For all those commenting on 'aren't more polluted areas just more criminal due to other factors", as far as I can tell the researchers examined crime rates for the same place and find correlation with whether there was more Ozone and PM 2,5 on a particular day or not. So they are not comparing clean air neighborhoods to highly polluted neighborhoods, but the same neighborhood on different days. https://www.sciencedai…

Is there a word for the fallacy of believing that another professional didn't consider the factor you thought of in seconds?

I see this all the time at meetup tech talks and it infuriates me!

Re: Exposure to air pollution is linked to an increase in violent crime

#98

Post by mondoshawan »

NeutralCrane wrote: post #42
mnw21cam wrote: post #3

The main problem I see with this study is that it could be confounded by the fact that high air pollution areas have other problems too that could be causing the bad behaviour instead, like overcrowding, noise, frustration at slow traffic, etc.

I can't read the article due to the the paywall, but any halfway decent study should be attempting to control for these things. Propensity score matching, or simply including these factors in a regression model should help remove some of the effects. Obviously, there is potentially an unlimited number of possible cofounders, and therefore the assumption that they've all been accounted for should always be met with sk…

There are many thousands of studies, just like this one, that imply correlation, but not causation and fail to properly account for confounding factors. Occam's razor implies this is more likely to be yet another study that fails to account for X of these factors.

This doesn't mean the future of science is in jeopardy. It just means more study is required and jumping to alter policy or make decisions based upon these studies, well, requires further study! :P

Re: Exposure to air pollution is linked to an increase in violent crime

#99

Post by dekhn »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #80

It's such a typical kneejerk "skeptical" reaction at this point to be like "oh well maybe correlation doesn't imply causation" as if there are no causal relationships ever in life itself. But really if the rationalists just took a few seconds to think about it maybe they'd find a some plausibility in the notion that exposure to harmful pollution could trigger a stress response; stress is intimately wrapped up with ag…

you literally just jumped to imputing a mechanism to back-support epidemiological data; I recommend not doing that.

Re: Exposure to air pollution is linked to an increase in violent crime

#100

Post by kolbe »

PeterStuer wrote: post #35

For all those commenting on 'aren't more polluted areas just more criminal due to other factors", as far as I can tell the researchers examined crime rates for the same place and find correlation with whether there was more Ozone and PM 2,5 on a particular day or not. So they are not comparing clean air neighborhoods to highly polluted neighborhoods, but the same neighborhood on different days. https://www.sciencedai…

From the article you linked: "The economists calculated that a 10 percent reduction in daily PM2.5 could save $1.1 million in crime costs per year, which they called a 'previously overlooked cost associated with pollution.'"

Is that 'million' a typo? I imagine $1.1m amounts to something like one homicide a year.

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