101–110 of 241 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Related: "much of the decline in crime in the 1990s may have been due to the reduction of childhood lead exposure after the removal of lead from gasoline and house paint." http://freakonomics.com/2007/07/09/lead-and-crime/
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.
Theory and speculation have a place in science.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
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…
It just doesn’t make sense intuitively to me. This feels more like an example to show correlation does not equal causation. So what if the violent crime is higher in highly polluted areas? How is that information useful for anything?
It's all about oxygen.
If it's harder to breathe, less oxygen is getting to your brain, and that's never good. While it may not be life-threatening or anything, it might make you more irritable. Just constantly slightly fatigued and cranky. It takes less to set you off.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
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…
Well yeah, but they have to remove all the other factors like heat, wind and rain, which are correlated to air pollution. There is likely less violent crimes on rainy days, just because more people stay home. To do this properly, they would have to do a controlled experiment with people in rooms with or without air pollution. And measure how sanguine they get or something of that nature.