Exposure to air pollution is linked to an increase in violent crime • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by taneq » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 1:33 AM UTC

mjlee wrote: post #97

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!

It'd be a corollary of the Dunning-Kruger effect, I guess. Like, you don't know enough about the problem space to know that your first thought is already well known?

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

#232

Post by powerbroker » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 3:26 AM UTC

PeterStuer wrote: post #111

d--b wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From the full paper: "Pollution and crime rates may have common correlations with location and time-varying unobservables. For example, PM2.5 or ozone levels and crime rates may be correlated with county-level covariates such as traffic density, population density, demographics, and industrial activity. Failing to control for such covariates will lead to biased estimates of γPM and γo. Our identification strategy exp…

I would like to see the predictive value of this study vis-a-vis greatly increasing electric car usage. Holding all variables constant (keeping temperatures level might be tricky), we should see some crime decreases, particularly in Oslo Norway, where electric cars are now > 33% of new sales.

This sort of thing has happened before. Lead was removed in the late 70's, and, lo, 20ish years later, crime rates dropped -- perhaps, for the reason there are fewer neurological impacts growing up without airborne lead.

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

#233

Post by littlestymaar » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 8:21 AM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #210

littlestymaar wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The way these tools are developed is by doing and then replicating and analyzing these studies Nobody in the field of people publishing this kind of studies has the required skill-set to develop the needed tools. This is the job of mathematicians. I'm not meaning it pejoratively, it's just a totally different job. (I wouldn't trust a mathematician to build a house, you shouldn't trust an economist, a biologist, or…

You seem to be overlooking the possibility that such study teams can and do include mathematicians. I'm friends with one who does the statistical legwork for a foundation that studies the spread of infectious disease.

You are right, I had overlooked this possibility. How does that work with your friend? Will he publish his own work in a separate math paper?

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

#234

Post by PeterStuer » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 12:29 PM UTC

powerbroker wrote: post #232

PeterStuer wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the full paper: "Pollution and crime rates may have common correlations with location and time-varying unobservables. For example, PM2.5 or ozone levels and crime rates may be correlated with county-level covariates such as traffic density, population density, demographics, and industrial activity. Failing to control for such covariates will lead to biased estimates of γPM and γo. Our identification strategy exp…

I would like to see the predictive value of this study vis-a-vis greatly increasing electric car usage. Holding all variables constant (keeping temperatures level might be tricky), we should see some crime decreases, particularly in Oslo Norway, where electric cars are now > 33% of new sales. This sort of thing has happened before. Lead was removed in the late 70's, and, lo, 20ish years later, crime rates dropped --…

Non exhaust emissions account for 85% of PM 2.5 produced by a car. As EV's are heavier than equivalent combustion engine cars, the end tally is a savings of just 1%-3% by going electric.

Don't get me wrong, any savings is an improvement, but EVs are not the 'green' transport revolution the industry wants to picture them as, just an incremental step.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297889793_Non-exhau...

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

#235

Post by vojta_letal » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 2:03 PM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #40

vojta_letal wrote: post #32

Is not there some common denominator, something simple like - there is both more crime and pollution in cities?

I'd like to assume that all the "easy" facors are already taken into account (population density, property value, education level, income level, weather, etc). Even if it's just a correlation, it's not really a result worth publishing otherwise.

I do not get why it got downvoted. Maybe I should have elaborate more. I skimmed the paper and it does not seem to be the case. They only take into account weather.

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

#236

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 6:12 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

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

#237

Post by mensetmanusman » Mon, Oct 14, 2019, 2:50 AM UTC

mjlee wrote: post #97

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!

People are quite skeptical since the great replication crisis.

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

#238

Post by dang » Mon, Oct 14, 2019, 7:23 AM UTC

downandout wrote: post #78

This article is paywalled with no workaround. My understanding was that HN did not allow such links. Economist.com links, if they are all hard-paywalled like this, should be blacklisted.

Users usually post workarounds in the threads. They did in this thread.

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

#239

Post by anigbrowl » Mon, Oct 14, 2019, 9:03 PM UTC

littlestymaar wrote: post #233

anigbrowl wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be overlooking the possibility that such study teams can and do include mathematicians. I'm friends with one who does the statistical legwork for a foundation that studies the spread of infectious disease.

You are right, I had overlooked this possibility. How does that work with your friend? Will he publish his own work in a separate math paper?

Sorry for the slow reply. My friend sometimes publishes alone and sometimes in concert with researchers from other disciplines; My understanding is that the research team has fairly wide latitude compared to people working in academe, but I don't know their publication history/process in detail.

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

#240

Post by downandout » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 7:09 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #238

downandout wrote: post #78

This article is paywalled with no workaround. My understanding was that HN did not allow such links. Economist.com links, if they are all hard-paywalled like this, should be blacklisted.

Users usually post workarounds in the threads. They did in this thread.

A “workaround” doesn’t mean someone posting a link to Outline or a similar service. It means having a way to access the content on the site itself. Economist.com links should be blacklisted, because they have no workaround. If Outline is required to read a given article, then the main link on the submission should go to Outline.

You seem to be stickler for the rules, so I can’t understand your position on this.