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

#121

Post by PeterStuer » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 3:36 PM UTC

fedups wrote: post #96

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 tes…

The article itself references many such studies correlating long term exposure to polluted environments with cognitive impairment. This study however focuses on short term effects (within the same day).

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

#122

Post by dekhn » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 3:44 PM UTC

blurbleblurble wrote: post #104

dekhn wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What I did is propose a plausible hypothesis for further research. Theory and speculation have a place in science.

What you did was link to a press release for a paper where they took 53 rats, removed their adrenal glands, injected them with corticosteroids, and saw they were more aggressive.

Few, if any, scientists would say that is a plausible hypothesis explaining the epidemiological results observed above. What you did was speculation with limited data and difficult transferrability (rats with adrenal glands are not representative of people exposed to air pollution).

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

#123

Post by aflessner » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 3:47 PM UTC

This seems like data dredging to me. I would be surprised if this holds true.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging

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

#124

Post by dekhn » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 3:48 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…

properly correcting for socioeconomic status in determining causal relationships in epidemiology is still a very hard problem.

What if, in this case, pollution has a delayed effect? How would their methodology deal with that (it wouldn't)?

Personally, I think what happened here is the author started with a prior belief: ""Several years ago, Fort Collins experienced a fairly severe wildfire season," Burkhardt said. "The smoke was so bad that after a few days, I started to get frustrated, and I wondered if frustration and aggression would show up in aggregate crime data.""

and then they conducted a study that supported their belief, possibly making methodological errors along the way , generating a scientific narrative to support their belief.

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

#125

Post by dsfyu404ed » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 3:48 PM UTC

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…

Sure it sounds plausible because it fits the world view of most here. The whole reason we have the scientific method and statistics is to remove personal bias that from the equation because if you don't you get nonscientific crap. The process only works if you use it every time. You can't just say "meh, good enough" because you find the results plausible. This study did not attempt to do a very extensive job controlling for other variables and likewise we can't just accept the conclusion at face value because we find it reasonable, more work needs to be done.

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

#126

Post by josephdviviano » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 3:51 PM UTC

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

If you want to avoid this, just read the paper.

I don't understand why technical people waste their time complaining about this stuff. We all have the acumen to read, understand, and debate research.

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

#127

Post by vondur » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 3:55 PM UTC

It'd be interesting to look at data from countries that have really bad air pollution levels and see if this trend is seen there too.

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

#128

Post by andy_ppp » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 3:55 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…

Yes but this effect could be caused by people becoming angry at high(er) amounts of traffic on the roads which causes the pollution no?

I would be more convinced if ozone/pollution was released by the scientists in an area and they found the same effect.

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

#129

Post by aflessner » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 3:58 PM UTC

This could be data dredging since it seems they may have looked at lots of dimensions and picked the one that correlated. It doesn’t make sense to me the effect of air pollution would be so acute and at such low levels:

The effects are present in and out of the home, at levels well below Ambient Air Pollution Standards

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging

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

#130

Post by Seanzie » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 4:01 PM UTC

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…

For as long as journals refuse to publish negative results, researchers will scrounge for some type of positive result, even if it's causally questionable, because to do otherwise is to see years of work go for nought. Until these incentives change, the rest of us are right to be skeptical.