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

#191

Post by littlestymaar » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 6:43 PM UTC

yearofthespider wrote: post #186

littlestymaar wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Challenging Yeah, like looking for perpetual movement or the philosopher stone. BTW, I should have worded my thoughts differently: I don't mind if individual people waste their time doing that kind of pseudo-science. I do mind however that these studies get fundings instead of more down-to-earth ones. I do mind when young researchers are driven to this kind of bs by perverse insentives. And I do mind when layperson…

Your first sentence makes clear (again) that you think you're so smart that you can determine what research is potentially viable and what isn't, without even having any expertise in a given area. I already stated that you're ludicrously stupid and arrogant. Stop proving me correct. (or don't. no skin off my back either way.)

Insulting people on the internet using throwaway accounts, what a wonderful hobby.

Good day.

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

#192

Post by neonate » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 6:45 PM UTC

https://outline.com/Ftuxkp

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

#193

Post by pjlegato » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 6:46 PM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #148

catalogia wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Kneejerk" skepticism is a good thing. The real problem is posting kneejerk incredulous comments before bothering to read all there is to read about the matter, since reading further would often clear up such concerns.

This kind of skepticism isn't actually skepticism. Its internalizing good arguments without understanding them, instead using the phrases associated with these legitimate concerns as magic words for social dominance and denialism. The typical "correlation doesn't imply causation" retort we see denialists level is a classic example of how people tend to use a phrase to avoid a reason-driven conversation about correlat…

Metagaming the purported hidden motives of people you disagree with is not rational. There is no evidence for your claims about how those you disagree with manipulate social discourse in order to shut down topics.

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

#194

Post by K0SM0S » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 6:47 PM UTC

bjourne wrote: post #115

Maximus9000 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And other big part was legalized abortion. http://freakonomics.com/podcast/abortion/

The abortion theory is pretty much busted by now. You find the same crime-reduction pattern in European countries were abortion has been legal since the 1940s. You don't find subsequent crime increases in countries were abortion has been outlawed or access to it has been severely restricted.

Just FYI, I don't know about others but France legalized abortion in 1975 after what is told as a rather uphill battle lead by Simone Veil [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_Veil

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

#195

Post by mjevans » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC

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 was thinking something similar.

Even within a single area of study "bad days" could involve activities correlated to increased pollution in many different ways.

An example that I can think of offhand: I'm way more stressed on days that neighbors are using powered yard tools (mostly mowers and blowers), which invariably also throw up lots of stuff my body and/or mind react negatively too (never been tested, but I'd be amazed if I didn't have at least an intolerance).

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

#196

Post by CamelCaseName » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 7:12 PM UTC

littlestymaar wrote: post #180

yearofthespider wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot imagine being either dumb or arrogant enough to suggest that people should not attempt to study problems just because they're challenging.

> Challenging Yeah, like looking for perpetual movement or the philosopher stone. BTW, I should have worded my thoughts differently: I don't mind if individual people waste their time doing that kind of pseudo-science. I do mind however that these studies get fundings instead of more down-to-earth ones. I do mind when young researchers are driven to this kind of bs by perverse insentives. And I do mind when layperson…

> And I do mind when laypersons are taught by mainstream media that this is science.

What is your definition for "science"?

To me, this is very much science. Starting off with a hypothesis, gathering/analyzing data, controlling for what you can, and concluding your findings with a number of caveats detailing the limitations of your research.

Unfortunately, not everything is a hard science, and even those sciences we consider hard sciences break down when you get deep enough.

I think your suggestion is rather dangerous and implies some arbitrary threshold where we become capable of studying something.

A simple example would by psychology. Whenever a psychology study comes out, people are quick to yell that it is useless, that there are flaws, etc. However, without these psychology studies, where would we begin when studying mental health issues?

How many people would be left to suffer untreated if we were to wait for the biology, chemistry, neurology, etc. fields to become advanced enough for us to detect with certainty the presence of a mental illness?

It's easy to belittle an study that turns up nothing or belongs to a soft science, but as the saying goes, "all models are wrong, but some models are useful."

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

#197

Post by mikelyons » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 7:18 PM UTC

littlestymaar wrote: post #185

mikelyons wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way these tools are developed is by doing and then replicating and analyzing these studies. (maybe thats what the intent behind "collecting and curating " was?) Exposure to air pollution seems to my intuition like it lowers a persons level of consciousness, and the lower a persons level of consciousness (the further down The Spiral Dynamics model they are) the more prone they are to violence.

> 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…

I see, and agree. It seems though that we've (as a society) gotten into a habit of categorizing people. Maybe rightfully as specialization has increased, but it seems to me (perhaps wrongfully) that there were more polymaths in Ben Franklins time for example.

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

#198

Post by BurningFrog » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 7:19 PM 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!

This is 90% of the critique I see of Economics...

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

#199

Post by tomrod » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 7:21 PM UTC

rockinghigh wrote: post #91

djhaskin987 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Linear regression is a form of correlation. The model causality is implied but the only connection is correlation. Unless estimating an average treatment effect or diff-in-diff type framework, causality will be hard to identify in observational frameworks

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

#200

Post by Bartweiss » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 7:23 PM UTC

OJFord wrote: post #85

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…

That's crazy though, and makes the headline tamer than it need be doesn't it? 'Exposure to' makes me think it's more prolonged, and over time the effect is[...] but actually it's suggesting that it has a reversible, quickly reacting/short-term impact, which (naively) I find much more surprising. Relevant excerpt: > They find that a 10% increase in same-day exposure to PM2.5 (particulate matter less than 2.5 microns i…

Yes - for once the headline seems to have undersold the results.

Reading the title, I was expecting this to be a long-term relationship, and to happen at extremely high levels of air pollution. Particularly since the study on China last year showing that exposure to PM2.5 has lasting cognitive effects, which found variation at levels far higher than anything found in the US. And ozone at approved levels (but not PM2.5) has been linked to long-term cognitive decline.

Instead, this is claiming day-to-day variation based on that PM2.5 levels that are 25% of the EPA 24-hour exposure threshold, and even below the annual EPA standard. If you told me that air pollution below the EPA safe thresholds had a noticeable impact on cancer or emphysema rates, I wouldn't be surprised at all. But this is wild - a 5% increase in violent crime based on a day of pollution! For reference, one violent crime study I just checked finds that violent crime is about 10% higher in the summer than the winter in a cold city, and late-night crime (past midnight) is about 5% higher on weekends than weekdays. So 15 micrograms of PM2.5 is about as impactful as "people stay up late and get drunk on weekends".

It's an effect so bizarrely strong that my first reaction is to assume the study is bad or confounded. Except... all the obvious patterns don't work, and the controls look solid. Unpleasant weather keeps people inside and reduces (outdoor) crime. Shared causes like high human activity should have raised property crime rates. The effect looks stable across all kinds of temperature and crime subsets. If there is a confounder, it's presumably something strong and interesting.

> Pollution levels can easily rise by much more than that.

Very true, although I note that the effect doesn't seem to continue across the whole range studied. I wonder why effect falls off, and what happens in places that are always this polluted?