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posted by mrpg on Friday December 29 2017, @03:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the weak-lead dept.

One popular theory has linked declines in crime rates to the elimination of leaded gasoline. A study of New Zealanders suggests that this is not the case:

Lead exposure during childhood has been tied to a variety of developmental problems, but a new study suggests it may not be associated with higher odds of criminal behavior later in life.

The study set out to address a flaw in much of the previous research linking lead and crime: mainly that it's hard to determine how much of this connection might be explained by poverty and other socioeconomic circumstances that can influence both criminal activity and lead exposure. Researchers followed 553 people born in Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1972 and 1973, when lead exposure was common among children of all economic backgrounds because of widespread use of leaded gasoline. All of the kids were tested for lead exposure when they were 11 years old, and the study team followed them until age 38 to see how many of them were convicted of crimes.

By the end of the study, 154 participants, or 28 percent, had at least one criminal conviction, the researchers report in JAMA Pediatrics. But the odds of this happening were barely influenced by the amount of lead exposure people had during childhood. Just being male had a stronger effect than lead levels, the researchers note. "Many studies have shown that higher exposure to lead could predict more criminal behavior, but our study actually found that there isn't a clear connection between the two," said lead author Amber Beckley, a researcher at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. The reason for the different results this time is that the current study found children from all walks of life had high lead levels, Beckley said by email.

The Need to Include Biological Variables in Prospective Longitudinal Studies of the Development of Criminal Behavior (open, DOI: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2017.4237) (DX)

Association of Childhood Blood Lead Levels With Criminal Offending (open, DOI: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2017.4005) (DX)


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday December 29 2017, @03:52PM (7 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday December 29 2017, @03:52PM (#615540)

    In this context, crime is that activity that generates a record of arrest and charges filed.

    "Just being male..." is quite enough to get one arrested more frequently - leaded, unleaded, ethyl or premium.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @04:42PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @04:42PM (#615558)

      "Just being male..." is quite enough to get one arrested more frequently

      There has been a statistical increase in female criminality across the Anglo-sphere. I can't find any recent articles but IIRC, the largest increase amongst adult women has been domestic violence. Probably because it was a historically under-reported crime but men especially avoided filing criminal complaints. They'd need to control for societal changes since the early '70s for a "toxic masculinity" conclusion to be statistically meaningful.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @05:23PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @05:23PM (#615570)

        Lesbian couples experience the most domestic violence, and gay men experience the least.

        Don't hold your breath waiting for science to knock down the female superiority narrative.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @05:34PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @05:34PM (#615572)

          Don't hold your breath waiting for science to knock down the female superiority narrative.

          Exactly. Science Vs. Science. [wikipedia.org]

          Female convicts are victims, [csosa.gov] always victims. [prisonstudies.org]

        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday December 29 2017, @08:31PM

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday December 29 2017, @08:31PM (#615646) Journal

          Are you sure about that? What's reported may not be precisely the same as what actually happens. I would bet good money a hell of a lot of gay men are abused and don't report it because, well, they're gay. It's easier for lesbians to pass one another off as just friends or roommates...ask me how I know :/

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @07:01PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @07:01PM (#615607)

      I'll take ethyl.. and myrtle.. and, what the hell, clyde too!

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by frojack on Friday December 29 2017, @07:03PM (1 child)

      by frojack (1554) on Friday December 29 2017, @07:03PM (#615608) Journal

      Even the prior studies suggested that the effects on lead were exhibited predominantly in males. with almost no significant effect on females. This was never adequately explained, but it was always there. (That was one of the first stories I submitted to SN way back).

      So if this study included females, then OF COURSE the significance of lead was swamped by gender. What the hell were they thinking?

      I also find it interesting second link in the story spends a lot of time poo-pooing the study, pointing out that the perceived weakness is not all that weak when one considers world wide falling crime rates and the social cost saving of even marginal reductions.

      Having said all that, I am somewhat concerned about the authors’ conclusion about “weak” associations. For example, their reported odds ratio for childhood BLL vs convictions is 1.29. Ttofi and Farrington9 found the same (weighted mean) odds ratio for the effectiveness of anti-bullying programs in reducing school bullying, and stated that this effect size was approximately equivalent to a 17% to 23% decrease in bullying. They argued that this was not a small effect. Consider also the report by Beckley and colleagues1 of r values of 0.09 to 0.10 for childhood BLLs vs self-reported offending at ages 15, 18, and 26 years. These values are very similar to the weighted mean effect size for resting heart rate reported by Portnoy and Farrington,9 as d is approximately 2r. According to Choy and colleagues, “A low resting heart rate is widely regarded as the best-replicated biological correlate of antisocial and criminal behavior.”

      And a resting heart??? Guess what it predicts across the board: Gender!!! [topendsports.com] One wonders if these guys are measuring their own rulers and confusing that for data.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday December 30 2017, @01:44AM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday December 30 2017, @01:44AM (#615700)

        I think that statisticians love digging into well known studies and pointing out their flaws... even if the conclusions are not really in dispute, I think they think that they are encouraging "better statistical practices" in the future.

        Personally, I find so much of statistics to be just arbitrarily set methods and thresholds of significance - no matter what you do, there's surely another camp of statisticians somewhere who can find fault with how it doesn't meet their pre-conceived ideals of rigor.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @03:52PM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @03:52PM (#615541)

    Just being male had a stronger effect

    We don't need males anymore. Didn't you get the memo? We can make sperm from scratch now.

    Proteins Can Now be Built From Scratch to "Do What We Want" [soylentnews.org]

    The criminal patriarchy is ended forever.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @04:33PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @04:33PM (#615553)

      Who would want to live in a place with no fucking crime? I have lived in such a place, reason there was no crime to be seen was because if you farted in the basement of your home, not only would the secret police have a record of it, but said record would describe in vivid detail what it smelled like.

      Lack of crime is a symptom of something really fucking nefarious.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @04:45PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @04:45PM (#615560)

        if you farted in the basement of your home, not only would the secret police have a record of it, but said record would describe in vivid detail what it smelled like. Lack of crime is a symptom of something really fucking nefarious.

        So, you're saying; "huff lead, not farts"?

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @06:08PM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @06:08PM (#615579)

      Just wait a little while, and we won't need females anymore either. Watch for artificial wombs and male pregnancy.

      So the question is, if we don't need males, and we don't need females either, does that mean we'll all be Bots?

      Hmm, Megaman X leads me to believe that bots still have gender. And sexuality. I don't know what to make of this. The only two things I've learned from this are 1.) avoid dating fembots involved in separatist movements and 2.) long hair makes boybots hot.

      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @06:25PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @06:25PM (#615589)

        Just wait a little while, and we won't need females anymore either.

        Anti-feminist wrong-thinking will not be tolerated.

        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday December 29 2017, @08:34PM

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday December 29 2017, @08:34PM (#615650) Journal

          Show me on the doll where the big mean scary feminist touched you. It's okay, honey, we know it happens to boys too.

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday December 29 2017, @06:25PM

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday December 29 2017, @06:25PM (#615590) Journal

        Male pregnancy, while possible, is not going to be desirable in light of artificial wombs [theverge.com]. Complicated surgeries, possible uterine donation needed, possible risks to the fetus or incubator's health from hormonal imbalance. Once artificial wombs are perfected, you'll have a predictable and, ahem, reproducible process that may be able to cut down on miscarriages and premature birth [npr.org].

        Male couples will eventually be able to have a boy or girl child using a mix of their own DNA with no outside DNA, used to create a synthetic embryo. Female couples would only be able to have a girl using their own DNA. But in both cases the couple could simply grab DNA from a donor or publicly available database. This is also the step in the process where you make it a designer™ baby that is genetically predisposed to be tall, intelligent, and attractive. Might not resemble you all that much in the end, but it could still be influenced by your DNA which can't be said for adopted children, and they'll have the right genes needed to become manipulative fintechs who can provide a cushy retirement for their "parents".

        It really has nothing to do with bots/AI. We still (for now) have the advantage of powerfully evolved evolutionary processes that can't be easily mimicked by inorganic machines. Mind uploading also looks like a very difficult undertaking. Expect to see some kind of strong™ AI in the future, and possibly good™ brain-computer interfaces [wikipedia.org] that help turn a human into a cyborg entity that is much more capable than before.

        --
        [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday December 29 2017, @08:33PM

        by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday December 29 2017, @08:33PM (#615648) Journal

        Also 3) don't interface with crazy. Iris was beautiful, but because of who she and Colonel were, they were both buggier than a Minnesota picnic ground in July.

        --
        I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @04:30PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @04:30PM (#615551)

    Just being male is not really a standard for odds ratios, is it?

  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @05:02PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @05:02PM (#615565)

    As in, non-existent? It's like you have to discount everything do-gooders say by a factor of ten, to estimate the real importance.

    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @05:21PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @05:21PM (#615568)

      Well, one thing authoritarians love to do is engineer the very conditions that make people want to put authoritarians in power.

      If the link between lead and crime is disproved, I'll bet that Republicans in charge of states with lead problems will suddenly find the funds to fix it.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @05:31PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @05:31PM (#615571)

    http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/12/new-zealand-study-provides-more-support-for-lead-crime-hypothesis/ [motherjones.com]
    "Unfortunately, that blunt statement in the press release seems to be taking the place of reading and understanding what the study actually says. As it turns out, I think it supports the lead-crime hypothesis fairly well. Unfortunately, as you might expect, it will take me a while to explain. So settle in.”

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 29 2017, @06:18PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday December 29 2017, @06:18PM (#615584) Journal
      Note that this also correlates with a decline in the age cohort which does most of the crime. Reducing lead reduces the number of young people!
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Friday December 29 2017, @07:13PM

      by frojack (1554) on Friday December 29 2017, @07:13PM (#615612) Journal

      I think it supports the lead-crime hypothesis fairly well.

      One of the reviewers (second link in story) also believes this, and spends a lot of time explaining why even small differences have major consequence.

      For example, Derzon11 concluded that the weighted mean effect sizes for predicting criminal behavior were r = 0.10 for broken homes, r = 0.10 for large family size, r = 0.13 for low socioeconomic status, r = 0.13 for urban housing, and r = 0.15 for antisocial parents. Admittedly, Derzon11 also found some larger effect sizes, such as r = 0.21 for child maltreatment and r = 0.26 for child rearing. However, the main point is that r = 0.10 is not necessarily a small effect size.

      Pretty much validates the observations that all these housing projects for the proletariat that the socialists are fond of creating are killing us.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by HiThere on Friday December 29 2017, @06:23PM (4 children)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday December 29 2017, @06:23PM (#615587) Journal

    That's a pretty small sample to try to derive any strong conclusion from. And the fact that "being male" was a stronger effect doesn't mean much when that's a already known, and fairly strong, effect. (One can argue about the reasons, but the effect is observable.)

    The most this study could do is suggest a larger study might be reasonable. You'd need a quite strong effect to be convincing at that sample size, and even then one would be tempted to look for unconsidered exogenous causation.

    --
    Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Bobs on Friday December 29 2017, @06:49PM (3 children)

      by Bobs (1462) on Friday December 29 2017, @06:49PM (#615605)

      Echo this.

        Given the small number of children, the short time span, age ranges and geographic distribution there could also easily be a handful of families, a school, a teacher or two, an unusually wet/dry/windy set of years, etc that create anomalous numbers.

      • (Score: 4, Interesting) by frojack on Friday December 29 2017, @07:16PM (2 children)

        by frojack (1554) on Friday December 29 2017, @07:16PM (#615613) Journal

        They also included self reported crimes, rather than just those that left official records.

        I know lots of guys will cop to an adolescent joy ride just for bragging rights, and few who will claim to have been a lapdog all their life.

        --
        No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @07:42PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @07:42PM (#615627)

          Doesn't that depend on the lap?

          • (Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Friday December 29 2017, @07:58PM

            by nobu_the_bard (6373) on Friday December 29 2017, @07:58PM (#615632)

            Also on what crimes we are talking. Some things, the statute of limitations doesn't run out for a long time, or ever. Other crimes are not the cool kinds you admit to for bragging rights.

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