4 ms·

I'm not sure why you're posting that link here. In academia, no single study is treated as conclusive. For example, when scientists observed a 50% decrease in m

I'm not sure why you're posting that link here. In academia, no single study is treated as conclusive. For example, when scientists observed a 50% decrease in men's sperm count in the last 30 years, they cited a meta-study which reviewed data from 185 other studies. [1] If you look on google scholar. It's trivial to find well over 100 lead-crime studies. The one you linked to seems to be only published-online, and not a meta-study, so it's not clear on what basis you (cherry?) picked it. https://doi.org/10.1093/humupd/dmx022 https://doi.org/10.1093/humupd/dmx022

jupiter90000 9y ago
For me it's good to have a healthy dose of skepticism about these things, especially when it comes to social studies. I didn't like the conclusive tone of the mother jones article personally. The mother jones author does a fairly amateur analysis and concludes: "I’d say that basic cohort analysis supports the lead-crime hypothesis, while age analysis might not." The article I posted is a counterpoint to this in which an academic cohort study is reviewed finding lead explains less than 1% of the variation in crime in a cohort, and another cohort study there reviewed found no association between lead exposure and murder -- so a relevant article to post here, I'd say. Do you consider the results in the MJ article to be as robust as a meta-analysis and if not, do you have the same criticism of that article? (in which case, fair enough)