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From the "correlation is not causation" school of thought, I immediately had 3 thoughts: 1. The # of phone calls to the police about a crime are not necessaril

From the "correlation is not causation" school of thought, I immediately had 3 thoughts: 1. The # of phone calls to the police about a crime are not necessarily indicative of how common that crime is. If people think the police won't do anything, they're less likely to bother calling (I see this often in my area with things like stolen bikes and catalytic converters... people often don't bother getting a police report unless their insurance requires it). 2. Throughout the 2010s the crime rate trended downward 3. Crime rates can have seasonal variations (but this can vary based upon location and type of crime) Skimming through the paper, #1 wasn't addressed at all. For #2, the paper compared the 2015 data against 2014. I don't think they did anything to compensate for annual trends in crime rate. In other words, if the crime rate in Des Moines, Iowa lowered at the same time, is that actually a ripple effect from NYPD's actions? Or are both cities just part of a larger downward trend that we saw coming out of the 2009 recession? For #3, they actually took temperature and precipitation into account which was cool.

syops 5y ago
I haven’t read the paper and by your admission you haven’t either. You skimmed it. Do you find it reasonable to believe that you could come up with potential objections to the paper that the authors didn’t also think about? You made a claim in #1 about the likelihood of people calling police when they think police won’t do anything about it. That claim sounds plausible but is it correct? Do know of studies on this? If you, a non expert, can think immediately of three thoughts then it seems highly likely the authors - who spent effort and time on the topic - also thought about these same thoughts. Maybe these things aren’t addressed because it’s obvious to them that these aren’t valid objections and it’s obvious to their target audience.
- coryrc 5y ago
  I get my car broken into biyearly. After the first time, I don't report because it's a waste of time. Same when bicycles are stolen from my friends. I don't need a study to say the sky is blue.
  - coryrc 5y ago
    But, I do have studies showing data is often made up or cherry-picked. So when a study disagrees with what most of us are experiencing, when cops have publicly announced they won't investigate crimes because the prosecutor won't prosecute, I'm going to need a lot more evidence that crime is actually decreasing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis https://crosscut.com/2014/12/d-word-seattle-confronts-dilemma-depolicing https://crosscut.com/2014/12/d-word-seattle-confronts-dilemm...
    - syops 5y ago
      Here’s an interesting Twitter thread that claims cops commit orders of magnitude more physical assaults than arrests for serious crimes. There is a possibility that having fewer police leads to less violence in the community. https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1430159902551445514 https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1430159902551445514
- Rebelgecko 5y ago
  > You made a claim in #1 about the likelihood of people calling police when they think police won’t do anything about it. That claim sounds plausible but is it correct? Do know of studies on this? There's a number of studies, some of them contradictory (perhaps because they're looking at different populations of people). Hagan et al[1] found that in urban African-American communities, cynicism towards police and the legal system was a major factor in whether or not someone called the police after being a victim of a crime (in a way that is actually a bit counterintuitive to me). Anyways, I owe the authors an apology. I took another look at the paper and noticed that they (sort of) addressed the issue of under-reporting, as was mentioned in the article. Tautologically, they point out that underreporting of the crime rate doesn't impact the accuracy of statistics showing that the number of reported crimes went down. However they do admit that this makes it harder to make a causal link. > Maybe these things aren’t addressed because it’s obvious to them that these aren’t valid objections and it’s obvious to their target audience. That's an interesting point, and I suppose it's hard to say without being an expert. OTOH, from talking to people I know who have left academia[2], the 'publish or perish' mentality makes it easier to put blinders on when faced with something that's inconvenient. [1]: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1722210115 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1722210115 [2]: Admittedly this is going to be a biased sample
  - syops 5y ago
    Pertaining to your last paragraph. I very much agree with what you wrote. I think a better way to state my point is this. I try to read academic papers with skepticism and when I think of an obvious potential objection I think it highly likely the authors are aware of this and didn’t address it because their knowledge of topic is such that they know it’s not really an objection. I then try to find out whether or not my potential objection really is valid or invalid. I assume the latter when I don’t have more information or the time to delve deeper into the topic. Thanks for the link to the study.
  - _RPL5_ 5y ago
    "The 'publish or perish' mentality makes it easier to put blinders on when faced with something that's inconvenient." I'd like to provide a competing take on this. In my experience, it's the job of the peer reviewers to force the authors to test alternative hypotheses, especially if it's something obvious or inconvenient. I once published a methods paper, where the reviewers got aggrieved I didn't mention a complementary, but mostly unrelated, method in my discussion. At first I was annoyed, because it was OBVIOUS to me that their objection was flippant. However, once I thought about it, I realized that the reviewer was probably representative of the audience that's going to read my paper. Their criticism while tiresome was entirely valid. So I sat down and spent a week coding a series of experiments that showed how the two methods (mine, and theirs) were different and how they could complement each other. That translated into a paragraph in the discussion section and a couple of supplementary figures, and overall a better paper. So to go back to the original point of the GP ("maybe things got left out because they are obvious"): Obvious things, unless it's something really trivial, are only obvious to the authors of the paper. If you expect an educated reader to raise an obvious/natural objection, you should really address it in your text head on. And if you don't, then hopefully the peer review will catch it. PS This is not meant to be a commentary on the paper linked in this thread. I have not read it, and have no opinion on it. I just wanted to opine on the general topic of peer review and whether "obvious" things should go into an academic paper.
newacct583 5y ago
Most of those same criticisms can be levied against the "broken windows" theory on which the studied policy was based, though.
SubiculumCode 5y ago
Correlation is not causation, but there certainly is a lot of evidence that causally links poverty with crime and drug-use, and poverty from accumulating petty fines and late-fee penalties. It seems to me the burden is on the broken-window excuse of a hypothesis. I've spent weeks in a middle-class community never seeing a cop. Surprise surprise, the crime-rate is low...Yet I knew that plenty of recreational drugs were flowing through this white-middle class community...it was barely hidden. Meanwhile, in poorer communities like where I grew up, police are everywhere patrolling, waiting to harass anyone they don't like the look of... hell I was interrogated for sitting in my front yard once.
- spideymans 5y ago
  I've been blessed to run in many different social circles in life. Poor black kids, incredibly wealthy white kids, I've seen it all. My experience is completely in line with yours. The wealthy white kids I was around were loaded with hard drugs. Coke use was rampant. I could open random drawers at my friends place and see bags of the stuff. Heck, some were outright dealing the stuff. Meanwhile my poorer black friends pretty much only smoked weed, while occasionally dabbling in some other minor drugs (mushrooms, MDMA, etc...). Of course the only ones with stores of police harassment were my poorer friends. My rich friends got away with anything they wanted
  - _-david-_ 5y ago
    Statistical speaking, areas with higher rates of blacks have higher violent crime rates so it is possible cops are patrolling the black areas at a higher rate. This would lead to increased police which would lead to increased harassment just because there are more cops.
- Stupulous 5y ago
  I don't think this works as a causal explanation. A decrease in petty fines shouldn't be significant enough at changing poverty to be reflected in crime rates in just a couple months. You'd also expect a delay as the fines that would otherwise be demanded in that time wouldn't be collected for some months, I assume. As an alternative, maybe people who are mistreated by police become immediately more likely to commit crimes? Or maybe police who would otherwise be doing proactive policing are doing something more beneficial instead? Those are just speculations, though.

syops 5y ago

I haven’t read the paper and by your admission you haven’t either. You skimmed it. Do you find it reasonable to believe that you could come up with potential objections to the paper that the authors didn’t also think about? You made a claim in #1 about the likelihood of people calling police when they think police won’t do anything about it. That claim sounds plausible but is it correct? Do know of studies on this? If you, a non expert, can think immediately of three thoughts then it seems highly likely the authors - who spent effort and time on the topic - also thought about these same thoughts. Maybe these things aren’t addressed because it’s obvious to them that these aren’t valid objections and it’s obvious to their target audience.

coryrc 5y ago
I get my car broken into biyearly. After the first time, I don't report because it's a waste of time. Same when bicycles are stolen from my friends. I don't need a study to say the sky is blue.
- coryrc 5y ago
  But, I do have studies showing data is often made up or cherry-picked. So when a study disagrees with what most of us are experiencing, when cops have publicly announced they won't investigate crimes because the prosecutor won't prosecute, I'm going to need a lot more evidence that crime is actually decreasing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis https://crosscut.com/2014/12/d-word-seattle-confronts-dilemma-depolicing https://crosscut.com/2014/12/d-word-seattle-confronts-dilemm...
  - syops 5y ago
    Here’s an interesting Twitter thread that claims cops commit orders of magnitude more physical assaults than arrests for serious crimes. There is a possibility that having fewer police leads to less violence in the community. https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1430159902551445514 https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1430159902551445514
Rebelgecko 5y ago
> You made a claim in #1 about the likelihood of people calling police when they think police won’t do anything about it. That claim sounds plausible but is it correct? Do know of studies on this? There's a number of studies, some of them contradictory (perhaps because they're looking at different populations of people). Hagan et al[1] found that in urban African-American communities, cynicism towards police and the legal system was a major factor in whether or not someone called the police after being a victim of a crime (in a way that is actually a bit counterintuitive to me). Anyways, I owe the authors an apology. I took another look at the paper and noticed that they (sort of) addressed the issue of under-reporting, as was mentioned in the article. Tautologically, they point out that underreporting of the crime rate doesn't impact the accuracy of statistics showing that the number of reported crimes went down. However they do admit that this makes it harder to make a causal link. > Maybe these things aren’t addressed because it’s obvious to them that these aren’t valid objections and it’s obvious to their target audience. That's an interesting point, and I suppose it's hard to say without being an expert. OTOH, from talking to people I know who have left academia[2], the 'publish or perish' mentality makes it easier to put blinders on when faced with something that's inconvenient. [1]: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1722210115 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1722210115 [2]: Admittedly this is going to be a biased sample
- syops 5y ago
  Pertaining to your last paragraph. I very much agree with what you wrote. I think a better way to state my point is this. I try to read academic papers with skepticism and when I think of an obvious potential objection I think it highly likely the authors are aware of this and didn’t address it because their knowledge of topic is such that they know it’s not really an objection. I then try to find out whether or not my potential objection really is valid or invalid. I assume the latter when I don’t have more information or the time to delve deeper into the topic. Thanks for the link to the study.
- _RPL5_ 5y ago
  "The 'publish or perish' mentality makes it easier to put blinders on when faced with something that's inconvenient." I'd like to provide a competing take on this. In my experience, it's the job of the peer reviewers to force the authors to test alternative hypotheses, especially if it's something obvious or inconvenient. I once published a methods paper, where the reviewers got aggrieved I didn't mention a complementary, but mostly unrelated, method in my discussion. At first I was annoyed, because it was OBVIOUS to me that their objection was flippant. However, once I thought about it, I realized that the reviewer was probably representative of the audience that's going to read my paper. Their criticism while tiresome was entirely valid. So I sat down and spent a week coding a series of experiments that showed how the two methods (mine, and theirs) were different and how they could complement each other. That translated into a paragraph in the discussion section and a couple of supplementary figures, and overall a better paper. So to go back to the original point of the GP ("maybe things got left out because they are obvious"): Obvious things, unless it's something really trivial, are only obvious to the authors of the paper. If you expect an educated reader to raise an obvious/natural objection, you should really address it in your text head on. And if you don't, then hopefully the peer review will catch it. PS This is not meant to be a commentary on the paper linked in this thread. I have not read it, and have no opinion on it. I just wanted to opine on the general topic of peer review and whether "obvious" things should go into an academic paper.

newacct583 5y ago

Most of those same criticisms can be levied against the "broken windows" theory on which the studied policy was based, though.

SubiculumCode 5y ago

Correlation is not causation, but there certainly is a lot of evidence that causally links poverty with crime and drug-use, and poverty from accumulating petty fines and late-fee penalties. It seems to me the burden is on the broken-window excuse of a hypothesis. I've spent weeks in a middle-class community never seeing a cop. Surprise surprise, the crime-rate is low...Yet I knew that plenty of recreational drugs were flowing through this white-middle class community...it was barely hidden. Meanwhile, in poorer communities like where I grew up, police are everywhere patrolling, waiting to harass anyone they don't like the look of... hell I was interrogated for sitting in my front yard once.

spideymans 5y ago
I've been blessed to run in many different social circles in life. Poor black kids, incredibly wealthy white kids, I've seen it all. My experience is completely in line with yours. The wealthy white kids I was around were loaded with hard drugs. Coke use was rampant. I could open random drawers at my friends place and see bags of the stuff. Heck, some were outright dealing the stuff. Meanwhile my poorer black friends pretty much only smoked weed, while occasionally dabbling in some other minor drugs (mushrooms, MDMA, etc...). Of course the only ones with stores of police harassment were my poorer friends. My rich friends got away with anything they wanted
- _-david-_ 5y ago
  Statistical speaking, areas with higher rates of blacks have higher violent crime rates so it is possible cops are patrolling the black areas at a higher rate. This would lead to increased police which would lead to increased harassment just because there are more cops.
Stupulous 5y ago
I don't think this works as a causal explanation. A decrease in petty fines shouldn't be significant enough at changing poverty to be reflected in crime rates in just a couple months. You'd also expect a delay as the fines that would otherwise be demanded in that time wouldn't be collected for some months, I assume. As an alternative, maybe people who are mistreated by police become immediately more likely to commit crimes? Or maybe police who would otherwise be doing proactive policing are doing something more beneficial instead? Those are just speculations, though.