4 ms·
I haven't read any of the studies it talks about. I think the evidence for lead causing brain damage is very strong. Its effect on the crime rate is a different
by greendestiny 14y ago
I haven't read any of the studies it talks about. I think the evidence for lead causing brain damage is very strong. Its effect on the crime rate is a different story. Admittedly it says it holds up over multiple countries, which seems like it should be stronger evidence.
Honestly I don't know, but I do think there is a real problem in our understanding of how to interpret population level trends. The rigorous camp simply wants to throw out everything that isn't a double blind study. The optimistic are convinced of every similar looking graph. I think we should be doing more meta-analysis of these things and building up a Bayesian sort of set of priors to apply to these results.
- sopooneo 14y agoI have two out of the air guesses on how brain damage might cause crime. First, part of your brain responsible for empathy might not work right. Second, if you're dumb you have a harder time holding down a job, so might be more likely to resort to crime. I throw these out only to play with ideas, not to imply I have any evidence they are correct, or that brain-damage even does cause crime increase.
- walls 14y agoFrom the article: > A second study [23] found that high exposure to lead during childhood was linked to a permanent loss of gray matter in the prefrontal cortex—a part of the brain associated with aggression control as well as what psychologists call "executive functions": emotional regulation, impulse control, attention, verbal reasoning, and mental flexibility.