| Tyrone Slothrop |
01-15-2015 06:06 PM |
Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch
(Post 493156)
Kevin Drum has been beating this percussion instrument for two years now, and Mother Jones remains the leading proponent of the theory, and the response from the sociology community has been “it’s more complicated than that.” Drum’s response to that criticism seems to have been “Of course they say that; they don’t want to opine themselves out of a job studying the ‘real’ causes of crime.” Which is a funny argument to make when you’re a magazine writer, but okay.
Anyway, the public health folks aren’t lit on fire by the policy advocacy because they were working like mad to abate lead and reduce childhood exposure already, so the cause of the ’60–70s crime spike is largely an academic question if the answer is “lead.”
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I am a huge fan of responses that things are more complicated than that, in part because they are almost always right. But if some people are saying, Pb explains 90% of the phenomena, and the sociologists (and the police unions, etc.) respond, it's more complicated than that, do they mean, you need to look at the other 10% too, or do they mean, Pb doesn't explain that 90%. Sounds like it's the latter -- but if so, where's the beef?
And you'd think the public health folks would be all excited, in a, oh-my-god-now-we-can-make-a-good-case-for-doing-a-lot-more-remediation-than-we-were-otherwise-going-to-get-funding-to-do sort of way. |
