Official "Science News" Thread

[chappy]

correlation is not causation.

also, the dreaded IQ is thrown around casually and post-causally in the article.

see also: the Flynn effect which shows a steady increase in IQ norms (the tests are periodically recalibrated to make them tougher and keep overall scores similar) throughout the whole time period that leaded gas was used in cars. If small particulate lead had a negative effect on IQ (setting aside for a moment the many problems of IQ and focusing on raw IQ test scores) wouldn't we expect to see some fluctuation in that data?

In other words, the data doesn't support the hypothesis. Casting some doubt upon the other better supported data like crime/lead relationship.

Also it took about 15 seconds to google this counter data. Implying that either the Mother Jones staff writer and fact checker and copy editor and editor either didn't want to check the facts, or did and decided to ignore them.

[LaurV]

Indeed. I was, am, and will be conspirationist. (I didn't know if this word is right, looked for it on the web, and found this funny article, a guy having the same problems :D, hehe I like the comic strip). We are living in a global environment. Globalization is spreading more now then ever. You can move money and resources around the globe with few clicks, people from different countries live, work, study in other countries. There is no way you can "hide" technologies, and the era of industrial secrets and industrial/economic espionage is dead for real. Except few "intellectual property" laws and/or patents which most of the world does not care about, there is nothing to stop spreading the "evolution" from developed countries to less developed countries, when their governments allow it (see China). And this "technology transfer" process is helped by the fact that less developed countries generally have more natural resources, and cheaper work force. For the first time in history, developed countries face a big competition from the rest of the world, a competition they can not win, on long term. They know it. Technologies they use to have and be the only one able to provide, are now available from the others, with shorter leadtimes and cheaper prices. They can't do nothing. They DO have newer technologies, but which are - as any new and not mature product in the experimental phase - more expensive. The only way to make money from the newer technologies, is the marketing. Convince the buyer that your product, even more expensive, is better. And indeed it is! Old technologies are big pollutants. [Indeed they are. No joke about it. But... does it really matter?? isn't the planet and the life on it more clever than that? Can't the "life" deal with it? See Cernobili and other sites, see the oil spills disappearing because were "eaten" by some marine microbes, etc]. If one can not convince the others to stop buying cheaper, pollutant stuff, then he may try to interdict them globally, scaring the sh!t out of the buyers: "if you continue using this, the planet will heat so much that everybody will die". When it doesn't work, [no, it does not matter, some guys went proving that the planet is in fact cooling, or working in cycles, as more carbon dioxide will give birth to more organisms that consume it (plants, plancton, etc) and viceversa], they will say the pollution cause the people to become criminals... What a surprise! Buy CNG cars, or better, electric cars! And stop using cheap coal or methane to produce electricity. We have better - solar, atomic, whatever - methods to produce electricity, we can make electric cars, sell them to you. Forget cheap chinese plastics, they will cause down syndromes to your children. We have better plastics which we can sell to you just a little bit more expensive. Contrary to the chinese one, which are red, ours are green. In fact this is the only difference, but who knows? Red might increase your aggressivity.. This is in fact proved by the psychologists around the world. By the way, India and China may make electric cars soon...

[Brian-E]

Originally Posted by chappy

correlation is not causation.

Absolutely right, and causation is notoriously difficult to prove. But in fairness the article does mention this lack of evidence of causality in relation to the Nevin study and presents the later Reyes study as providing at least some evidence of the causality of lead pollution by looking at crime rates at other times and places where other possible causing factors vary.

also, the dreaded IQ is thrown around casually and post-causally in the article.

see also: the Flynn effect[...]

This, and the rest of your post, are a little unfair I think. While the article does indeed mention IQ in various contexts, that is not what it is really talking about. The conclusions it reaches concern crime rates, which you can measure directly and accurately, not IQ which is merely discussed in the context of possibly being related.

[chappy]

Here's the problem, as I see it with my biased eyes. I grew up just north of the Lead Belt here in Missouri. 12% of the worlds lead is mined within 40 miles of where I grew up. The lead levels in the the soil there after a century and a half of mining and transporting lead are higher than any other place in the United States (except some Military firing ranges--most of which are just transported Missouri lead.) 'We deal in lead friend' should be the St. Francois County motto.

Yet there is no epidemic of crime or low IQ's in the lead belt. While there is a general level of poverty. The areas around the lead belt have some of the highest rates of meth-lab related crime in the country (Yay for my home town!)

And we did sometimes make fun of the Hercky giant who was almost 5 foot tall (let me know if anyone gets that joke) which was at its most fundamental level a lead joke.

My main problem with the article is that it has a narrow agenda, and most of it seems a childish whining about why "my pet theory" is being ignored by the mainstream criminologists. The point about IQ's isn't an aside, it is integral to the notion. If it is the case that elevated levels of airborne lead have an effect then why would the effect be limited to only crime? Either there is a correlation or there isn't. But, you can't just pick some symptoms and ignore others because they don't fit the preconceived bias of your publication.

[kladner]

Originally Posted by akruppa

http://www.motherjones.com/environme...-link-gasoline

Could atmospheric lead play a role in the rise and fall of crime rates?

That is a fascinating account. My mother was an industrial chemist during WWII, and worked for the Ethyl corporation at one time.

EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead

[kladner]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multime...echnology.html

[Zeta-Flux]

Apparently so.

[science_man_88]

Originally Posted by Zeta-Flux

Apparently so.

yeah well from what people say about the negative temperature thing on wikipedia it appears that a negative kelvin exhaust from a spacecraft, and the suns particle output both like expanding and in colliding a negative temperature stream with a high positive temperature stream could we not double the acceleration on a spacecraft ?

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by Zeta-Flux

Apparently so.

Previously absolute zero was considered to be the theoretical lower limit of temperature as temperature correlates with the average amount of energy of the substance’s particles. At absolute zero particles were thought to have zero energy.

That is false, written by an amateur. 30 years ago, our physics teacher told us about negative temperatures, as a concept, when we talked about population inversions and energy distribution, I still remember the matrix with 16 atoms (4 by 4), all having a determined number n of levels of energy, and placing them here or there would result in temperatures between minus infinite and plus infinite. Kelvin, of course. One can google for it, some 10 years old articles should be somewhere around...

[xilman]

Originally Posted by Zeta-Flux

Apparently so.

It's long been known that negative temperatures are not only meaningful but straightforward to produce. There are even well-observed natural phenomena which demonstrate negative temperatures.

I know for a fact that at least two people (myself and fivemack) have posted here about such phenomena. The most recent prior to this post was Tom's reference to water masers in uncwilly's thread about not yet flown space missions.

Nonetheless, this is a fascinating report and I thank you for drawing to my attention.

[science_man_88]

Strong quake shakes West Coast, reignites fears of the 'big one'

A major earthquake struck off the coast of southern Alaska early on Saturday, roughly 300 kilometres north of where a similar quake shook the islands of Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, two months ago. The quake registered 7.5 on the Richter scale, and set off tsunami warnings along the north and south coasts of Vancouver Island, including the City of Victoria. The warning was called off early this morning, as only minimal changes in sea level were detected.