[Mr Ramsbotham]

And here I thought it was social deterioration caused by government.

[tsomer]

There’s so much I don’t understand:

I thought the “Freakonomics” maven said that it was because parents had aborted all the miscreants in the 1960s.

[cgbg]

This study smells like it falls for the correlation not causation fallacy.

Children who grow up poor and turn to crime often don't have fathers living at home, have a violent peer group, have lousy public schools, and, oh yeah, have lead paint in the house.

[Dahoser]

The most compelling information has come from an economist in Fairfax who has argued in a series of little-noticed papers that the "New York miracle" was caused by local and federal efforts decades earlier to reduce lead poisoning.

Lead poisoning reduction efforts did not make the squeegee guys disappear nor clean up Times Square.

[Vinnie_Vidi_Vici]

I have a sure-fire cure for criminal behavior that involves “lead”..........

[Roccus]

“The most compelling information has come from an economist in Fairfax who has argued in a series of little-noticed papers......”
_____________________________________________________

Gee, I wonder why this series of papers was “little noticed?” Perhaps because they were STUPID!!!

[L98Fiero]

I swear stupidity knows no bounds. They were just on FoxNews reporting this like it was settled FACT. It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world.

[Bon mots]

That's now the third explanation for the same phenomenon.

1. Malcolm Gladwell - "The Tipping Point": Gladwell thought that a combination of community policing and other factors pushed it beyond "The tipping point" and crime began to go the other way.
2. Stephen P. Leavitt - "Freakonomics": Leavitt says that Roe v. Wade did it - the lowlifes were finally allowed to murder (abort) their wicked little unwanted children some 20 years before the S.W.A.T team would ever have to.
3. Now, lead.

Sounds like the increasing number of theories for the decline of the Roman Empire....

[3Lean]

And it was only 10 years after banning lead that the Soviet Union collapsed (proving conclusively that Ronald Reagan had nothing to do with that event)...