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Police Violence in Utero. An academic study is retracted, but it’s revealing nonetheless.
Wall Street Journal ^ | December 30, 2019

Posted on 12/31/2019 5:18:49 AM PST by karpov

It was a startling claim, published this month by a Harvard sociologist in the journal Science Advances: “Police killings of unarmed blacks substantially decrease the birth weight and gestational age of black infants residing nearby.” That reinforces “the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage,” Joscha Legewie wrote, because preterm birth can affect things like cognitive development.

To reach this finding, he had crunched data on 3.9 million California birth records from 2007 to 2016. In retrospect, though, the results appear oddly specific: There was no ill effect on white or Hispanic infants. No ill effect from police killings of white or Hispanic suspects. No ill effect “for police killings of armed blacks.” If the hypothesis was that nearby police violence raises maternal stress, wouldn’t it show up after any trauma in the neighborhood?

The professor’s explanation was that the trend must be “driven by perceptions of discrimination and structural racism.” White mothers don’t carry that burden. Also, feelings of fear and hopelessness “should be more pronounced for police killings of unarmed victims perceived as unjustified.” There was a nice chart: The effect was strongest when the shooting was within one kilometer of the mother’s home. By about three kilometers, it was statistically insignificant.

A week later the study was retracted. There were errors, for example, in the classification of armed and unarmed suspects. After fixing them, the effect essentially disappeared. It’s a fact of life, alas, that mistakes happen. Journalism is not immune. Mr. Legewie here has been forthright, and we aren’t trying to pile on.

But now that we know the result is illusory, it’s revealing to read how the original finding was greeted like a just-so story. “This is an important finding and a very intuitive one,” a New York University sociologist told the L.A. Times.

(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: harvard; health; pregnancy
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Retraction of the Research Article: “Police Violence and the Health of Black Infants”.
1 posted on 12/31/2019 5:18:49 AM PST by karpov
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To: karpov

A prime example of ‘educated beyond intelligence’


2 posted on 12/31/2019 5:26:05 AM PST by LibertyWoman
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To: karpov

They lie. They make up facts and statistics. When caught in the act, they say “Oops”.


3 posted on 12/31/2019 5:26:07 AM PST by ClearCase_guy (If White Privilege is real, why did Elizabeth Warren lie about being an Indian?)
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To: karpov

These people are just crazy.


4 posted on 12/31/2019 5:28:12 AM PST by grobdriver (BUILD KATE'S WALL!)
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To: karpov

I saw that it was written by a Sociologist. Which tells me they just took the outright statistics and probably said A=B and C=D so A=D.

Brainless twit doesn’t even consider areas of high crime might well have high drug abuse by pregnant mothers, resulting in underweight babies, but...the author was a sociologist, after all.


5 posted on 12/31/2019 5:31:58 AM PST by rlmorel (Finding middle ground with tyranny or evil makes you either a tyrant or evil. Often both.)
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To: karpov

It was a black Marxist racist story to begin with, saying blacks were predispositioned to failure due to stress put on their collective.


6 posted on 12/31/2019 5:33:52 AM PST by dila813
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To: karpov
The fact is that sociology and its stepchild, criminology, have long since abandoned any semblance of scientific validity. They have both degenerated into political demagoguery.
7 posted on 12/31/2019 5:38:08 AM PST by hinckley buzzard (Power is more often surrendered than seized.)
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To: karpov
“Police killings of unarmed blacks substantially decrease the birth weight and gestational age of black infants residing nearby.”

Imagine what abortion does to those poor things.

8 posted on 12/31/2019 5:39:31 AM PST by Texas Eagle (If it wasn't for double-standards, Liberals would have no standards at all -- Texas Eagle)
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To: ClearCase_guy

Correspondence is not causation. A similar relationship can be found between impoverished blacks with an eviction within the previous 6 months and police brutality. There might even be evidence.


9 posted on 12/31/2019 5:39:48 AM PST by Louis Foxwell (A deep and terrible ignorance born of abject corruption is required to hate our president.)
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To: karpov

Read up on Dr. Patrick Frank. The guy has been trying to tell the “climate scientists” that they have been (intentionally?) using the models they “borrowed” from the physicists inappropriately either through incompetence or bad faith for years. They wouldn’t even publish his work.


10 posted on 12/31/2019 5:41:08 AM PST by wastoute (Government cannot redistribute wealth. Government can only redistribute poverty.)
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To: karpov
A week later the study was retracted. There were errors, for example, in the classification of armed and unarmed suspects

Well, yeah, not to mention what that whole "gestational age of the infant" suggests.

11 posted on 12/31/2019 5:44:14 AM PST by Texas Eagle (If it wasn't for double-standards, Liberals would have no standards at all -- Texas Eagle)
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To: karpov

With this idiot in place we have another reason why “higher” education is a F^^king waste of money. Most majors today would get a better education reading comic books (if they could actually read) than they are getting from these moron so-called Professors.


12 posted on 12/31/2019 5:44:45 AM PST by Agatsu77
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To: karpov
A week later the study was retracted. There were errors, for example, in the classification of armed and unarmed suspects

Will they have to give us taxpayers our money back? HA! Sometimes I say the craziest things.

13 posted on 12/31/2019 5:45:57 AM PST by Texas Eagle (If it wasn't for double-standards, Liberals would have no standards at all -- Texas Eagle)
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To: karpov

The original story fit the narrative of the left and was hailed. The correction did not and was not.


14 posted on 12/31/2019 5:46:03 AM PST by Midwesterner53
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To: karpov

You’re a damn liar, Joscha Legewie!


15 posted on 12/31/2019 5:48:44 AM PST by Texas Eagle (If it wasn't for double-standards, Liberals would have no standards at all -- Texas Eagle)
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To: karpov

BS and utter drek.

August Weisman cut off the tails of mice for many generations (probabaly in front of them) and not one mouse born after had smaller tails.

Physiological damage can affect existing persons but not ones yet to be born.

Yet these same scientists will happily support abortion of the black race because that’s “good”


16 posted on 12/31/2019 5:54:30 AM PST by Skywise
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To: karpov

The last people to engage in this kind of science were the Nazis. That kind of politics as religion based scientific logic supported things like the vivisection of pregnant Jewish women in Dachau.

These bastards are nascent Nazis, liberal fascists, ready to go to any length to destroy America and substitute the Constitution with their Utopian hell..

Saul ALinsky is their guide.

Right now the Alinskyites want to destroy our police institutions while disarming America at the same time? Virginia is their test ground.

A pox on the lot of them.


17 posted on 12/31/2019 5:56:24 AM PST by Candor7 ((Obama Fascism)http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2009/05/barack_obam_the_quintessentia_1.html))
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To: karpov

A good study of fake news.


18 posted on 12/31/2019 5:56:39 AM PST by SharpRightTurn (Chuck Schumer--giving pond scum everywhere a bad name.)
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To: ClearCase_guy

Or maybe it was satire


19 posted on 12/31/2019 6:11:54 AM PST by gibsonguy
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To: karpov

One of N reasons that Harvard is becoming a joke.

STEM excluded, of course. So far, at least.


20 posted on 12/31/2019 6:33:07 AM PST by Da Coyote (is)
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