Freakonomics-Lovers: Bad News For "Abortion Lowers Crime" Theorists:
I'm not happy that crime of any kind is continuing to rise, much less violent crime. But I'm not surprised.
I mention it because this kind of proves something we discussed just a little over a year ago here: that Levitt's bestselling book is another example of the Madison-Avenue/Hollywood Boulevard-style pop culture fiction that too many of us Americans swallowed and now have to spit up. That discussion was part of a five-part series debunking the abortion/crime theory and showing how the media misreported and misunderstood those recent crime statistics.
How does this new bad news prove that we get fooled by the garbage we read?
Freakonomics came out in mid-2005, to rave reviews and ringing cash registers for Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner.
By October 2005, the mainstream media was falling all over itself with pats on our collective backs over then-recently issued U.S. Crime reports. Recall this glowing statement aired a mere 15 months ago, in September 2005, by all major news outlets including CNN (though their page is gone now) and MSNBC:
I find it quite amusing that, when doing a search on Amazon.com tonight for the word "Freakonomics," several other interesting items come up on page 1 of the hit list:
Interestingly, the excerpt for that last one begins:
After many years of decline, the number of murders climbed this year in New York and many other major U.S. cities, reaching their highest levels in a decade in some places.And this is the one-week-old edition for Steven Levitt-groupies:   "Violent crime still on rise in 2006:
Every region in the country reported sizable increases in violence crime, from 2.9 percent in the Northeast to 4.7 percent in the West, reports CBS News' Stephanie Lambidakis. The crime spike hit small and medium-size cities the hardest, a trend that has many police chiefs calling for more federal aid. The number that stands out the most is for robberies, which jumped almost 10 percent nationally...The numbers reflect what police across the country have been saying for months: that the lull in crime between 2001 and 2004 appears to be over.
Violent crime figures are on pace for a second straight annual increase. Based on statistics for all of 2005, violent crime rose 2.2 percent nationally — the first increase since 2001.Here's the FBI website which is the source for the data in the articles.
I'm not happy that crime of any kind is continuing to rise, much less violent crime. But I'm not surprised.
I mention it because this kind of proves something we discussed just a little over a year ago here: that Levitt's bestselling book is another example of the Madison-Avenue/Hollywood Boulevard-style pop culture fiction that too many of us Americans swallowed and now have to spit up. That discussion was part of a five-part series debunking the abortion/crime theory and showing how the media misreported and misunderstood those recent crime statistics.
How does this new bad news prove that we get fooled by the garbage we read?
Freakonomics came out in mid-2005, to rave reviews and ringing cash registers for Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner.
By October 2005, the mainstream media was falling all over itself with pats on our collective backs over then-recently issued U.S. Crime reports. Recall this glowing statement aired a mere 15 months ago, in September 2005, by all major news outlets including CNN (though their page is gone now) and MSNBC:
The nation's crime rate was unchanged last year [compared to the prior year]...Since 1993, violent crime as measured by victim surveys has fallen by 57 percent and property crime by 50 percent. That has included a 9 percent drop in violent crime from 2001-2002 to 2003-2004.In October 2005, we discussed how wrong--and racist--Levitt et. al. actually were. We showed the hard data that there were, contrary to Freakonomics' conclusions, "more crime spikes after abortion 'removed' between 2 and 20.4 million 'potential criminals' from the U.S. population."
I find it quite amusing that, when doing a search on Amazon.com tonight for the word "Freakonomics," several other interesting items come up on page 1 of the hit list:
On Bullshit by Harry G. FrankfurtHonestly, you just can't make this stuff up.
Crimes Against Logic by Jamie Whyte
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman
Dismal science.(Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything)(Book Review): An article from: Commentary by James Q. Wilson
Interestingly, the excerpt for that last one begins:
DURING MY many years of lecturing on crime, invariably the first two questions I would be asked were: "What do you think of the death penalty?" and "What do you think of gun control?"The rest of the article is a $5.95 digital download away, for those of you who'd like to read the rest. I kind of think we can tell where he's going to go with that though...
No more. Now the first question is whether I believe that legalized abortion has cut the crime rate. For this I can thank Freakonomics, the weirdly named book by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner that has been high on the New York Times best-seller list for weeks now. My answer, by the way, is no: I do not believe the...
posted by Annie at 11:18 PM
