Comments on: Lies, Damned Lies and Freakanomics http://www.edrants.com/lies-damned-lies-and-freakanomics/ a blog in ever-shifting standing Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:15:38 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: Steve Sailer http://www.edrants.com/lies-damned-lies-and-freakanomics/comment-page-1/#comment-4933 Steve Sailer Wed, 30 Nov 2005 18:09:44 +0000 http://www.edrants.com/?p=2411#comment-4933 This fiasco reveals much about what's wrong with public policy discourse in modern America. Fifteen minutes of Googling would have shown that the abortion-cut-crime theory hadn't come close to meeting the burden of proof, but, instead, much of America's intellectual elite fell head over heels for it. Ever since my 1999 debate with Levitt in Slate.com, http://www.slate.com/id/33569/entry/33571/ Levitt's fans have been telling me that my simpleminded little graphs and ratios of national-level crime trends showing, for example, that the teen homicide rate tripled in the first cohort born after Roe v. Wade couldn't possibly be right because Levitt's state-level analysis was so much more gloriously, glamorously, incomprehensibly complicated than mine, and Occam's Butterknife says that the guy with the most convoluted argument wins. Now, two economists have finally redone Levitt's work and found two fatal mistakes in it. You can learn far more than Freakonomics dares tell you about the abortion-crime controversy at http://www.iSteve.com/abortion.htm This fiasco reveals much about what’s wrong with public policy discourse in modern America. Fifteen minutes of Googling would have shown that the abortion-cut-crime theory hadn’t come close to meeting the burden of proof, but, instead, much of America’s intellectual elite fell head over heels for it.

Ever since my 1999 debate with Levitt in Slate.com,
http://www.slate.com/id/33569/entry/33571/

Levitt’s fans have been telling me that my simpleminded little graphs and ratios of national-level crime trends showing, for example, that the teen homicide rate tripled in the first cohort born after Roe v. Wade couldn’t possibly be right because Levitt’s state-level analysis was so much more gloriously, glamorously, incomprehensibly complicated than mine, and Occam’s Butterknife says that the guy with the most convoluted argument wins. Now, two economists have finally redone Levitt’s work and found two fatal mistakes in it.

You can learn far more than Freakonomics dares tell you about the abortion-crime controversy at http://www.iSteve.com/abortion.htm

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