quietlife.net

sociologists get no love

01 Aug 2003

Just a quick rant here. I read this article on the NYT, about economist Steven Levitt. Aside from being one of the NYT’s always slightly odd man-as-god profile articles, it irked me in another way.

Take this, for example:

Levitt and his co-author, John Donohue of Stanford Law School, argued that as much as 50 percent of the huge drop in crime since the early 1990's can be traced to Roe v. Wade. Their thinking goes like this: the women most likely to seek an abortion -- poor, single, black or teenage mothers -- were the very women whose children, if born, have been shown most likely to become criminals. But since those children weren't born, crime began to decrease during the years they would have entered their criminal prime. In conversation, Levitt reduces the theory to a tidy syllogism: ''Unwantedness leads to high crime; abortion leads to less unwantedness; abortion leads to less crime.''

So, obviously, first of all, that logic is a huge honking fallacy, but to be fair, this article mentions that:

Still, the very topic managed to offend nearly everyone. Conservatives were enraged that abortion could be construed as a crime-fighting tool. Liberals were aghast that poor and black women were singled out. Economists grumbled that Levitt's methodology was not sound. A syllogism, after all, can be a magic trick: All cats die; Socrates died; therefore Socrates was a cat.

But it then continues on its way, deifying Levitt as some sort of messiah to the shady and troubled field of sociology.

On another paper of Levitt’s:

That paper was later disputed -- another graduate student found a serious mathematical mistake in it -- but Levitt's ingenuity was obvious. He began to be acknowledged as a master of the simple, clever solution.

Sure, it was proved to be based on a giant mistake, but it was still ingenious!

The article mentions conservatives and liberals being aghast at his conclusions. That’s fine, but how about the respectable social scientists who spend their entire careers studying this, who have to watch some nerd get famous with his solution because he demonstrated reverse causality and drew a (fallacious) conclusion.

I know that I am harping on a paper (of Levitt’s) that was mostly refuted, anyway. But, the basic tone of the article seems to be “Well, sure he draws a lot of flak from people who know what they’re doing, but he doesn’t play by the rules! He shoots from the hip! Economic models be damned! Math is boring! Social science? What’s that?! This guy tells it like it is!”

Don’t get me wrong, this guy sounds like a smart guy. He sounds like your basic nerd who looks at things from a different perspective. Sometimes, his simplistic solutions are a well-needed breath of fresh air, but it’s obvious that sometimes, they’re an insulting gross oversimplification.

It’s like people are oblivious to the fact that there is a science that studies these sorts of things. It’s called sociology. It’s been around for a long time, now. Crime rates are a little bit more complicated to explain than “they aborted lots of future criminals”. Give me a break. Let’s leave the sociology to the sociologists, okay?

Comments

Amanda — August 01, 2003 at 18:16 · reply

man, even though you are my boyfriend and we talk about this all the time…..it’s still thrilling to see sociology getting a little love. Thanks!

sean — August 01, 2003 at 19:46 · reply

Um, “All cats die; Socrates died; therefore Socrates was a cat” is not a valid syllogism, though.

All cats are among the set of things that die. Socrates is among the set of things that die. It does not follow that Socrates was a cat… both the set of “all cats” and the instance of Socrates can happily co-exist within the set of “things that die” without ever having anything in common. A similarly bad syllogism is “All people from Hackensack are assholes; George Bush is an asshole; therefore, George Bush is from Hackensack.”

So, that’s no criticism on syllogistic logic, it’s just a crappy example.

“Unwantedness leads to high crime; abortion leads to less unwantedness; abortion leads to less crime” seems weird, as well… perhaps it’s the causal stuff buried in there. I imagine Venn diagrams whenever I see a syllogism, so I guess I recast it as:

“People who are unwanted are among the set of people who commit crimes; People who are aborted as fetuses are not among the set of people who are unwanted; People who are aborted as fetuses are not among the set of people who commit crimes”

So, that’s not a fallacy, that’s perfectly fine logic. The PREMISES are what’s offensive about it, not the logic. The logic makes sense, but that says nothing about the conclusions one draws from the syllogism.

–sean

Chris Wage — August 01, 2003 at 19:52 · reply

Well, I think they were using that as an example of why his logic was flawed, not as validation of it.

This reminds me that for no real reason I was reading about Zeno’s paradoxes today. And it got me thinking that I should really get around to reading Aristotle, and Plato, and all that sort of crap again – as well as reading up on fallacies and logic in general. Learning is hard.

Also, I don’t recommend reading about paradoxes while hungover. It doesn’t work.

Erik Ostrom — August 01, 2003 at 19:57 · reply

I’m with you on most of this post, but wary of “leave the sociology to the sociologists”. Scientists can be blinded by their assumptions just like anyone else. It behooves us all to try to understand other people’s fields instead of simply accepting the opinions of experts.

Chris Wage — August 01, 2003 at 20:01 · reply

Yes, I agree. I just meant that in the “you know, there ARE professionals that do this stuff” spirit, not the “you are too dumb to possibly comprehend this” sense.

Amanda — August 05, 2003 at 02:36 · reply

Why don’t you talk about movies we went to see or stuff like that anymore George Stephanopoul…I mean Chris?

AKA More me less Paul Krugman.

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