Talk:Lead-crime hypothesis/Archive 1

Archive 1

Neutrality

I've added the {{POV}} tag to the article on account of the vague, unsupported attributions of various opinions, such as: "advocated by numerous academic studies and various criminologists", "publications running material in support of the hypothesis", and "writers from publications such as the science magazine Discover have expressed caution". And that's just in the lead (lede) section.

Joining the opinions of various writers into a single interpretation (such as saying that various people advocated the hypothesis) is the definition of editorial synthesis, which is banned in itself, and also potentially leads to problems of undue weight. Crucial to establishing due weight is drawing on secondary or tertiary sources that describe the disagreement from a disinterested viewpoint. Currently, those kinds of sources seem to be lacking. The next-best option would be to simply use in-text attribution to present the various sides of the debate. See also WP:WEASEL. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 05:11, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Also, the only reference to the BBC article on the subject is to quote an academic critical of the hypothesis, which is definitely undue weight. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 21:24, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

* I've removed the BBC reference for now, until it can be summarized more impartially for this article. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 05:37, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

* Rather than having a back-and-forth between sources advocating and critiquing the hypothesis, it would be better to cite reliable secondary or tertiary sources that comment on the debate from a disinterested viewpoint, per WP:BALANCE. Any help finding high-quality scientific sources in this vein would be appreciated. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 09:31, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Criticism​

Criticism of the lead and crime hypothesis often focuses on the fact that expanded police activity and widespread incarceration of people with past criminal records may override whatever effects anti-lead measures have. In particular, advocates of the 'broken windows theory' of policing, or of alternative theories such as 'community policing', have stressed the relative importance of local programs while not dismissing other factors. Academic debates on the statistical correlations around crime have gone on for decades in major Western nations with complicated results.

I removed this paragraph which appears to be novel WP:SYNTHESIS which ignores the points made in Reyes' 2007 paper, in particular that these alternative explanations are not mutually exclusive with the lead-crime hypothesis. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 01:53, 5 June 2017 (UTC)