Deltoid

D. Deming wrote:

For those interested in statistical criminology, there is an interesting article that appeared in the scholarly journal "The Mankind Quarterly", vol. 35, no. 4, summer, 1995. The article is titled "Ideology and Censorship in Behavior Genetics" by Glayde Whitney of Florida State University in Tallahassee.

A most, umm, interesting journal. If I was looking for one word to describe it I think that word would be "racist". In one of the other issues I found an absolutely glowing and entirely uncritical review of JP Rushton's "Big dick = little brain" theory about the relationship between race and intelligence.

Whitney has a figure which shows that the murder rate for the United States is actually one of the LOWEST, when the race variable is not included. In other words, he has compared the white homicide rate in the US with the homicide rate in other countries which are predominantly white (e.g., Sweden). Interestingly, in this comparison, the highest rate is found in that enclave of perfect socialism: Sweden. The US is actually lower than England, Switzerland, Denmark, Scotland, France, E. Germany, Czech., Israel, and Finland. The US rate is only higher than W. Germany and Belgium, and only marginally so at that.

Sigh. It must be my week for checking homicide rates. Whitney is unable to read a table. He has grossly overstated the homicide rates for all countries other than the United States. Here are his figures and the correct ones from the source he cites (United Nations Demographic Yearbook 1992)

           Whitney  correct
Germany        3.5  1.0
Belgium        3.8  1.6
US (whites)    4.5
England        4.5  0.5
Switzerland    4.6  not given
E. Germany     4.7  1.0
Denmark        4.9  not given
Scotland       4.9  1.5
France         5.0  1.1
Czechoslovakia 5.5  2.0
Israel         6.0  2.4
Finland        7.3  3.1
Sweden         7.4  1.3
US             9.1  9.1

Whitney argues that race rather than environmental factors determines the crime rate because the US white homicide rate is similar that in countries populated by white people. As can be seen by the above table his argument is based on incorrect figures for the homicide rate. The homicide rate for US whites is much higher than in Europe. The difference can only be due to environmental factors. (Which might include guns or might be something else.)

How could Whitney have got the figures so badly wrong? As far as I can tell, he has added the figure for homicide to that for "other external causes" and reported this as "murders". Except that he didn't do this for the US. The reference does not report homicide rates for Switzerland and Denmark, just a figure for homicide and "other external causes" combined. It would be an understandable error to report the incorrect figures for Switzerland and Denmark, but getting the other ones wrong as well is inexcusable.

Whitney complains that his paper was rejected by Behavior Genetics because it wasn't "politically correct". If the editor of that journal rejected it on those grounds he/she was definitely wrong -- it should have been rejected because it contained gross errors and and a completely inadequate literature review. (The only study on the relationship between race and crime he cites is JP Rushton's. He ignores, for example, Centerwall's Atlanta study where black and white domestic homicide rates were found to be the same once household crowding was controlled for.)