General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: About that "lead exposure caused the youth violence of the 70s-90s" research... [View all]RickNevin
(2 posts)I introduced myself in 2007 with a guest blog at http://riehlworldview.com/2007/07/lead-poisoning.html when a conservative blogger responded to the Washington Post article about my research with some of the same angry suspicions expressed here. I still work for ICF and still collaborate with NCHH and I am still doing all of my research on my own time and dime. I am an economist, but I think I also qualify as a health researcher based on my many publications about the health effects of lead, available at the Nevin Research page of my web site, www.ricknevin.com. The 2010 World Health Organization guidance on Childhood Lead Poisoning at http://www.who.int/ceh/publications/leadguidance.pdf also reproduced my 100-year graph of USA murder rates versus paint lead and gasoline trends (see page 21), and cited my 2000 and 2007 studies in Environmental Research.
A more recent version of my working paper on "Lead Poisoning and The Bell Curve" is available at www.ricknevin.com under a quote from Thomas Sowell about that book: "The great danger in this emotional atmosphere is that there will develop a two-tiered set of reactions--violent public outcries against the message of The Bell Curve by some, and uncritical private acceptance of it by many others, who hear no rational arguments being used against it." I don't agree with Thomas Sowell about a lot of things, but his prediction on this subject could not have been more accurate. I do agree with the statement that The Bell Curve is racist, and that is what my research shows. The dictionary definition of a racist is someone who believes "that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities". The NAACP actively lobbied for removing lead from gasoline, at a time when African-American children were disproportionately affected because they were much more likely to live in larger cities where air lead levels were higher. When President Obama was a U.S. Senator he drew a line in the sand and said he would block any future EPA appointments until the EPA issued it's long-delayed Renovation and Rehab Rule (RRR) to prevent lead paint hazards. The NCHH actively promoted the RRR rule, and celebrated that rule when it finally became law: See http://www.progressivereform.org/CPRBlog.cfm?idBlog=25BD809A-D94F-5081-847E1638618172CE. Those actions by the NAACP, Senator Obama, and the NCHH - and my research - have nothing in common with racists.
Another angry outcry about "the purported science" in The Bell Curve does not address the Scientific American article by Linda Gottfredson, at http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/intelligence/cache/1198gottfred.html#authors, or the illustration for that article at http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/intelligence/cache/1198gottfredbox2.html that reflects data reported in The Bell Curve. Gottfredson also organized the 1994 treatise "Mainstream Science on Intelligence," an editorial published by the Wall Street Journal, with more than 50 signatories with expertise in cognitive research, largely supporting findings reported in The Bell Curve. My web site paper on "The Answer is Lead Poisoning" explicitly addresses the Gottfredson article and The Bell Curve with a rational argument that discredits racist interpretations of the data reported in Scientific American.
It is a fact that the horror of childhood lead poisoning, in dilapidated slum housing and in public housing projects built beside major highways with severe near-fallout from leaded gasoline emissions, is a horror that has disproportionately affected African-American children. Denying that this horror occurred has nothing to do with Science, and recognizing the horrific effects of childhood lead poisonning has nothing to do with racism.