It is right to generalize

Published 9 May 2021 at 06.23

Column. There are no natural laws in the social sciences. Therefore, it is necessary to make models, examine relationships and measure over- and under & shy; representations. In other words, it is completely right to generalize, writes Jan Tullberg.

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The fact that the incidence of crime is higher among immigrants is as well known as that the incidence of lung cancer is higher among smokers. But the debate is still very similar to the one we had about cancer.

Everyone who has discussed the subject at a dinner table has heard of “My uncle Olle who smoked two packs a day since he was 15 years old, and now his health is at 93”. This is supplemented by the story: “Cousin Agda got lung cancer and died at 35, despite not even smoking in high school”. This defense for smoking was mainly practiced by smokers.

The tobacco companies dealt with a slightly more advanced argumentation. They often began by confirming, not denying, the correlation: Smokers got cancer more often than non-smokers. But then it was pointed out that “correlation is not causality”.

It is conceivable, the tobacco companies said, that the tendency to like smoking is controlled by genes and that people with these genes also have a gene set that increases the risk of cancer. Why there was a certain covariation was a question for science to sort out in the future, but even if the person who smoked was ill, it did not help to stop smoking. The risk of cancer was due to bad luck in the genetic lottery.

Over time, it became difficult to claim that the link between smoking and cancer was due to an unknown covariation of genes. One problem was that there seemed to be a causal link between active smoking and cancer. If you managed to quit despite a strong craving for smoke, you were less exposed to cancer, quite simply. The tobacco companies withdrew in increasing silence.

The discussion about immigrants and crime has several similarities. By and large, the opponents of a causal connection remain in a denial with anecdotal evidence. But the most anti-scientific is really their often repeated statement: “It is wrong to generalize”.

It is not at all wrong to generalize.

There are, of course, incorrect generalizations. And of course there are sciences that do not need generalizations. The law of gravity, for example, applies all the time without exception. But for social interaction and human behavior, there are always exceptions that give surprising results. This does not make the connections uninteresting, but they become generalizations, not laws of nature without exception.

It should not be difficult to accept generalizations that one has been forced to admit to be correct in themselves. Smokers get cancer more often, immigrants commit crimes more often. But instead they launch new causal factors, often “sociocultural factors” and so on.

But negative socio-cultural factors are very strongly associated with the person being an immigrant: Cultural clashes, low-educated parents, poor school results, low employment, motivation problems, living in particularly vulnerable areas (those with many other immigrants).

Denial is reminiscent of the classic defense for criminal Swedes. “There is nothing wrong with Pelle. He is a wonderful guy, but unfortunately he has happened in bad company. ” Constantly this criminal culture that seduces. Pelle was in turn bad company to Krille, who is also in himself a wonderful guy.

Immigrant crime can be due to several things. But they interact to a clear problem in the same way as obesity. There are several ways to become overweight, but the key is that the body absorbs more nutrients than it burns. The obese have a lack of balance as well as the criminal whose balance between high expenses and small legal income is not enough, but also illegal income is required.

I think health advocates and tobacco lawyers do a better job than those who claim that “it is wrong to generalize” about immigrants and crime. A few years ago, for example, the deniers of the link between immigrants and unemployment tried to defeat their opponents in the debate by playing stupider than they were. They talked about “the 700 thousand immigrants who go to work every day”. The key, as everyone understood, was that it was a comparison between two quotas. What proportion of immigrants “went to work every day” compared to the proportion of Swedes who do this? That debate also went on for many years of inconsolable threshing.

Immigrant crime has become a permanent problem and not just an effect of a change of culture. In the suburbs there is already an established model for how an immigrant criminal acts in different situations and it is neither civilized, legal or peaceful.

If we are to solve the problems that Sweden has, politicians and journalists must stop playing dumber than they are . I do not think stupidity is the explanation, but this is a purposeful stupidity. Such stupidity crosses the border into the criminal, at least in the moral sense. It is a criminal act not to understand, what you can understand, but do not want to understand.

Immigrants did not just appear in Sweden. They appeared because the politicians had created strong incentives to come here and because they refused to introduce rules to prevent an invasion.

JAN TULLBERG

Jan Tullberg is an author and associate professor of business administration. He is the author of the book & nbsp; Låsningen: An analysis of Swedish immigration policy & nbsp; which was published in 2014. More texts by Tullberg can be read on his website.