Natural scientists
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt (1994) are authors of a biting critique of the
claptrap that many postmodernist social scientists have published on science.
Yet, like so many writers on the so called academic Right they have paid scant
regard to the claptrap published from those claiming to be among their own
ranks. Here I refer to the self-proclaimed crime scientists, who claim to be
natural scientists, and yet seem to understand nothing of the lessons that
science teaches of:
1.
The need to seek disconfirming evidence for your own hypothesis,
2.
the meaning of causality,
3.
the need to keep scientific explanations separate from the data
you are seeking to explain and
4.
the need for explanations that are both refutable and difficult
to vary.
Crime
Science, Crime Opportunity Theory, Routine Activity Theory (RAT) and
Situational Crime Prevention (SCP) each breach the 4 points above because all
of them are founded upon the RAT ‘Crime Opportunity’ (ratortunity) premise that
the three essential components of a successful crime in commission (which can
only be known to exist after the crime has been successfully completed (Sutton
2012) combine to create an essential causal opportunity for the commission of any crime.
For those unfamiliar with Crime Opportunity Theory (ratortunity): the
three components of a so called crime opportunity are: (a) a capable offender
in the presence of (b) a suitable target and (c) an incapable/absent guardian,
which are said to jointly comprise the most important cause of crime. The logic
of such a claim that these three elements represent an ‘opportunity’ can only
rest on the irrational premise that every successfully completed crime and
every failed attempt somehow caused itself to happen (see Sutton
2012 for an exhaustive explanation of the complete
irrationality of this claim).
As
a useful critical exercise let us consider a powerful and valid criticism of
postmodernist criticism of science from Gross and Levitt (1994: p.104) - with
the word postmodernism adjoined by [ratortunity]. Readers familiar with the
prolific work of the ratortunists and ratortunity's significant, yet weird, impact upon
credulously supportive and unquestioning academic publications, policing and
policymaking may find this exercise particularly intriguing:
‘…such
solecisms as we find in these writings are confidently put forth as scholarly
discoveries, with
every assurance that something profound is being uttered, one must wonder about
the system – and the ideology – that nurtures and rewards them. Whence we must
ask, does such grossly misplaced intellectual self-confidence come? The smug
hermetic, self referential atmosphere of politicized academic postmodernism
[and ratortunity] obviously has a great deal to do with it. In this milieu,
there is not much thought given to simple scientific accuracy. The caution and
scrupulousness that working scientists are conditioned to expect are swept
aside, because in the final analysis, postmodernism [and ratortunity] is in
great measure prophetic and hortatory, rather than analytic; it announces and
cheers on a sweeping “paradigm shift” within our civilization, a change that is
supposed to liberate us all.’
Readers
may wish to draw their own conclusions. Those who are credulously teaching
ratortunity principles to students, publishing them in student text books and
the wider peer reviewed academic press, government policymakers and police
services might wish to question the implications of what they are doing for
both knowledge progression and the moral obligation to at least seek to spend
scarce public resources on crime reduction measures that are most likely to be
most effective at reducing crime rather than nurturing and rewarding
pseudoscientific claptrap and those who propagate it.
References
Gross,
P.R. and Levitt, N (1994) Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its
Quarrels with Science. The John
Hopkins University
Press. Baltimore.
Sutton, M (2012) On Opportunity and
Crime. Dysology.org: http://dysology.org/page8.html
