The Facts of the Case

“I remember literally running into my husband’s office and saying, ‘Come look at this email, I think I’m being punked.'” That was how UC Irvine criminology professor Charis E. Kubrin reacted after learning that she had been nominated for the Stockholm Prize, the highest honor in her field. And you can’t really blame her. For years, she has been punked, doubted, dismissed, and attacked over her research. Why? Because it’s research that flies in the face of what most Americans believe — their certainty based on longstanding, preconceived notions, bolstered nonstop by the assurances of one of the world’s most prolific liars, combined with what’s become America’s unofficial favorite pastime: Doing your own research. Research and science being doubted and flouted is hardly unique in today’s America, but in Kubrin’s case, her findings strike at the heart of a political movement and at the core of a set of policies that are reshaping America’s streets (and values). “Kubrin was being recognized for rigorous research that demonstrated in place after place, decade after decade, that immigration to the U.S. does not cause crime to go up; it may even push it down.” When Kubrin won her award, Anne Ramberg, who chairs the Stockholm Prize in Criminology Foundation, explained: “When policymaking becomes driven by populism rather than by evidence, society as a whole stands to suffer.” In other words, Don’t Study Crime, If You Won’t Take the Time. A UC professor won criminology’s highest honor. Americans still don’t believe her research (Alt link). “The distance between what is empirically known and what is deeply believed has tormented scholars since before Galileo. But the schism has rarely felt so impassable in American culture.” (Even today, I’m sure there are plenty of Americans who don’t believe that the earth orbits the sun. They think it orbits Donald Trump.)