Criminology: The Blog of Mike Sutton. All my opinions are my own and may not reflect those of any employer or organisation

Wikipedia is engaging in deliberate policy of stealth plagiarism of my work, and that of other experts, on the basis that experts are scum! In a blog I wrote a couple of weeks ago I bust the then universally held myth that Richard Dawkins coined the phrase ‘selfish gene .Within two weeks of my unique mythbusting, Wikipedia sneakily changed its own perpetration of that myth by simply...  Read More

Once again my deployment of the powerful new research method of Internet Dating that is facilitated by Google’s incredible Library Project has overturned orthodox knowledge claims regarding the origin of another word or phrase. This time it takes us back to the real origin of the word nerd in the English language. If you use Google to seek out the origin of the word nerd you will find that every...  Read More

CLICK THE LINKS TO SEE THE BUSTED MYTHS The Spinach Popeye Iron Decimal Place Error Supermyth The Booze Down the Boots Bootlegging Myth The Black Market Myth The Moral Panic Myth Google finds the original Google The Warren Harding Founding Fathers Myth The Zombie Cop Supermyth The Crime Opportunity Myth ...  Read More

Richard Dawkins Did Not Coin the Phrase Selfish Gene and is Not the Originator of the Basic Concept. Moreover, Others are Asking Some Very Telling Questions About the Meme Concept and from Where Dawkins Really Got the Word Postscript 14 th April 2013 . As part of its drive to seek to improve its dreadful reputation for spreading myths and fallacies, Wikipedia is currently unethically...  Read More

Readers of my recent mythbusting work (e.g. here and here ) will know that I have developed a research technique called internet dating (so called because it’s remotely like carbon dating the veracity or the published origins of words and phrases). Internet dating as a research technique relies upon efficiently and systematically sifting and synthesizing knowledge inside books, journals,...  Read More

Research Boots-out The Etymological Bootlegger Origin Myth Without a single reference to support the claim, all of the major dictionaries and etymology textbooks assert confidently that the words bootleg, bootlegging and bootlegger all stem from the past practice of illegal alcohol peddlers concealing their product inside their boots. OK - let's try to picture these mythical bootleggers and...  Read More

The Phrase Is The Concept: Introducing Eleven Meanings and the Currently, and Newly, Attested Origin of the Black Market Idiom In an earlier peer-to-paper on the importance of knowing the origins of phrases and concepts (Sutton 2013a) I wrote about why we should seek to ensure the veracity of what we write about. My simple argument in that article is that erroneous yet orthodox ‘knowledge’...  Read More

Peer-to-Peer Brief Blog Article Briefing note 6/2/2013 Current etymological and criminological knowledge (e.g. Oxford University Press Dictionaries Onlne 2013 and Pearson, G. 1983 – pp. 74-74) has it that the word hooligan entered into common English usage in the 1890’s as the lyrics to a song published in 1898. Until now, it seems that nobody has found the word hooligan published...  Read More

Over the past few days I used freely available internet search engine technology to bust two myths that are credulously disseminated in numerous scholarly articles and books. Both myths were universally believed to be veracious academic ‘knowledge’. In effect, I used the internet simply to check whether the respective phrases “moral panic” and “self fulfilling prophecy” really were coined by the...  Read More

When your own government knowingly targets a segment of the electorate for systematically unequal and unjust treatment you should know things are very bad indeed. To claw back money from the British public in order to try to deal with Government debt, a totally unjust policy has been dreamed up by out-of-touch, immature and privileged ministers with no sense of empathy regarding the imposition...  Read More

ANOTHER SUPERMYTH IN THE MAKING IS BUSTED On 1 st January 2013 the British got off to a flying dysological start with a prime time national TV broadcast of a shameful excuse for a documentary that claimed to name 50 Shocking Facts About Diet and Exercise . The production company and broadcaster Channel 5 TV published the following promotional blurb about this new year's day broadcast: ...  Read More

Mythbusting the mythbusters and their super myth making On the 17 th December the BBC ( Prichard, C. 2012 ) set about debunking the old maxim that “you are never more than six feet away from a rat”. The Six Feet From a Rat Myth was formulated in 1909 on the basis of the unfounded belief that rural Britain had one rat per acre. Since there were 40,0000 acres of cultivated land and a...  Read More

Crime Opportunity Theorists claim that hardening targets with security will reduce overall crime levels because offenders will not simply be displaced to softer targets. To support their claim they cite their own research of their own target hardening measures to claim that it is miraculously efficacious at actually reducing crime in surrounding areas that never even received security upgrades....  Read More

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Sounds like a good idea. Done with the best of intentions and for all the right reasons. What could possibly go wrong? (Part 1) Mid November 2012 in Kent, England, once again police officers are arrested under suspicion of committing crimes in order to meet government imposed targets designed to cut crime. How ironic. In 2006, a book, written by a serving police constable from...  Read More

Any government or organisation seeking to implement policies based on the intuition of politicians, policy advisers, civil servants, senior executives, managers and other self-anointed ‘experts’ should beware that their compellingly plausible initiatives do not fall foul of the dreaded Clowns Fallacy. The Clowns Fallacy The principle lesson for policy and practice that I have named the Clowns...  Read More

Q1. Which of the two diagrams below represents a mere description of the data of a completed crime? Q2. Which diagram below represents a veracious notion of opportunity for crime? Q3. Explain what the Semmelweis lag is and discuss its potential importance for understanding bad science and stubborn bias even when faced with veracious disconfirming evidence for prior orthodox 'knowledge'. Q4....  Read More

In my article on hi-tech crime I point out the similarities between the ancient mythologies of fire theft with the realities of copyright theft. In both cases the owner's status and earning capacity is undermined even though no physical object is taken away, diminished or even disturbed. The same problem that would have 'robbed' our imagined prehistoric “keeper of the sacred fire” by making...  Read More

The Semmelweis Reflex is a favourite lesson that scientists and sceptical scholars rely upon in order to teach the lesson that ‘experts’ relying upon embedded orthodox knowledge can fiercely contest new ideas and irrationally reject them – like a knee-jerk reflex- without due regard to the veracity of the new findings. Explanations of the phenomenon are legion in the scholarly literature and...  Read More

The following account was written for me several years ago by two-times convicted and imprisoned criminal, Mike Ahearne. Reformed and re-invented, Mike went on to become a much respected and well-loved academic colleague. Mike has a unique style as an inspirational and truly expert educator of criminology students and academic staff alike. He retired as Senior Lecturer in Criminology from...  Read More

British and American Governments promote publications based upon Crime Opportunity Theory as containing promising and effective lessons for reducing crime. Unsurprisingly, therefore, our police services base their crime reduction strategies on such work. As a consequence, much of our current crime reduction practice is focused on increasing levels of observational security and hardening targets...  Read More

The latest news in Britain is that crime continues to fall (by six per cent this year alone). Unsurprisingly, our police forces and their associations and our politicians are quick off the mark to take credit for it - something that they weirdly never do when the crime rate is rising. Overall, crime in the Western industrialized world has been falling for the past 16 years. It seems that ...  Read More

Building on the scientific tradition of Anne Elk (Miss) I have a theory that is mine. It is mine and it is called My Theory of OF CRIME. "Ahem...ahem". This is it. My theory, that belongs to me, is as follows. This is how it goes. Ready? My theory, which belongs to me, that is mine, what it is and all there is about it, by Dr Mike Sutton. Ahem, ahem: All crimes have a motivated and capable...  Read More

Prestigious Citations Scores can be had by Publishing Busted Bullony. I’m currently reading Sam Arbesman’s excellent book The Half-Life of Facts , a book that I was only aware of after receiving an email from Sam to let me know his book supported a myth that he had only learned was a myth - rather than a science knowledge fact about bad science - after going into print. The myth is the one...  Read More

The Secret Behind the Unit Fines Fiasco In 1990 the Home Office published its Research and Planning Unit Paper 59. This contained the results of the first trial of unit fines experiments in England and Wales in four magistrates courts that were in Basingstoke, Bradford, Swansea and Teesside. Essentially these experiments were conducted to gauge whether people could be fined more according to...  Read More

In today’s news in the UK, Danielle Eccles, a British woman, suffered pain and deafness for three years until she was cured when a perfectly preserved ladybird (ladybug) fell out of her ear. So what? you might ask. Well, for a start let's approach this story with rational skepticism, because the very newsworthiness of this story teaches us that the chance that any one of of us who lives in a...  Read More

History Text on Founding Father's Fatherhood Found Wanting Controversy remains and may always remain with regard to the question: Did Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States (1801–1809) and founding father, father children with his slave Sally Hemings? On the basis of all the available evidence it seems that Jefferson as the father is the most likely explanation for the DNA...  Read More

Rarely should we make predictions about what will and will not shape the future of mankind, because society is a chaotic system with so many known unknowns and unknown unknowns that something as likely as not changes the course of what happens next. But sometimes, just sometimes, something comes along that instinctively seems to be just what is needed and so could become something very big indeed...  Read More

Could we ever agree on what is the most painfully ironic discovery of all time? I mean, if all personkind put it to the vote, would different cultures have different notions of what is most ironic? Is it true that Americans don’t understand irony? Or is that a most ironic myth in its own right? What discoveries might we nominate for such a contest of discovery of irony? I wonder, can any...  Read More

The widely believed myth that a study of beat policing by the British Home Office shows that:“ A patrol officer in London could expect to pass within 100 yards of a burglary only once every 8 years, but might not even realise that the crime was taking place.” ...has been myth busted as based upon unrealistic assumptions made in a mere paper and pencil exercise (See: Clarke and Hough 1988 for...  Read More