Book Review: Freakonomics

Freakonomics by Stephen J. Dubner , Steven D. Levitt 

Original title: Freakonomics: a rogue economist explored the hidden side of everything 

Category:  Economy, politics, sociology and news

If statistics do not exist ... this book would not exist either 

Obviously, therefore, the "ease" of reading will serve as enthusiastic about the skeptics.
A collaboration between a young atypical economist and a journalist from the New York Times, this book is regularly praised in the press for the original approach to certain issues that everyone does not fail to arise one day. Indeed some issues raised by the book are among the questions that could one day touch the mind of the average reader (what are the factors that led to the drop in crime in the 90s, how can earn a drug dealer) others, such as whether sumo fights are rigged, of interest that jumps least in the eyes ... 
This is my first reserve. 
My second reservation concerns the almost systematic use of statistical data. These tend to be used as supreme demonstration tool, although the authors provide warnings of use (beware of hasty conclusions) and strive to respect the distinction between the concept of correlation and the event. 
Another key subject to comparisons and conclusions which the authors engage willingly. Some very crude, are deliberately provocative to trigger these polemics worth all advertising campaigns (after all Levitt is not it a brilliant economist recognized by his peers?). So compare the risk to a crack dealer to be killed in a year (7%) and the risk to a death row inmate to be executed in the same time frame (2%) to conclude that the fate of the former is less desirable than the second seems at least curious. It's cheap to psychological torture that represent years to languish at the bottom of a cell awaiting certain death. As for reconciliation between the legalization of abortion and lower crime fifteen years later, each judge based on his convictions ... 
Finally, last reservation I promise, I think that certain conclusions are perfect clichés circulating for decades in all facs and other conferences devoted to gender issues. Say for example that information, according to which the holding can be a beacon, a stick, an olive branch, a deterrent, seems to me to be obvious. Similarly, we suspected that the organization of crack trafficking, at some level, like that of an ordinary capitalist enterprise. 
I will end on a positive note, because this book is not as flaws, noting that some items are subject to a most unexpected analysis (collective fears and their use, the security policies of major cities ...) even it is rather to sociology.