In two apparently unintentionally competing op-eds, social science revealed some problems in dealing with the concepts of cause and effect in its effort to “explain” a rise in violent crime in a few cities. Neil Gross writes about the Ferguson Effect, noting two studies that show that it’s nonsense, except when it’s not.

One, there is now some evidence that when all eyes are on police misconduct, crime may edge up. Progressives should acknowledge that this idea isn’t far-fetched.

Far-fetched? Nobody said it was far-fetched, but correlation doesn’t prove causation.

Two, while it makes for a tidy political narrative to say “Ferguson effect,” researchers have not pinned down the underlying mechanisms. Against Ms. Mac Donald’s theory, the Baltimore study reveals that a decline in broken-windows policing alone does not elevate crime rates. And the study by Professors Rushin and Edwards tells us that crime can rise following the imposition of federal oversight even when stop-and-frisk reform isn’t necessarily the main goal.

Of 18,000 police departments in the United States, 61 have undergone federal scrutiny, and 30 have been found dirty and told sternly not to be dirty anymore. The assumption implicit in this takeaway is that it was the scrutiny that caused a rise in crime because police stopped doing their job for fear of criticism.

The third takeaway may be the most important: If you read the emerging research literature on the Ferguson effect, you can’t help noticing that while there have been some disturbing upward trends in violent crime in a few places, these short-term changes pale in comparison with another fact: There is consistently much higher crime in some cities and neighborhoods than in others, even while the total amount of crime in the country is low by historical standards.

Blips. When crime is low, blips become more pronounced and create the appearance of a problem when they’re just blips.

So what’s missing here? First, the acceptance of the police narrative that their performance has declined because scrutiny has made them fearful of criticism. Heather Mac Donald says so, but that’s Heather. What about the less generous argument that cops are paying us back for our lack of love and respect, for their butthurt, but taking their paycheck and not doing their job?

Too cynical? Maybe, but the researchers’ generous assumption of good will on the part of the police is a political choice. They’re gonna teach us about what happens when we don’t respect their authoritah, why we need them and better realize it. The long-time police union retort to a cop getting nailed for abuse was, “if you don’t like it, the next time you need help, call a criminal.” Refusing to do their job has long been one of the arrows in their quiver of teaching the public to suck up their misconduct because we had no better options.

Could this be the reason? Could it have nothing to do with scrutiny per se, but with the public’s attitude toward police giving rise to scrutiny? If we’re going to parse blips for cause and effect, then reality plays a role in the analysis. Social scientists might not want to test unpleasant theories that suggest cops can be petty and self-serving when left to their own butthurt devices, but that doesn’t make it so.

But as Andrew Fleischman raised when another study was made public, there is yet another influence in the mix that the “Ferguson Effect” studies neglected entirely. How about the Jude Effect?

One uniformed officer, Joseph Schabel, stomped on Jude’s face until he heard bones breaking. The other on-duty officer watched. An off-duty officer picked Jude up and kicked him in the crotch with such force his feet left the ground. Another took one of Schabel’s pens and pressed it deep into Jude’s ear canals. Another bent Jude’s fingers back until they snapped. Spengler put a gun to Jude’s head. Jude was left naked from the waist down lying on the street in a pool of his own blood.

When Frank Jude’s face hit the papers in Milwaukee, the cops’ phones stopped ringing.

Our findings confirm what the people of Ferguson, Mo., Baltimore and other cities have been saying all along: that police violence rips apart the social contract between the criminal justice system and the citizenry, suppressing one of the most basic forms of civic engagement, calling 911 for help. The promotion of public safety requires both effective policing and an engaged community. We cannot have one without the other.

When the public fears cops as much as criminals, they don’t invite them to stop by for a chat. People want to survive to go home for dinner just like cops, and when they hear about police behaving like vicious animals, it influences their decision to ring them up, cooperate with them, seek their help.

There’s nothing about the Jude Effect in the Ferguson Effect, not because Matthew Desmond’s admonition, that a fearful and mistrustful community is an external cause of police failure isn’t accurate, but because that wasn’t what the “social scientists” were looking for. If it’s not on your radar, you won’t find it.

But there is a far deeper flawed assumption permeating these studies and their dubious conclusions, though it’s not surprising given the general sense that feelings are a totally acceptable explanation for failure. Cops aren’t a bunch of nice guys and gals doing us a favor. They are people who sought a position of authority and responsibility, and get paid to do a job.

They don’t get to do it, or as much or little of it, as they feel happy about. They don’t have to like scrutiny. They don’t get a pass on abuse and violence because, well, Ferguson made them sad.

They do the job because that’s their job. They do the job under whatever scrutiny we choose to put them under. They do it without harming people for kicks, without violating the law or the Constitution, because that’s the job. They don’t have to like it. They have to do it. And if they don’t feel like it, get out. There is no study required to reach this conclusion.