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Tim Lambert's weblog
Tim Lambert (deltoidblog AT gmail.com) is a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales.
May 31, 2003
Category: misc
In his interview in the Illinois Leader Lott says: "If you look at the national news reports for ABC, NBC and CBS during 2001, they had about 190,000 words of contemporaneous gun crimes stories on their television morning and evening...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:40 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
May 30, 2003
Category: misc
Several people have commented on the irony of Lott attacking the New York Times for a "Pattern of Deceit", but let's look at what he says in his article: As an example, take the major 20,000 word series on "rampage...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:40 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: survey
David Glenn's article on academic blogging in the Chronicle of Higher Education mentions the role of blogs in the investigation of Lott's conduct. William Sjostrom writes "Lott always releases his data." But Lott has not released the data for his...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 3:05 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: safe-storage
In Lott's latest entry he has given up trying to support his claim that "the sensible girl ran for where the family guns were stored. But they were locked up tight." and responded to this post, where I pointed out...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 3:05 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
May 29, 2003
Category: Merced
Lott has blogged for the third time about the Merced murders: Taken together, the different articles in these various posts indicate that the gun was locked; it was placed in a way that was not accessible by the children; both...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 7:54 AM • • 0 TrackBacks
May 28, 2003
Category: links
Tom Spencer mentions the Washington Post's criticism of Lott. ArchPundit finds Lott's criticism (in this interview)of poorly done gun control research ironic. Arie discovers the John Lott story....
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:48 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Merced
Lott has a new entry on his blog where he posts a transcript from Fox News that apparently has the father of the murdered children saying: "If a gun would have been here today, I'd have at least a daughter...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 7:54 AM • • 0 TrackBacks
May 27, 2003
Category: links
The Washington Post zings Lott for throwing stones at the New York Times from his glass house. Matt Welch also comments, while Greg Beato thinks that the New York Times has hit rock bottom when even John Lott is denigrating...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:48 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: safe-storage
The Fox News story that Lott cites contains some other falsehoods: For several years, gun control advocates have been quoting a study that reached a very different conclusion. University of Washington doctors claimed that in a dozen states which had...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 3:05 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Merced
Lott has started a blog and responded to the questions I raised about his claims about the Merced pitchfork murders: Fox News interviewed the father of the dead children and reported the following: "Lott cited a Merced, Calif. family whose...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 7:54 AM • • 0 TrackBacks
May 26, 2003
Category: how many guns
Also in the Fox News article we have: But Lott counters that the number of gun accidents among law-abiding citizens is remarkably low given that about 90 million Americans own firearms. As I explained earlier, Lott's estimate of the number...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 11:28 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: links
Jan Haugland writes about how blogs have been bad news for people named Lott: Even if Lott is not an outright fraud (which the evidence so far suggests he is), he is certainly not a scholar, and he is a...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:48 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Merced
I found a copy of the Fresno Bee story that Lott claimed "included the fact that while he was breaking in the eldest child, a fourteen year old girl with experience in target shooting, went to her parents' bedroom, got...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 7:54 AM • • 0 TrackBacks
May 24, 2003
Category: links
Dr Limerick thinks Lott isn't washed up, because the AEI and similar institutions will always have a place for him. Andrew Chamberlain tells us why character matters: By Lott's total disregard for norms of honesty, he's revealed a deep character...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:48 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
May 23, 2003
Category: links
Tom Spencer finds Lott's complaints about a "pattern of deceit" at theNew York Times rather hilarious....
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:48 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Merced
In chapter 7 of The Bias Against Guns, where Lott argues that "safe storage" laws cause increases in violent crime, he quotes from an op-ed: Jessica Lynne Carpenter is 14 years old. She knows how to shoot ... Under the...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 7:54 AM • • 0 TrackBacks
May 22, 2003
Category: links
Metafilter has a thread on Mary Rosh, while David Schimke also comments....
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:48 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: misc
Lott has written an op-ed where he criticizes the New York Times for a "pattern of deceit"....
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:40 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
May 21, 2003
Category: More Guns Less Crime
Posts by d-squared and John Quiggin on data mining and Lott reminded me that Lott accused his critics of data mining in a response to Webster: The Black and Nagin paper excludes Florida after they have already excluded the 86...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:58 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
May 20, 2003
Category: links
Brian Linse writes: The fact that former supporters (and some current supporters like NRO) haven't been outspoken and firm in their denunciations of Lott's irresponsible and unethical behavior is destined to do additional harm to the cause of gun rights....
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:48 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
May 19, 2003
Category: links
Tom Spencer comments on Lott's attack on Tom Smith. John Quiggin writes about data mining and Lott....
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:48 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: misc
Jeff Johnson of CNSNews.com describes an AEI event to publicise The Bias Against Guns. Lott repeats his version of the Appalachian Law School shootings, as usual not mentioning that the shooting stopped because the shooter ran out of ammunition and...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:40 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
May 18, 2003
Category: how many guns
On pages 36-37 of The Bias Against Guns Lott attacks Tom Smith: A few years ago, while I was doing research at the University of Chicago,I had lunch with Tom Smith, who is the director of the General Social Survey...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 11:28 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: UK
Jim Henley is still concerned about the possibility that the BCS figures might be cooked. I still consider this possibility extremely unlikely because it would require some sort of conspiracy between the statisticians (who don't have an interest in crime...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 6:26 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
May 17, 2003
Category: links
Tom Spencer thinks that Lott's days are numbered now....
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:48 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: UK
Jim Henley reflects on the British crime statistics I mentioned a couple of days ago. He is concerned that I am too trusting of the British Crime Survey. As far as I can tell they have used standard practices for...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 6:26 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 15, 2003
Category: More Guns Less Crime
ArchPundit has a thoughtful analysis of the latest from Reynolds and Lott. Shorter dsquared: If you use some data to construct a model, then to test it properly you need new data. Lott's approach is a little different. The model...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:58 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: misc
Lott has an op-ed in The Plain Dealer where he continues to mislead: My new book, "The Bias Against Guns," examines multiple-victim public shootings in the United States from 1977 to 1999 and finds that when states passed right-to-carry laws,...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:40 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
May 14, 2003
Category: links
Tom Spencer thinks that Reynolds is "making wild evidence-free claims about the nature of other scholarship in the field just to distract you from the trouble his man Lott is in." It is certainly odd that Reynolds doesn't provide any...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:48 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: misc
In Lott's appearance on KSFO he talked about the Appalachian Law School shooting and described the two armed off-duty police officers who apprehended the shooter as "two students, one with a former law enforcement background". Lott knows full well (as...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:40 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
May 13, 2003
Category: Kellermann
Glenn Reynolds comments on the CNSNews article. Despite Ayres and Donohue's best efforts, Reynolds is all agnostic on the Lott question, but fortunately he has an opinion on the study by Ludwig and Cook (who Reynolds calls "antigun researchers"): What's...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 11:14 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: More Guns Less Crime
Jeff Johnson of CNSNews.com writes a very pro-Lott piece on the dispute between Lott and Ayres and Donohue. Probably the most notable feature is what is not mentioned---there is nothing about the coding errors Lott made. We can be sure...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:58 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: survey
[Note: This is a copy of a document found at this link on John Lott's website on May 13, 2003. I have added critical commentry, written in italics like this. Tim Lambert ] With some recent attacks on me in...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:16 AM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: safest-means
As well as making the highly misleading claim that women are 2.5 times as likely to be injured if they offer no resistance than resisting with a gun as I discussed yesterday, in The Bias Against Guns Lott claims (page...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 7:23 AM • • 0 TrackBacks
May 12, 2003
Category: safest-means
So, apart from pretending to be one, what expertise does Lott have on women and gun issues? Well, he wrote this NRO article on women and guns. It was widely linked by bloggers, who felt that the key statistic was...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 7:23 AM • • 0 TrackBacks
May 9, 2003
Category: misc
The Journalist's Guide to Gun Policy Scholars and Second Amendment Scholars is a directory of pro-gun scholars. It is grouped into sections by specialty. So who are the experts with special expertise in Women and Gun Issues? Women and Gun...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:40 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
May 8, 2003
Category: More Guns Less Crime
Three recent papers that contradict Lott's "More Guns, Less Crime" theory: Duwe, Kovandzic and Moody, "The Impact of Right-to-Carry Concealed Firearm Laws on Mass Public Shootings" Homicide Studies Journal, 6:4 pp 271-296 (2002). Duwe et al find no statistically significant...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:58 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Levitt
Brian Linse responds to William Sjostrom's attempt to defend Lott....
Posted by Tim Lambert at 6:30 AM • • 0 TrackBacks
May 7, 2003
Category: More Guns Less Crime
Mark Kleiman has posted some comments from John Donohue about the Stanford Law Review controversy. Donohue isn't even sure what the changed word was that caused Lott to withdraw his name. (Details are here if you are interested.) And like...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:58 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
May 6, 2003
Category: More Guns Less Crime
So what was the one word correction that prompted Lott to remove his name from his paper? In their draft, Ayres and Donohue wrote (my emphasis): On the other hand, the temporal pattern, that states adopting shall-issue laws in the...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:58 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: MaryRosh
Julian Sanchez has an article in the May issue of Reason on the role blogs played in the investigation of the Lott affair....
Posted by Tim Lambert at 7:54 AM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Levitt
William Sjostrom gamely defends Lott against the charge that he anonymously accused Levitt of being "rabidly antigun"....
Posted by Tim Lambert at 6:30 AM • • 0 TrackBacks
May 5, 2003
Category: More Guns Less Crime
Archpundit has some thoughtful comments on Mark Kleiman's post. Ryan Barrow has a short comment. Glenn Reynolds would like someone else to check to see if the Ayres and Donohue are correct about the coding errors. I think the way...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:58 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: More Guns Less Crime
Lott's corrected Table 3a from "Confirming More Guns, Less Crime"...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 9:33 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
May 4, 2003
Category: More Guns Less Crime
Brian Linse comments on Mark Kleiman's post and suggests that people should write to the University of Chicago Press and ask them to investigate Lott. Tom Spencer also comments on Kleiman's post, as do Kevin Drum and Matt Yglesias. Lott...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:58 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
May 3, 2003
Category: More Guns Less Crime
In his email to Mark Kleiman, Lott accused Ayres and Donohue of lying: However, the Stanford Law Review allowed Ayres and Donohue to add an addition to their piece commenting on all this. They said that: "It is important to...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:58 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
May 2, 2003
Category: More Guns Less Crime
Mark Kleiman has written a must read post covering the recent developments and concluding: defenders of gun rights should stop citing Lott as an authority the University of Chicago Press should conduct a formal enquiry into the existence of the...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:58 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
May 1, 2003
Category: More Guns Less Crime
Still nothing from Lott on whether he concedes or denies the charge of coding errors. In the mean time, let's examine his other claim: "Ayres and Donohue have simply misread their own results." This is a remarkable claim. Lott is...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:58 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: MaryRosh
A gun control group has set up a "fan" site for Mary Rosh....
Posted by Tim Lambert at 7:54 AM • • 0 TrackBacks
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