Now on ScienceBlogs: 'My work has been plagiarized. Now what?'
Tim Lambert's weblog
Tim Lambert (deltoidblog AT gmail.com) is a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales.
August 29, 2003
Category: Merced
In his book The Seven Myths of Gun Control, Richard Poe has an extensive account of the murders. He is much more careful with his facts than the other pro-gun writers who hang an attack on safe storage laws...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 7:54 AM • • 1 TrackBacks
Category: More Guns Less Crime
In Lott's 8/20 blog entry he writes: There is a pretty obvious reason why these guys have choosen to publish their work in nonrefereed publications. Despite their continuing claims to the press, Ayres and Donohue's own papers do NOT...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 12:22 AM • • 0 TrackBacks
August 27, 2003
Category: More Guns Less Crime
Tom Wright demonstrates perfectly the misleading nature of Lott's postings on the coding errors: He also claims that the 100's of errors claimed for the study could make a difference without mentioning that these errors were corrected and the...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 6:45 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
August 26, 2003
Category: More Guns Less Crime
In the posting where he finally admitted that he had made hundreds of coding errors, Lott insinuated that Ayres and Donohue had refused to release their data and that their results were not reproducible. Unlike Ayres and Donohue, I...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:54 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
August 25, 2003
Category: More Guns Less Crime
In his statement on the coding errors Lott tries to downplay the significance of the errors: Minor coding errors were discovered in the data set after it was first given out. The files available for downloading on this site have...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 9:41 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
August 24, 2003
Category: meta
Inspired by Ron Davis' comments on editing old posts and Justene Adamec's excellent post on Blogging Loosely Applied Practices (BLAP) (hat tip: Kevin Drum) I have decided to adopt the BLAP. So: I link to stuff I mention. Once I...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 6:37 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 21, 2003
Category: More Guns Less Crime
Lott has a reply to Ayres and Donohue's letter. He has finally, at last, admitted that there were "a few hundred data entries that contained mistakes". It is unfortunate that it has taken Lott four months to admit to...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 6:33 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 19, 2003
Category: More Guns Less Crime
Ayres and Donohue have sent a letter to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, replying to Lott's 21 July letter. I agree with their description of Lott's behaviour as dishonest. On July 21, 2003, researcher John Lott wrote a letter to...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 6:33 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
August 18, 2003
Category: More Guns Less Crime
A study by Kovandzic and Marvell has been published in July issue of Criminology and Public Policy. (A draft of their paper is here.) From the journal's news release about their findings: In the recently published study "Right-to-Carry Concealed...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 6:33 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
August 16, 2003
Category: Appalachian
Lott has an article in the National Review Online where once more misleads his readers about what happened at the Appalachian School of Law: "Last year, two law students with law-enforcement backgrounds as deputy sheriffs in another state stopped the...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 9:44 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: misc
On 23 July, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune printed this letter from Heather Martens: The ubiquitous John Lott appears on the Star Tribune's editorial pages again, this time in the July 19 Short Cuts, describing his bogus survey that allegedly shows...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 12:21 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 14, 2003
Category: survey
Lott has a letter in the 26 July Columbus Dispatch replying to an earlier letter from Paul van Doorn. Lott repeats his claim from his 21 July letter: Yet, in the very same issue, another paper appeared by professors...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 3:05 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
August 12, 2003
Category: More Guns Less Crime
Lott has a letter in the 21 July St Louis Post-Dispatch. He writes: While some other studies claim the laws produce no change in violent-crime rates, among all the national studies that have been done there is not a...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:58 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: askjohnlott
Jeff Johnson of CNSNews.com has a fourth story about the Lott parody site askjohnlott.org. Johnson discusses the evidence that Jonah Peretti is involved with the site and quotes Lott: "I don't see how one can get around that [Peretti]...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 6:30 AM • • 0 TrackBacks
August 11, 2003
Category: Baghdad
Keneth Miles describes Lott and Lehrer's claims that crime increased in Washington DC after the gun ban as an excellent example of cherry picking. Earlier, I observed that the only justification Lott offered for another claim he made about...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 11:33 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: links
Glenn Reynolds comments on the Ayres and Donohue's letter on the coding errors. Reynolds also states that he is reluctant to believe charges of dishonesty against Lott because some critics have made ad hominem charges against him, for example,...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 12:37 AM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Washington DC
Lott (along with Eli Lehrer) has an editorial in the Washington Times which claims that the 1976 gun ban caused crime to increase. D.C. residents need more protection: Crime has risen significantly since the gun ban went into effect. In...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 12:21 AM • • 0 TrackBacks
August 10, 2003
Category: Lott
Kevin Drum observes that Lott evaded the question of whether correcting the hundreds of errors that he made eliminated his results. (And Lott's son, Maxim, seems to have posted near the end of the comments.) After Drum posted, Lott...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 4:45 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: links
Kevin Drum writes It's one thing that Lott is still revered by the NRA, but why does the mainstream media still give him the time of day? He's rather plainly a liar, and such an obvious one that it's...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 12:37 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 8, 2003
Category: askjohnlott
The registration details for askjohnlott.org have changed: Registrant Name:Mary Rosh Registrant Organization:Center For Truth Registrant Street1:45 Main Street, 12th Floor Registrant City:Brooklyn Registrant State/Province:New York Registrant Postal Code:11201 Registrant Country:US Registrant Phone:+1.7182223892 Registrant FAX:+1.7182225621 Registrant Email:maryrosh@mail.com Compare with those...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 6:30 AM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: askjohnlott
Scott Carlson at The Chronicle of Higher Education has a story (subscription required) about askjohnlott. He quotes Lott: "Someone called me up a couple of weeks ago, very angry, claiming that they got an e-mail from me, telling them...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 6:30 AM • • 0 TrackBacks
August 7, 2003
Category: askjohnlott
Iain Murray has a post where he insists that askjohnlott.org is not a parody, but an attempt by persons to pass off the site as being by John Lott himself without revealing their own identities or motivations. The only...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 6:30 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: askjohnlott
After askjohnlott linked here some people decided that obviously I must be behind the site and emailed me to let me know what they thought of me. Nope. Not me. Using false identities is not my style. It was...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 6:30 AM • • 0 TrackBacks
August 6, 2003
Category: askjohnlott
Jeff Johnson has an story on the defacement of askjohnlott.org (now restored, by the way), but apparently both Lott and Larry Pratt suspect that the defacement was staged: "I think we have to assume that the owner of the fraudulent...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 11:28 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
August 5, 2003
Category: askjohnlott
Lott has a posting on his blog where he insists few will think that the site was set up with the intention of making others think that it was a parody. I don't agree, but you can judge for...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 11:28 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: askjohnlott
The Fifty Minute Hour has the best line so far on the whole "identity theft" flap: John Lott is luckier than most victims of identity theft. After all, if one identity is stolen, he has another to fall back on....
Posted by Tim Lambert at 11:28 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: askjohnlott
askjohnlott.org now just contains the following text: AskJohnLott.org was recently hacked by someone who values the Second Amendment but not the First. Although we at AskJohnLott.org can understand why pro-gun extremists would be afraid of free speech, we believe that...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 11:28 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
August 4, 2003
Category: askjohnlott
There is now a disclaimer at the bottom of every page at askjohnlott.org: This site is not run by John Lott, he has no affiliation with it. It is run by Mary Rosh. John Lott used Mary Rosh to...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 11:28 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: links
Timothy McGillicuty comments on Lott's attack on Levitt: To my immense amusement, an NRA nut named John Lott has attacked him for it because, as near as I can tell through the foam and spittle flying out of Lott's mouth,...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 12:19 AM • • 0 TrackBacks
August 3, 2003
Category: askjohnlott
Jeff Johnson of CNSNews.com has a story about askjohnlott.org and suggests that the wags behind the site might by guilty of "identity theft" and wire fraud: "Fraud by wire, radio, or television" (18 U.S.C. 1343) is a federal crime:...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 11:28 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Levitt
Brad Delong points us to a New York Times profile on "rabidly anti-gun" Steven Levitt. The whole thing is worth reading, but this part is especially interesting to me: The year after he was hired, his wife gave birth...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 6:30 AM • • 0 TrackBacks
August 1, 2003
Category: askjohnlott
The Washington Times has a story about a Lott related Internet impersonation, but it's not about Mary Rosh. The Washington Times considers the Lott parody site askjohnlott.org to be a more important story than Mary Rosh. That site contains answers...
Posted by Tim Lambert at 11:28 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
