Tim Lambert
tlambert
Posts by this author
April 15, 2006
Here's an interesting timeline:
31 March: Lott's abrupt departure from the American enterprise institute.
10 April: Lott files his lawsuit alleging that Levitt has defamed him.
12 April: First Anniversary of Freakonomics publication.
I think all three events are connected.
There is a one…
April 14, 2006
Online Journalism has an article about ScienceBlogs. I get quoted a couple of times.
April 13, 2006
All kinds of interesting posts at the Skeptics' Circle number 32.
April 12, 2006
Ted Frank has your must read blog post on Lott's lawsuit against Levitt. He has a copy of the complaint and an explanation from Lott:
When a book sells well over a million copies this goes beyond a mere debate among academics. To say that other scholars have been unable to replicate one's work…
April 12, 2006
Ever since Lott started at the American Enterprise Institute there have been people there who have wanted to get rid of him.
I was forwarded a copy of Lott's final email to AEI staff. It suggests that he was abruptly forced to leave:
From: John Lott
Sent: Sun 4/2/2006 4:00 AM
To: Everyone…
April 11, 2006
The Chicago Tribune reports:
A scholar known for his work on guns and crime filed a defamation lawsuit Monday against University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt, co-author of the best-seller "Freakonomics."
John Lott Jr. of Virginia, a former U. of C. visiting professor, alleges that Levitt…
April 10, 2006
Someone edited John Lott's wikipedia entry to state that he left AEI in 2006. Sure enough, he is no longer included on the AEI's list of scholars and fellows. The person who made the edit was anonymous, but the IP address tracks to Washington DC.
April 10, 2006
Jennifer Marohasy has written a rather self-referential response to my criticism of the sixty scientists' letter. Rather than deal with the substance of my criticism, Marohasy, who works for the Institute of Public Affairs, predictably tried to attack my credibility, writing:
Rather than deal…
April 10, 2006
One of the features of the generally shoddy reporting of Iraqi casualties in the media is the way that if reporters mention the Lancet study they will mention the bogus controversy about it, while the Iraq Body Count number is never given any qualifications, even though it is guaranteed to be too…
April 9, 2006
Bob Carter has a piece in the Telegraph where he claims:
For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. Consider the…
April 8, 2006
Six Australian business leader reckon that the debate is over and climate change is real:
Six business leaders yesterday stepped into the greenhouse debate, and blew the whistle. Game over, they said: climate change is real, it's going to hurt, and unless we act now, it's going to hurt us a lot…
April 6, 2006
Tim Blair grasps at a straw, I mean perfume sprayer:
Frank Gaffney is interviewed by the ABC's Tony Jones, who confidently deploys the "Saddam had no WMD" argument:
TONY JONES: Except for the fact as it turns out -- I'm sorry to interrupt you there -- except for the fact as it turns out, he didn'…
April 5, 2006
Steve Milloy has made a special appeal to his supporters:
I helped launch the Free Enterprise Action Fund (www.FreeEnterpriseActionFund.com), a pioneering mutual fund designed to accomplish two goals for investors:
Earn a market-based financial return from investing in the common stocks of…
April 4, 2006
Blogger dav wrote to RTE (Ireland's Public Service Broadcaster) to correct their misleading reporting of Iraqi casualties:
Today's Six One news reports that the death toll in Iraq as a result of invasion is estimated at between 34 and 38 thousand. Presumably these figures were obtained from the…
April 2, 2006
In 1972 the US banned the agricultural use of DDT, but did not ban its use against malaria. Other countries followed suit. The ban on the agricultural use of DDT has probably saved many lives by slowing the development of resistance. However, Michael Crichton blames the ban for 50 million…
April 1, 2006
Nicholas Davies has an article Estimating civilian deaths in Iraq - six surveys in Online Journal. Critics often point to the Iraq Body Count and the Iraq living conditions survey as contradicting the Lancet study when they do not. Davies explains why.
April 1, 2006
There were some ominous black clouds and it was pretty windy and I had to take my youngest to the doctor because he was throwing up all over the place, but I made it to the picnic, even if it was somewhat late. The sun came out, we were sheltered from the wind, and we had a pleasant afternoon…
March 31, 2006
Tina Rosenberg, who wrote the hopelessly inaccurate article What the World Needs Now Is DDT, is back with more falsehoods about DDT:
The truth is that many malaria victims would be better off if America still had the disease. If malaria still existed in America, we would be attacking it with DDT…
March 29, 2006
A misleading sidebar on this BBC story on Iraq only presents the IBC count of civilians killed in Iraq (which is guaranteed to be a significant undercount) and omits to mention the Lancet estimate of roughly 100,000 excess deaths.
Gabriele Zamparini wrote to the BBC seeking an explanation. The…
March 28, 2006
Over at Crooked Timber, John Quiggin has organised an on-line seminar on Chris Mooney's War on Science. Lots of interesting reading, including two guest posters: someone called Tim Lambert and Steve Fuller. PZ Myers wasn't real impressed with Fuller's contribution.
March 27, 2006
In a Financial Times discussion in new and old media Trevor Butterworth says:
Second, the idea that there are hundreds of thousands of "niche experts" blogging away (or ready and willing to blog) lacks empirical evidence. I'm very impressed with scienceblogs.com - read the surgeon/scientist "…
March 27, 2006
This Saturday, 1st April in the Royal Botanic Gardens from 1pm. We'll be at the lawn to the east of the Main Pond. Tigtog has some pictures of the location.
March 25, 2006
One of the less pleasant parts of my job is talking to students that I have caught plagiarizing assignments. All too often, rather than admit to copying they will tell me clumsy lies and blame somebody else. Which brings us to Ben Domenech. Instead of admitting to his obvious plagiarism he…
March 24, 2006
You have two 50g containers of cream. One is 10% fat, and the other 20% fat. You combine them. What is the percentage of fat in the mixture?
A. 10% of 50 is 5, 20% of 50 is 10. (10+5)/(50+50) is 15%. The answer is 15%, the arithmetic mean of 10% and 20%.
B. 14.1%, the geometric mean…
March 22, 2006
Last year Benny Peiser claimed that on a literature search he found 34 papers "reject or doubt" anthropgenic global warming. I posted the abstracts and it's very obvious that he misclassified most of the papers. Peiser left several comments on that post, but could not bring himself to admit that…
March 20, 2006
John Lott keeps trying to use sock puppets to scrub his wikipedia page of criticism. Unfortunately other wikipedia users undo his changes, he makes them again and he gets into an edit war. He's used his socks to try to alter the page many many times. (See round 1 round 2 round 3).
This…
March 19, 2006
Today is Malaria Action Day. Dunk Malaria are holding a Dunk Malariathon. coturnix is running a linkfest for malaria related posts.
My thanks to John Quiggin and Tara Smith for linking to my earlier post and extra thanks to everyone who donated money and doubled my $300 to help fight malaria.
March 16, 2006
Note for visitors from Daily Kos: 120,000 is an estimate of the
number of violent deaths. The total number of extra deaths as a result of the war is very roughly
200,000 once you include the increase in disease and accidents since
the invasion. This number is more likely to be too low than too…
March 15, 2006
Dunk Malaria is organizing a Malaria Action Day on March 19th, to raise awareness of malaria. The idea is that people net a basketball to symbolize the insecticide treated netting that is the best weapon against malaria. Good. Except that number 2 on their list of charities is the execrable…
March 10, 2006
Carl Zimmer has reviewed two books on Global Warming: Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers (I dissected some criticism of Flannery's book here) and Elizabeth Kolbert's Field Notes From a Catastrophe.