Tim Lambert
tlambert
Posts by this author
October 29, 2003
Kevin Connors admits that he has been "quite remiss in following the efforts to debunk Prof. Lott's work", but unfamiliarity with the case isn't going to stop him from having an opinion on the matter. Connors takes issue with Brian Linse's description of Lott's work as fraudulent…
October 25, 2003
Michael Maltz has sent me some comments on the severe problems data Lott used for his "More Guns, Less Crime" thesis. Note that this is a different set of problems to the coding errors that Lott has been dodging recently.
Also of interest is Lott's response to the severe problems---…
October 24, 2003
by Michael Maltz
Anyone who has looked closely at the data used by John Lott in coming up with his “findings” in More Guns, Less Crime (MGLC) would come to the same conclusion, MGLC = GIGO. First, the data are so full of holes as to be unusable for the analyses he conducted. Second, Lott badly…
October 16, 2003
On August 18, in his interview with Chris Mooney, when he was asked if there were coding errors, Lott replied:
There are a couple minor errors, the data is on, the data is available for anybody to look at, anybody can go and download the data, I've made it so that people can go…
October 15, 2003
[Note: This was an attachement to a Nov 17 posting to firearmsregprof on Nov 17. My comments are in italics like this. TL]
by David B. Mustard
I take issue with two points of Jim Lindgren?s representation of my statements about John Lott?s 1997 survey, as posted on instapundit.com.
Claim…
October 15, 2003
Chris Mooney has a couple of comments on Lott's response to his article.
You can also read comments from Nick Confessore on Tapped and Atrios.
Update: And Randy Barnett repeats his call for an independent panel to assess the merits of this controversy.
October 14, 2003
Lott has posted some criticism of Chris Mooney's article.
Let's see how many errors he has successfully identified:
1) Paraphrasing claim from the Chronicle of Higher Education stating that the "coding errors had not been reviewed by a third party." I was never asked by the…
October 14, 2003
Mark Kleiman writes:
What seems to me even more striking, though Mooney doesn't mention it, is the difference in the way the two are treated in the mainstream press: while no news article about Bellesiles could fail to mention the controversy about Arming America, Lott---who made up an on-line…
October 13, 2003
Mother Jones has posted Chris Mooney's interview with Lott. Definitely worth reading. First read Mooney's commentry and follow the links to the transcripts.
October 13, 2003
Chris Mooney has published an article on Lott in Mother Jones. The whole article is well worth reading, but the way that Lott kept changing his story about the coding errors is particularly interesting:
In the face of this evidence, how can Lott continue to claim the coding errors…
October 12, 2003
Benny Smith has replied to Andrew Ackerman's article that suggested that Benny Smith was really Michael Bellesiles. (My earlier comment is here.) Smith has a good argument against one of the pieces of evidence pointing to him being Bellesiles---he has turned up a website that has…
October 11, 2003
Lott has an article which purports to show that Rush Limbaugh was right when he claimed that Donovan McNabb was overrated because the media wanted to see a black quarterback do well.
Lott looked at whether media coverage was more favourable to black quarterbacks than to white quarterbacks and…
October 3, 2003
You have to scroll down towards the end of this monster posting. Zycher has proven to be profoundly careless with his facts in his post, which makes this comment of his rather self-referential:
The modern art of blogging---of which you are one of the truly prominent practitioners---has…
October 3, 2003
Tyler Cowen reacts to the calls from Mark Kleiman, Glenn Reynolds and Randy Barnett for a panel to investigate Lott's conduct:
My first reaction is to suggest that we already have such a panel every time John, or anyone else, submits a manuscript to a refereed journal on the…
October 3, 2003
Randy Barnett adds his voice to those calling for the American Enterprise Institute to conduct an investigation into Lott's conduct. He also writes:
Since Jim Lindgren's unsuccessful effort to verify some of Lott's claims from the criticisms of Tim Lambert, I have not defended…
September 29, 2003
(All of my postings on the shootings at the Appalachian School of law are here.)
Lott has a [report of a conversation with Mikael Gross](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/cgi-bin/johnrlott.tripod.com/postsbyday…) on his blog. In The Bias Against Guns Lott claims that Gross pointed his…
September 25, 2003
Mark Kleiman has posted an email from Michael Maltz with some comments on Lott and his research. An extract:
It seems that most of Lott's critics and supporters forgot about what I feel is the most damaging lie he told while hiding behind the skirts of his fictitious Internet persona…
September 23, 2003
In a review of The Bias Against Guns, Pat Buchanan claims that Kleck's survey found that
11 out of every 12 times citizens use their guns in self-defense, they merely brandish them or fire a warning shot.
and that this was "confirmed" by Lott:
Brandishing a gun stops crime 95…
September 22, 2003
Paul Cella writes about Lott:
My amateur and incomplete (and, if you insist, predisposed) sense is that Mr. Lott has roundly disarmed his often-strident critics with the scrupulousness of his research.
Fortunately, Wes Little sorts him out in comments and Cella ends up conceding…
September 21, 2003
Alex Tabarrok has some more on the question of whether Iraqis were well armed while Saddam was in power. (My earlier comments are here.)
He points to a New York Times article that states: "Mr. Hussein, never one to tolerate competition, forbade private citizens to carry…
September 19, 2003
Over at the History News Network, a die hard Bellesiles supporter who posts under the name "Benny Smith" has attacked James Lindgren for, get this, his "ill-fated attempt to defend" Lott. Here's Smith's version of what happened:
After serious questions arose regarding a…
September 16, 2003
ArchPundit writes:
The simple question to Lott is why did he stop correcting for clustering in the observations. Hear the silence?
September 15, 2003
Alan Schussman has a thoughtful post on the issues of how scientists should treat their data and how it relates to Lott's conduct.
September 14, 2003
Eric Helland and Alexander Taborrak have a new paper "Using Placebo Laws to Test More Guns, Less Crime : A Note". I commented on their paper back in May, but here is Lott's take (in full, 8/22/03 blog entry):
A new research paper has an new important approach towards…
September 14, 2003
It has now been one year since I asked him for evidence that he had conducted a survey. The original email is here.
September 13, 2003
Andrew Chamberlain observes "Once again, economist John Lott has been busted for lying."
Julian Sanchez writes about Lott: "It's long past time for people who care about gun rights to cut this albatross from our necks."
William Quick says that "it doesn't look good for Lott at the moment…
September 12, 2003
Kevin Drum has an excellent summary of Lott's cheating with his models and his attempt at a coverup. He concludes that Lott should be fired forthwith. Niraj agrees, as Tom Spencer.
Atrios says that Lott's work on the Florida election is even more dishonest than his "More Guns…
September 10, 2003
Suppose you had a pair of dice and were wondering if they were fair. The average number you will get on a pair of fair dice is seven, so one way you could check your dice is to roll them a few times and look at the average of the results. Trouble is, you aren't likely to…
September 8, 2003
On his blog, Lott offers an excuse for the fact that in his book and on his blog he had not mentioned that Ted Besen contradicts Bridges' claim to have used a gun to disarm Odighizuwa:
I have gotten an e-mail asking about the role that Ted Besen played in stopping the Appalachian Law…
September 7, 2003
The Federalist Society is sending Lott on a speaking tour. They asked Saul Cornell to debate Lott. This is what he sent them:
Lott has been accused of research fraud and has lied on a host of other topics related to his research, including his participation in Internet discussions under…