Tim Lambert
tlambert
Posts by this author
If you are interested in the question of whether Lott's claim that passing concealed carry laws reduce crime, you might want to read this article, which reports that a new book, Evaluating Gun Policy will be published in February contesting Lott's claim. The book is partly based on the…
From: John Lott Sent: 1/26/03 1:44 PM Subject: Response to Lindgren's "Lott's Tax Arguments" Response to Lindgren's "Lott's Tax Arguments"
My wife, who took care of our taxes, has a discussion below about how the forms were completed. The main point is that all payments to research assistants…
Julian Sanchez is on the case again. This time he has a bit more detail from Mustard. The key point is that Mustard is "fairly confident" that Lott told him in 1997 that he had done a survey. This suggests that Lott didn't invent the survey in 1999 to explain his 98% figure. Well,…
From: John Lott Sent: Saturday, January 25, 2003 2:49 PM Please post
Claims by archpundit (apparently reflecting similar claims made in other places):
Lott claims his new survey will solve the problems, but that assumes he oversamples DGU's. If he doesn't, his finding will be as pointless as the…
Atrios has a disturbing report on David Gross. He is an extremely active pro-gun activist and was involved in a dirty trick that stole the name of a pro-control organization. Ouch. Well, I may start getting many more emails from Nigeria, but I'm still inclined to believe him.…
Robert Stacey McCain has a disgraceful whitewash of the affair in the Washington Times. The most important thing about this affair has always been whether Lott's 98% brandishing claim is true. By any objective reading of the existing evidence it is not. On the one hand we have nine…
Bloggers just can't get enough of Mary Rosh. We have Andrew Conway, Tim Dunlop and Jane Finch. G. Beato even has a picture of Mary.
Tom Spencer comments on Glenn Reynolds curious reluctance to mention Mary Rosh, apparently because it is not "actual news". Well, actual people have changed their minds about Lott because of his Mary Rosh deception and the associated lying. One of them is John Quiggin. Yesterday…
And, from the surely-it-can't-get-any-weirder department: After John Lott made people promise not to reveal the questions in his new survey, Mary Rosh posted the questions from the new survey to Usenet. I'm imagining it went something like this:
Lott:
Nasty tricksy bloggers. We hates them, we…
Ok, so what about this witness being a pro-gun activist? Well, he made it perfectly clear to me that he was strongly pro-gun and greatly admired John Lott in the long message that was sent to firearmsregprof. I should have mentioned it that day, but I knew all of the…
Julian Sanchez drops another bombshell: the person who came forward saying that he believed that he had been surveyed is a pro-gun activist. Julian's revelations prompted John Quiggin to change his mind---he thinks Lott's employer should fire him.
Kevin Drum suggests that the large scale of the Lott/Rosh deception suggests that Lott maybe could have carried off a conspiracy with this witness. Sorry, but I still don't buy it. Lott's a liar, but he's a clumsy one. He could have saved himself most of the embarrassment of this Mary…
Well, after yesterday's revelations, blogspace seems to be split. On the one hand, we have Clayton Cramer, Steve Verdon, Jane Galt, Glenn Reynolds and Marie Gryphon who think Lott has been exonerated. On the other hand Kevin Drum and Tom Spencer are not yet convinced. On…
Oh, and in amusing side note, Julian Sanchez uncovered evidence that determined Lott defender Mary Rosh is actually John Lott, and Lott actually confessed. Atrios, Roger Ailes, Kevin Drum and Tom Spencer also seem amused. I've had some discussions with "Mary" on Usenet. Her argument style is…
Tim Lambert's questions:
Why did Lott repeatedly make false claims that the 98% figure came from other studies and from Kleck?
Even Lott cannot possibly be sure that the correct result of his survey was 98% since there is no way to check his calculations. Why did he repeat the figure…
If you don't know who Mary Rosh is, you might want to read "The Mystery of Mary Rosh". Also of interest might be the blog post that unmasked Mary, and the latest Mary Rosh news.
[Editor's note: Most of these postings were made to Usenet. Some were made to comment sections on blogs, two are…
Julian Sanchez posts some comments from someone who believes he was surveyed by Lott. Lott is in error when he states that there were no other gun use surveys at that time, but once these have been eliminated, we can regard it as established that Lott conducted a survey in 1997.
James…
[This is an email sent to John Lott that Lott posted to the firearmsregprof mailing list on January 20, 2003.]
I believe that in my emails to you and in my conversation with James Lindgren, I have stimulated just about all of my memories and impressions that I'm going to have concerning the survey…
From: John Lott Sent: Monday, January 20, 2003 1:58 PM To: Eugene Volokh [Critical Commentary by Tim Lambert. This is a copy of a January 20 email by Lott to the firearmsregprof list. My comments appear in italics like this.]
Response to Lindgren's January 17th posting:
Lindgren's role in…
If you haven't looked at the new section 4 in Lindgren's report, you should.
In his latest response Lott asks:
"There is also a question as to why people have waited so long to ask for this additional information when people have known about the lost data for years."
A few…
Steve Verdon has responded to my critique of More Guns, Less Crime.
Verdon starts by claiming that Lott's argument doesn't depend on their being more guns or less crime. He argues that you just need "more people carrying (concealed) existing guns legally" and that Lott found a…
Lindgren has released a new version of his report. It's long, but it's an absolute must read. If you've read the earlier version, you can skip to section 4 to read Lindgren's description of how Lott is trying to change his story.
The disgraceful way that Lott has behaved towards Lindgren…
Julian Sanchez finds evidence that Lott lost data because of a computer crash. I'm afraid that he hasn't discovered anything new---his time would have been better spent reading Lindgren's report:
"I talked with one of Lott's co-authors on another paper, Bill Landes, and received emails…
Otis Dudley Duncan has sent me these comments, which draw attention to a key point that almost all bloggers have missed:
"There are two distinct issues in this case.
Lott repeatedly made erroneous statements about the findings of other researchers. None of the national surveys that he cited…
Jim Henley gets another email from Lott. It's not fair!
Roger Ailes asks "how reliable is a self-reporting survey of 'defensive gun use' in the first place?". You're opening a real can of worms here, Roger. Survey estimates of the frequency of defensive gun use range from 80,000 (NCVS 87-92) to…
Steve Verdon comments on the Ayres and Donahue study I cited yesterday. Unfortunately he doesn't seem to have understood what their conclusions were. Try reading the abstract, Steve:
"Estimating more statistically preferred disaggregated models on more complete county data, we show…
I want to comment further on the email Lott sent to some bloggers. Lott states that he has been responsive and implies that he was somehow ambushed on this issue.
Duncan first asked Lott for evidence for his survey last June. Lott did not respond. I sent him the first version of my…
Mark Kleiman has an insightful post that is definitely worth reading. Mark observes that even though Lott's work on concealed carry laws does not rely on his alleged survey, destroying his credibility means that people cannot trust the results of his concealed carry laws.…
Jim Henley has an excellent blog roundup with thoughtful comments and even ratings.
Julian Sanchez has an update where he includes a comment from an economic researcher that repeats what I wrote below: if his new survey only has 13 defensive gun uses, then this sample is far too small to…
In Lott's latest response, he changes his story again. He originally told Lindgren that hadn't discussed the survey with anyone at the time. Now he has recalled the name of an economist he discussed it with at the time. Unfortunately, when Julian Sanchez contacted this…