James Lindgren makes some interesting points in the comment section to this Jane Galt post. First, he comments on this Lott claim about his tax returns:
As to deducting these costs on my income taxes, my 1997 tax form, which I have shared with many others, shows that $8,750 was deducted for research assistants (the heading was under "legal and professional services"). We do not keep the supporting documents past the three years required by the IRS and the $8,750 does include the expenses for other projects. On the other hand, I am sure that I did not keep track of all of my expenditures so the $8,750 is a sizeable underestimate of what I spent.
Lindgren observes that:
John Lott implies that his 1997 tax returns support his claims of having done the 1997 survey. They do not. I have not opened his main return (since no one has suggested that it has any relevant information). I did look at Lott's 1997 Business expense schedule and there are no reimbursements for phone calls listed. Some commentators have also implied that the return shows payments of wages to research assts, which it does not, nor should it for the 1997 survey because Lott says that they were unpaid volunteers. Of course, Lott might have forgotten about the supposed phone research charges when he filed his return, but there are none listed, which tends to undercut his claim to have done the 1997 survey rather than support it. The return does support Lott's contention that he spends large amounts of his own money on business travel, computer expenses, journal subscriptions, etc., so it is not hard to believe that he would be willing to fund a large project himself. But there is no evidence in the business deduction schedule on his 1997 return that he did the 1997 survey unless the expenses are mislabeled.As to his business tax schedule, John Lott just posted to a discussion list that amounts he paid research assts in 1997 were listed on his schedule C under "Legal and professional services." Of course, research assts should have been paid under "wages," which lists no deduction, not "Legal and professional services," which is for the professional services of firms and independent contractors like lawyers, book agents, and brokers.
But this is a moot point since he has made clear that he did not pay his volunteers on his 1997 survey.
Second, he hoses down the criticism of Lott over the IRB issue. As I mentioned yesterday, the IRB rules are routinely ignored at U of Chicago Law, so folks should not make a big deal about it.
Glenn Reynolds has a long post on the Lott affair. He attempts to frame things so that only question that matters is whether Lott did a survey or not. He wants to completely ignore the important question of whether Lott's 98% figure is correct because he is "not qualified to judge the statistical merit of this stuff". But you don't need a mathematics degree to realize that if you don't have the data to support your claims you should withdraw them. And as for the the question of sample size, why not listen to what Lindgren says?
Unless John Lott can come up with a sensible explanation for why his rates could possibly be justified with only a 2,424 person sample, it is my opinion that Lott should withdraw the 98% figure as probably erroneous and, in any event, too unreliable to form the basis of an estimated rate. Perhaps he has an explanation that doesn't appear yet. If not, withdrawing the 98% figure in some appropriate way would be a simple matter of good social science.
Glenn then complains that many are trying to make this into a Bellesiles-payback case. Who? Who are these people? I've tried to read and link to every bit of coverage of this in blogspace and maybe it's been too subtle for me, but I just don't know who he is talking about.
If we must have a Bellesiles analogy here's one. Suppose that Bellesiles had been claiming that only 2% of early American households had guns based on a random sample of 25 inventories. Suppose further that he had lost all the data and records supporting his claim and that there was no record of him even having visited the places where the records were stored. Then, someone (who happens to have been a director of a gun control advocacy group) comes forward to confirm that Bellesiles had indeed visited one of the places where the inventories were stored. Would Glenn have said "Case closed" and moved on?
Glenn also seems to have missed something very important about the Mary Rosh thing: Lott was caught making a blatant lie:
"I have not participated in the firearms discussion group nor in the apparent online newsgroup discussions"
Greg Beato also has some more comments about the significance of Mary for Glenn.