Blogs on Lottâs coding errors

skippy comments on Lott's "coding errors". Tom Spencer thinks that Lott's days are numbered. Mike Spenis has written off Lott.

Chris Lawrence agrees that there were coding errors but argues that is easy to make such errors. I agree that such errors are easy to make, but, he did it twice, and the errors seem to systematically favour his position. Another thing that strikes me when I read Ayres and Donohue's paper is that they report many regression results, some of which are favourable to the "more guns, less crime" thesis, but more of them are not. The Lott and Mustard paper and More Guns, Less Crime also report many regressions, all of them supporting Lott's thesis. It sure looks like that even when he doesn't have systematic errors in his data, Lott just reports the results that support his position.

More like this

This is a long post, so I'll start with two summaries. One sentence summary: It looks as if Lott might have been caught cooking his "more guns, less crime" data. One paragraph summary: Ian Ayres and John Donohue wrote a paper that found that, if anything, concealed carry laws lead…
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…
Several people have commented on the latest developments. Atrios has resolved that Lott is a liar and a fraud. Kevin Drum has his usual nice summary. Jesse Taylor isn't really interested because he believes that Lott has already been discredited. Julian Sanchez and Chris Lawrence are…
John Quiggin comments on the collateral damage the Lott affair has inflicted on Lott's allies and supporters. Chris Lawrence has an update to his earlier post. Tapped has a brief summary of the latest installment in the saga. Julian Sanchez and Kevin Drum mention Lott's response,…