I asked Ben Horwich, the president of volume 55 of the Stanford Law Review to comment on Lott's latest complaints.phpa>. He writes:
- I did not categorically promise Lott that we'd run a verbatim statement by Plassmann and Whitley. I did express my interest in working with them to clear up the confusion. I think that's the crux of the misunderstanding.
- The statement that did run was prepared in consultation with Plassmann and Whitley; indeed, they provided the original draft. Of course, it's modified a great deal from that version, but I wanted to print something that I stood behind 100%.
- Since the whole purpose of the statement was to clear up confusion and vindicate Plassmann and Whitley's motives in the whole thing, it didn't even make much sense to have it come from them alone. So whatever we ran, for it to be effective, it had to come from the Editors; and if it was to come from the Editors, then it had to be something we could sign on to. Hence it's not the exact piece they'd have run if they could, but it seems like small change.
If you compare the Plassmann and Whitley statement with the one from the Stanford Law Review, there do not seem to be any really important changes---about the only thing is the Stanford Law Review editors do not accept Plassmann and Whitley's charge the editors "violated an agreement". I think the editors were quite right to reject the charge. The minor editorial correction that they made is hardly a substantive change.
It is ironic that Lott piously complains that
I don't think that it looks very good for two senior academics to lash out at young people like this, especially when the attacks on them are unjustified.
while he repeatedly accuses the law students who edit the Stanford Law Review of breaking promises and lying (when they deny they were pressured by Donohue).
He also writes:
Florenz and Whitley are being painted as being so desperate for a publication that they would put their names on a flawed paper.
However, Plassmann and Whitley have put their names on a flawed paper. As Ayres and Donohue showed, the paper contains table after table and graph after graph based on miscoded data. And, instead of correcting the problem, or even admitting that it exists, they have issued a statement about the relatively trivial matter of Lott's dispute with the Stanford Law Review,