Lott was on MSNBC's Buchanan & Press on May 26. From the transcript:
- PRESS:
- After that book came out, there was a person who showed up on the Internet by the name of Mary Rosh, who said you were the best professor she ever had in college. She praised the book in her review on the Internet. She said any critics of your book should slink away into a hole and hide. And it turns out this Mary Rosh is a total invention of yours.
Now, why should I believe anything you say in this book if you are lying to people on the Internet?
- LOTT:
- Well, first of all, not all of those were from me.
- PRESS:
- She doesn`t exist, does she?
- LOTT:
- I used a pseudonym in Internet discussions, in chat room discussions.
- PRESS:
- Doesn't that just destroy your credibility?
- LOTT:
- Well, nothing there was false, in the sense that everything I said about guns was correct. And even the other stuff was all based upon some type of truth. I originally used my own name in Internet discussions. But I would get phone calls from people who would be threatening and other types of things.
And, look, we all make silly mistakes from time to time. I admit that I did that.
So when "Mary Rosh" promoted Lott to a chaired professor:
"I had him for a class at the Wharton Business School where he was a chaired professor",
it wasn't a lie, but "based upon some type of truth". And when she wrote:
"There were a group of us students who would try to take any class that he taught. Lott finally had to tell us that it was best for us to try and take classes from other professors more to be exposed to other ways of teaching graduate material",
that was "based on some kind of truth" as well. And I'd really like to know the kind of "truth" that this:
I am 114 lbs. and 5'6".
and this:
Even if I am not wearing heels, I don't think that there are many men that I could outrun
were based on.
And some of Rosh's statements about guns were incontrovertibly false. For example,
These are not surveys for self defense as you claimed, but surveys involving any type of carrying guns for any reason (e.g., hunting, moving residences, etc.).
And the story about the threatening phone calls doesn't hold water, as I explained before.
More like this
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…
Lott's responses to Michelle Malkin's op-ed are in a fixed-width font, while my comments on his response are in italics like this. Lott's responses were downloaded on 25 April 2005.
Below is Malkin's op-ed with commentary by me (my comments are indented and in italics and start…
[Note: This is a copy of a document found at this link on John Lott's website on April 6, 2003. I have added critical commentary, written in italics like this. Tim Lambert ]
Statement on John Lott's Survey Work on Self-Defensive Uses of Guns
by David B. Mustard Monday 10 February 2003
Background…
I've done some more investigation in Lott's latest explanation for his Mary Rosh postings:
I originally used my own name but switched after receiving threatening and obnoxious telephone calls from other Internet posters.
The first group of Lott postings were made between 3 June…