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How to be a Lott apologist: don't bother looking at the evidence

By tlambert on October 29, 2003.

Kevin Connors admits that he has been "quite remiss in following the efforts to debunk Prof. Lott's work", but unfamiliarity with the case isn't going to stop him from having an opinion on the matter. Connors takes issue with Brian Linse's description of Lott's work as fraudulent:

simply because a theory is flawed, that constitutes no grounds for labeling it fraudulent.

If Connors had been following the case against Lott he would know that it isn't just that his work is flawed (that was shown long ago) but that it is dishonest. After correcting his coding errors made his "More Guns, Less Crime" result go away, Lott changed the way he did the calculation to bring his results back. And when I asked him for an explanation, he changed it again and tried to pretend that it had never been changed.

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