Stephen Dubner reports that Freakonomics is the 7th best-selling book for 2005. According to Nielsen BookScan, it is has sold 584,000 copies so far this year.
Freakonomics discusses the survey that Lott claims to have conducted in 1997, but that he appears to have fabricated. Lott says that eight Chicago university students made the phone calls for him. So why hasn't one of these students read Freakonomics and come forward to prove that Lott conducted a survey? You would think that students (or former students) from Chicago would be particularly likely to have read the book since Levitt is a professor there.
More like this
Jim Lindgren has two posts about John Lott. First, on Lott's lawsuit against Levitt he concludes:
I think that Freakonomics is misleading in its juxtaposition of different studies, a juxtaposition that might bring one to conclude that the reason that the main More Guns, Less Crime research was not…
The LA Times publishes Jon Wiener on Lott's lawsuit:
But Lott is not suing those who have said some of his pro-gun research was "invented," "faked" or "cooked." The lawsuit turns on the definition of "replicate," from the "Freakonomics" sentence about how other scholars have tried and failed to "…
When we last visited Lott's lawsuit against Levitt, Lott was asking the judge to reconsider the dismissal of his case against Freakonomics.
Well, the judge denied this, so now Lott wants to amend his complaint. The new complaint adds is now about another sentence in Freakonomics as well:
Then…
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…
"reakonomics discusses the survey that Lott claims to have conducted in 1997, but that he appears to have fabricated."
Does the book talk about the controversy?
Your wording is kind of ambiguous. Appears to whom? The author or you? I agree it's a bogus survey, but if the book doesn't mention the controversy no one would call in. Just asking.
Yes, the book discusses the controversy over whether the survey was ever conducted.