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Lott in NY Times

By tlambert on January 25, 2006.

Kevin Drum is is dismayed that theNew York Times has published an op-ed by John Lott:

I note that the New York Times has published a piece by John Lott today and I just have to ask: what is Lott doing writing op-eds for them? The man is a fraud and the Times demeans itself by allowing him space on their pages.

Lott says that he conducted a multivariate statistical analysis of the ABA rankings of judicial nominees and like all of Lott's other statistical analyses the results were favourable for Republicans -- Lott "found" that the ABA was biased against Republicans. For all I know, they might be, but given Lott's history of cooking results it would be unwise to give any weight at al to his claim.

In other Lott news he has used his sockpuppet army in a futile attempt to, yet yet again, remove all criticism from his wikipedia page. As a result, the page is now semi-protected.

Update: Media matters has more. It seems that this isn't a new study but dates from 2004. Also Lott found that the ABA gave lower ratings to Democratic District Court nominees, but decided that didn't count because obviously they were just doing so to hide the high ratings for Democratic Circuit Court nominees. Hat tip: Mark from Section 15.

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Has he published his data and complete analysis? I couldn't find any on his website, or SSRN's website. If he does, I'm sure Tim'll pour over it and it'll be debunked in no time. All the more reason for him not to publish.