tlambert | October 12, 2003 Benny Smith has replied to Andrew Ackerman's article that suggested that Benny Smith was really Michael Bellesiles. (My earlier comment is here.) Smith has a good argument against one of the pieces of evidence pointing to him being Bellesiles---he has turned up a website that has the new cover art for the new edition of Arming America. The fact that this wasn't available from the drafter or Amazon had pointed to Benny Smith being close to Bellesiles.
Now, there is something odd about Smith's responses to the questions about how he learned about the cover…
tlambert | October 11, 2003Lott has an article which purports to show that Rush Limbaugh was right when he claimed that Donovan McNabb was overrated because the media wanted to see a black quarterback do well.
Lott looked at whether media coverage was more favourable to black quarterbacks than to white quarterbacks and found that stories about black quarterbacks were slightly more likely to be positive (67% to 61%). He then did a multivariate analysis controlling for factors like the whether the quarterback's team won and finds that after doing this, black quarterbacks are 27 percentage points more…
tlambert | October 3, 2003 You have to scroll down towards the end of this monster posting. Zycher has proven to be profoundly careless with his facts in his post, which makes this comment of his rather self-referential:The modern art of blogging---of which you are one of the truly prominent practitioners---has many virtues, among them the stimulation of discussion and the ability to correct errors and set records straight quickly. But among those virtues one searches in vain for carefulness; the familiar trade offs are heavily weighted toward edginess and speed.
I can only hope…
tlambert | October 3, 2003 Tyler Cowen reacts to the calls from Mark Kleiman, Glenn Reynolds and Randy Barnett for a panel to investigate Lott's conduct: My first reaction is to suggest that we already have such a panel every time John, or anyone else, submits a manuscript to a refereed journal on the topic.
Cowen seems to believe that the purpose of the panel would be to investigate whether Lott was correct in his "More guns, Less Crime" research. There is already a panel examining that question. It is the National Academy of Sciences panel on firearms research. Lott mounted a…
tlambert | October 3, 2003 Randy Barnett adds his voice to those calling for the American Enterprise Institute to conduct an investigation into Lott's conduct. He also writes: Since Jim Lindgren's unsuccessful effort to verify some of Lott's claims from the criticisms of Tim Lambert, I have not defended Lott publicly in any way. Nor would I now rely on his empirical conclusions absent some outside examination of the sort that was eventually given the work of Michael Bellesiles.
Ralph Luker writesLott's sponsors, primarily the American Enterprise Institute, but also the…
tlambert | September 29, 2003 (All of my postings on the shootings at the Appalachian School of law are here.)
Lott has a [report of a conversation with Mikael Gross](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/cgi-bin/johnrlott.tripod.com/postsbyday…) on his blog. In The Bias Against Guns Lott claims that Gross pointed his gun at Peter Odighizuwa: Only two local newspapers (the Richmond Times Dispatch and the Charlotte Observer) mentioned that the students actually pointed their guns at the attacker.
So does Gross confirm that he pointed his gun at Odighizuwa? Nope. Does he confirm that Bridges pointed his…
tlambert | September 25, 2003 Mark Kleiman has posted an email from Michael Maltz with some comments on Lott and his research. An extract:
It seems that most of Lott's critics and supporters forgot about what I feel is the most damaging lie he told while hiding behind the skirts of his fictitious Internet persona Mary Rosh: s/he described himself as "a chaired professor" at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Had s/he forgotten that he was never even awarded as much as a stool? One can be disgusted by his unfairly lashing out at his critics while in drag, calling them liars who hide behind…
tlambert | September 23, 2003 In a review of The Bias Against Guns, Pat Buchanan claims that Kleck's survey found that 11 out of every 12 times citizens use their guns in self-defense, they merely brandish them or fire a warning shot.
and that this was "confirmed" by Lott: Brandishing a gun stops crime 95 percent of the time, Lott learned.
Buchanan doesn't seemed to have noticed that Lott's 95% brandishing number, far from confirming Kleck, contradicts Kleck's 11/12. Buchanan also got the number from Kleck wrong. Kleck found that 84% involved brandishing or a warning shot and…
tlambert | September 22, 2003 Paul Cella writes about Lott: My amateur and incomplete (and, if you insist, predisposed) sense is that Mr. Lott has roundly disarmed his often-strident critics with the scrupulousness of his research.
Fortunately, Wes Little sorts him out in comments and Cella ends up conceding: Alright, Wes: you win. I had altogether forgotten about Lott's shadiness when I posted the link. If I had remembered the scandal, I surely would have looked for someone else to adduce on guns. It is also unfortunate that the reviewer I link to failed to mention it.
Jesse…
tlambert | September 21, 2003 Alex Tabarrok has some more on the question of whether Iraqis were well armed while Saddam was in power. (My earlier comments are here.)
He points to a New York Times article that states: "Mr. Hussein, never one to tolerate competition, forbade private citizens to carry weapons, effectively outlawing the security industry.", and suggests that contradicts an earlier New York Times article that reported that guns were easy and legal to obtain in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Tabarrok concludes:Clearly, the New York Times is wrong. But where does the truth…
tlambert | September 19, 2003 Over at the History News Network, a die hard Bellesiles supporter who posts under the name "Benny Smith" has attacked James Lindgren for, get this, his "ill-fated attempt to defend" Lott. Here's Smith's version of what happened: After serious questions arose regarding a survey that Lott claimed to have done, Lindgren interviewed "at length" a man who claimed to have been interviewed by Lott for the survey. Lindgren pronounced him credible and the Washington Times in a follow-up article credited Lindgren when it said the matter of whether…
tlambert | September 16, 2003 ArchPundit writes:The simple question to Lott is why did he stop correcting for clustering in the observations. Hear the silence?
tlambert | September 15, 2003Alan Schussman has a thoughtful post on the issues of how scientists should treat their data and how it relates to Lott's conduct.
tlambert | September 14, 2003 Eric Helland and Alexander Taborrak have a new paper "Using Placebo Laws to Test More Guns, Less Crime : A Note". I commented on their paper back in May, but here is Lott's take (in full, 8/22/03 blog entry): A new research paper has an new important approach towards estimating statistical significance. Professors Eric Helland and Alex Tabarrok conclude that:
"the cross equation restrictions implied by the Lott-Mustard theory are strongly supported."
"Surprisingly, therefore, we conclude, that there is considerable support for the…
tlambert | September 14, 2003It has now been one year since I asked him for evidence that he had conducted a survey. The original email is here.
tlambert | September 13, 2003 Andrew Chamberlain observes "Once again, economist John Lott has been busted for lying."
Julian Sanchez writes about Lott: "It's long past time for people who care about gun rights to cut this albatross from our necks."
William Quick says that "it doesn't look good for Lott at the moment", but asks for a simple explanation. I recommend Kevin Drum's summary.
tlambert | September 12, 2003 Kevin Drum has an excellent summary of Lott's cheating with his models and his attempt at a coverup. He concludes that Lott should be fired forthwith. Niraj agrees, as Tom Spencer.
Atrios says that Lott's work on the Florida election is even more dishonest than his "More Guns, Less Crime" work.
skippy is amused by Lott's apparent use of time travel. Tapped and buzzflash link here and send me many visitors.
Glenn Reynolds is wavering---he now says that he would quite reluctant to rely on Lott's work.
tlambert | September 10, 2003 Suppose you had a pair of dice and were wondering if they were fair. The average number you will get on a pair of fair dice is seven, so one way you could check your dice is to roll them a few times and look at the average of the results. Trouble is, you aren't likely to get an average of exactly seven. Suppose you get an average of 9. Are the dice fair? Well, that depends on how many times you rolled them.
I rolled\* a pair of dice twice and averaged the results. I repeated the experiment 1000 times and plotted all the averages. 95%…
tlambert | September 8, 2003 On his blog, Lott offers an excuse for the fact that in his book and on his blog he had not mentioned that Ted Besen contradicts Bridges' claim to have used a gun to disarm Odighizuwa:I have gotten an e-mail asking about the role that Ted Besen played in stopping the Appalachian Law School attack during January 2002. While I had seen and referenced a story by Rick Montgomery, a reporter for the Kansas City Star, I hadn't read down to the last couple hundred words of the 1,400 word piece that he drafted in March 2002. Montgomery's piece contains a…
tlambert | September 7, 2003The Federalist Society is sending Lott on a speaking tour. They asked Saul Cornell to debate Lott. This is what he sent them: Lott has been accused of research fraud and has lied on a host of other topics related to his research, including his participation in Internet discussions under a false female identity (cyber-cross dressing---very un-Federalist Society if you ask me---can you imagine Publius in drag?) I would gladly debate with any serious academic on this or other topics, but I have a general rule about not sharing the stage with frauds. In fact no serious scholar would…