tlambert | April 23, 2003Some responses to Glenn Reynolds' post yesterday: Tbogg considers Reynolds to be washing his hands and changing the subject. Tom Spencer observes that it is dishonest of Reynolds to respond to criticism without providing a link to that criticism. Roger Ailes reckons that Reynolds is being unfair to Lott by calling him "disingenuous" for not mentioning Levitt's denial of the "rabidly antigun" charge. After all, Reynolds did not bother correcting the article and it unreasonable to expect Lott to have read the correction on Reynolds' weblog. However, it is reasonable to…
tlambert | April 22, 2003Kevin Drum comments on Lott's weighting scheme. He also links to a January posting which has this explanation from Lott explaining how he might have got a weight of 1/8 from his weighting procedure (my emphasis). Whether it is possible depends upon how finely you do the weighting. If you do something as simple as national weighting, you are right, it would not be likely. But if you are willing to put in the effort to break things down into enough categories it becomes quite likely. I just looked up some different numbers from 2000 to give you a rough idea.…
tlambert | April 22, 2003Glenn Reynolds finally gets around to blogging on the accusation in his article that Levitt is "rabidly antigun". Remarkably, Reynolds does not mention or link to any of the discussion about this that has occurred on many blogs.
tlambert | April 21, 2003 Last September Lott told Lindgren that he "weighted his respondents by demographic information taken from his main national study in More Guns, Less Crime"
On January 14 he provided more details: I did not weight the sample by household size but used the state level age, race, and sex data that I had used in the rest of my book. There where 36 categories by state. Lindgren hypotheses why you can get such small weights for some people and I think that this fine of a breakdown easily explains it. I don't remember who answered what after all these years, but suppose someone who fired a gun…
tlambert | April 20, 2003Roger Ailes comments on Reynolds and Kopel's failure to show any evidence in support of the "rabidly antigun" claim. Greg Beato also has some extensive comments. Tom Spencer has two comments, as does Atrios here and here.
tlambert | April 19, 2003Otis Dudley Duncan has written an excellent article on Lott and defensive gun use surveys. I'll quote from the conclusion, but you really should read the whole thing:
Investigators are obliged to tell the truth about what they take from the work of other investigators and to provide verifiable evidence and complete documentation for statements made in reports on their own research. They are responsible for telling the “whole truth” about it, to use the legal phraseology, and for enabling others to confirm or falsify their results. As far as his claim about the evidence on gun…
tlambert | April 17, 2003Ted Barlow thinks that Mac Diva overstates her case against Lott's views on non-gun issues. I agree with him. While it is relevant to note that Lott's research always seems to produce results supporting a right-wing agenda, in most of those issues he does not indulge in advocacy. You can't say that he thinks that woman's suffrage was detrimental because he produces a study purporting to show that it made the government bigger (something that Lott would consider bad). Lott might believe that giving women the vote had some benefit that outweighed any costs. In…
tlambert | April 17, 2003Max Sawicky links here, as does Brad Delong and Hesiod.
Meanwhile, in a post that seems to have drifted in from some alternate reality, the William Sjostrom take on the Kopel/Reynolds/Lott attacks on Levitt is that Brad Delong is a sleaze.
In a previous message Glenn Reynolds claimed to have taken Levitt's word that he wasn't rabidly anti-gun. In his blog it did not seem that Reynolds had taken Levitt's word, so I asked him to clarify his position. He wrote: I was quite clear in my InstaPundit post on this: I don't know Levitt. Someone who I…
tlambert | April 16, 2003Mac Diva is trying to figure out why Lott does the things he does. Atrios explains why he cares about Lott. Brad Delong says that I have "a very strong case". Matt Yglesias has some thoughtful comments on appropriate behaviour in this case. ArchPundit has one two posts.
On Monday Glenn Reynolds wrote: Kopel sent an update to the NRO piece some time ago stressing Levitt's denial of the charge. Although Lambert doesn't mention this, I imagine that he's aware of it. I don't know if it has appeared on their site yet or not.
It turns out that "some time ago" was Reynolds' special way of…
tlambert | April 15, 2003Kevin Drum has a nice summary on Lott's anonymous attack on Levitt. Kieran Healy tells what Lott's next step will be. Brian Linse thinks Reynolds and Kopel should offer some answers. Atrios links here. And Tom Spencer has two posts. First, he observes that Reynolds' cover up for Lott raises questions about Reynolds. Second, he is impressed by Lott: However, can you imagine the chutzpah on the part of Lott to quote an article in a book that is quoting himself as an unnamed source to bolster an argument he's advancing in the book? You've got to give it to Lott, he…
tlambert | April 14, 2003First, a recap and a time line on the Kopel/Lott/Reynolds attacks on Steve Levitt:
16 Aug 2001
Glenn Reynolds claims that the NAS panel is "stacked" with "ardent supporters of gun control", especially Levitt.
29 Aug 2001
Dave Kopel and Glenn Reynolds write an article in National Review Online where they claim that most of the people on the panel are anti-gun and that Levitt has been described as "rabidly antigun". They offer no evidence to support their attack on Levitt.
29 Aug 2001
Levitt emails Reynolds, denying the charge, pointing to this op-ed as evidence that he is not rabidly…
tlambert | April 12, 2003 You can read Steve Levitt's op-ed on pools and guns here. It is quite clear from the op-ed why he wrote it: he lost his son and he didn't want another parent to lose a child to a preventable accident. I am totally disgusted with Lott for accusing Levitt of exploiting the death of his child to cover his "rabidly anti-gun" views. I'm too angry to write any more.
tlambert | April 11, 2003I asked Steve Levitt about Lott's attack. He comments: I wrote that op-ed piece on swimming pools and guns almost a full year before it was published. Members of the U of C publicity department can attest to that. I wrote it at the tail end of the summer, so they suggested waiting until the beginning of the next summer to try to publish it, which I did. I had certainly never heard of any NRC panel at the time I wrote it. I wrote it because it is the truth and it is an important point
So Lott was wrong about the timing of when Levitt's op-ed was written. Lott either knew this or was…
tlambert | April 10, 2003Otis Dudley Duncan
This discussion is concerned with four topics: (1) Lott’s references to, remarks about, and discussions of DGU statistics originating in sample surveys or polls carried out by other investigators; (2) Lott’s claims about a survey he says he conducted in 1997; (3) Lott’s reports on a survey he conducted in 2002; (4) several matters that have proved to be distractions from the careful consideration of the foregoing. Section (5) presents my conclusions. They may be read at once by anyone who has followed closely the Internet exchanges about the Lott case.
Before proceeding, I…
tlambert | April 10, 2003Just so people don't have to take my word for the nature of Lott's attack on Levitt, here are Lott's exact words. On page 54: - Another panel member, Steve Levitt, an economist, has been described in media reports as being "rabidly anti-gun."[10]
On page 289:[10] Dave Kopel and Glenn Reynolds, ibid., 347. Levitt apparently tried to overcome this image by writing his first op-ed about a week before his name was publicly nominated for the panel. Given that panel members are supposed to not have strong views on the topic that they are studying, it was strange that…
tlambert | April 9, 2003I've been reading Lott's new book, The Bias against Guns. Chapter 3 is entitled "How the Government Works against Gun Ownership". The heart of the chapter is on pages 53--55, where he argues that the National Academy of Sciences stacks its panels against guns.
His first example is their panel on firearms research. He argues that the panel was set up "to examine only the negative side of guns". Lott writes: Rather than comparing how firearms facilitate both harm and self-defense, the panel was only asked to examine "firearm violence" or how "…
tlambert | April 8, 2003John Quiggin has written an article for the Australian Financial Review examining the role weblogs played in the John and Trent Lott affairs. Jim Henley has some interesting comments on gun issues including his assessment of Lott.
tlambert | April 8, 2003Lott has a long message at his website where he discusses Mary Rosh and argues that when he claimed that he had "not participated in the firearms discussion group nor in the apparent online newsgroup discussions", he was not lying: Another misunderstanding in the media is that I was lying as to whether I had ever participated in internet chat rooms. I have never made any general statement that I do not participate in such groups. And, obviously, I did participate under my own name for a substantial period of time. There are however two separate statements, one in an email to Glenn…