tlambert | March 22, 2003Laura Billings has a article in the St Paul Pioneer Press where she argues that Lott has "been largely discredited as a reliable source of information on gun policy". In the Albuquerque Alibi Steven Robert Allen lambasts both Lott and Bellesiles as frauds.
tlambert | March 18, 2003 ArchPundit has a post and another post on Lott's new survey. He argues that Lott has replicated his previous survey---by replicating a worthless survey with another worthless survey.
tlambert | March 13, 2003Lott's new book has been published. This means that I can disclose the results of his 2002 survey. In that survey, 7 people said that they had used a gun for self defence. Of those 7 people, only one reported firing the gun (in fact, that person reported wounding the attacker). This means that a 95% confidence interval for the percentage firing is 3%–50% (calculated using Wilson's method). This confirms what I suggested earlier---the number of defensive gun users in Lott's 2002 survey is far too small for this survey to give any useful information about…
tlambert | March 8, 2003David Mustard has made a statement giving his recollections about when Lott told him about the survey: I do not remember the first time John Lott and I talked about the survey. At the time there was nothing exceptional about the survey for me to associate with it and help me remember when I first learned about it.
I believe it likely that John informed me of the completed survey in 1997. I think it highly probable that John told me he had completed the survey at the time of my talk at the Academics for the Second Amendment conference in Washington, DC in November 1998.
I know beyond a…
tlambert | March 2, 2003Lott makes it into the Sunday comics. (Thanks to Julian Sanchez for the link.)
tlambert | March 2, 2003Patti Thorn investigates how many other fake reviews there are at Amazon.com.
tlambert | March 1, 2003Glenn Reynolds has an update with comments from Dan Polsby who writes: Numerous of Lott's opponents (John Donohue, Ian Ayres, Phil Cook, Jens Ludwig, and many others) use the Lott-Mustard numbers, subsequently updated by Lott, in their work because they have to
However, because of Lott's dishonesty, it will now be necessary to check all of Lott's data for accuracy.
tlambert | February 28, 2003Glenn Reynolds links to a Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial that is very critical of Lott.
tlambert | February 27, 2003I came across this quote from Lott in a May 28, 1999 article by Jeff Jacoby: "There are 15 national surveys that have been conducted by academics as well as polling organizations like the Los Angeles Times and Gallup, and their average estimate indicates that people use guns defensively well over two million times each year. My own survey put the defensive uses at about 2.1 million in 1997."
I thought that this could potentially help Lott. If the source for the quote was something that Lott wrote before Duncan raised questions about the 98% statistic in…
tlambert | February 25, 2003Henry Farrell observes that while Joyce Lee Malcolm's Reason article about Bellesiles describes several cases of misconduct other than Bellesiles, it does not mention Lott. However, this article is from the print edition, so it is likely to have been written before the Lott affair became public.
Dick Dahl has a story about the new book Evaluating Gun Policy. Meanwhile, Handgun-Free America are going to protest against Lott at the AEI Annual Dinner.
tlambert | February 25, 2003BuzzFlash has an interesting story which details some more examples of apparent dishonesty by Lott.
I was able to check one of them myself: Mary Rosh's defence of Lott's statement that the "the worst thing people can expect from dioxin is a bad rash". Rosh argues that this isn't Lott's claim, but that of Michael Fumento, whose book Lott was reviewing. However, if you read Lott's review, it is quite clear that he makes the claim his own. And if you read Fumento's book, you will also see that Lott exaggerates Fumento's position. Fumento argues (convincingly,…
tlambert | February 25, 2003compiled by Otis Dudley Duncan and Tim Lambert revised 26 Feb 2003 by Tim Lambert
This pages documents direct and indirect references Lott has made to a survey he claims to have carried out in 1997. Further analysis is here, and the latest update is here.The information of over 2 million defensive uses and 98 percent is based upon survey evidence that I have put together involving a large nationwide telephone survey conducted over a three month period during 1997. Letter from John Lott to Otis Dudley Duncan, dated May 13, 1999.
There are 15…
tlambert | February 25, 2003The ad that Lott said was placed in the December University of Chicago Magazine has appeared in the February 2003 issue: (The delay was apparently caused by a mix up.) Attempting to reach two people who worked on and helped coordinate others on a survey given by John Lott while they were undergraduates at the University during the beginning of 1997. Some questions about verifying the survey need to be answered. Please call 202.862.XXXX.
(I've replaced part of the number with Xs---if you are one of the two students that Lott seeks, email me and I will send you the number.)
tlambert | February 23, 2003Archpundit and Tom Spencer comment on Lott's fudged figure.
Costa Tsiokas discusses Lott's integrity.
tlambert | February 23, 2003Kevin Drum observes that even an 11-year-old kid seems to understand the problem of having too small a sample size in a poll. The Sunday paper here printed a supplement giving property auction clearance rates by suburb. Except, of course, for those suburbs where there had been less than 20 auctions, where it printed "nsr" (not statistically reliable). An 11-year-old gets it, the Sunday paper gets it, why doesn't Lott?
tlambert | February 22, 2003Atrios and Tom Spencer link to the Rob Levine article I mentioned a few days ago. Tom also writes: "Many are saying that it's probably only a matter of time before [Lott] loses his position at the American Enterprise Institute."
tlambert | February 22, 2003John Quiggin concludes that "with a high degree of confidence that no survey was ever undertaken", but suggests that declining ethical standards at the American Enterprise Institute mean that Lott will keep his job for now.
tlambert | February 21, 2003No new developments in the Lott case today. This is bad news for Lott. The Chicago Tribune story was published a week ago. If Lott had a dozen students doing interviews for a month in 1997, you would expect them to have told their friends about what they were doing. If each interviewer told three different friends about it, we have a pool of about 50 people who could tell us about the survey or put us in contact with someone who could. I would guess that roughly one third of these, about 16 people, would still be in the Chicago region. The Chicago Tribune claims to…