tlambert | February 19, 2003Rob Levine has a very critical article on Lott at citypages.com.
Here is the story behind the removal of Rosh's review of More Guns, Less Crime from Amazon.
tlambert | February 19, 2003Over at the History News Network, Clayton Cramer has a post where he comments on the parallels or lack of same between the Lott and Bellesiles affairs:
1. There were legitimate questions raised about the 1997 survey, most notably by Tim Lambert. Proving that the survey didn't take place is impossible, unlike Bellesiles' problems, which often involved documents that were easy to find.
It's also easy to find out what "national surveys" and Gary Kleck's study say. Lott's claims here are wrong and he won't even admit to making them.
2. Lott has managed to scrape together…
tlambert | February 17, 2003General Christian has a few, slightly sarcastic, comments about John and Mary.
tlambert | February 17, 2003 Some commentators have been saying that the 98% is the only dodgy thing Lott has done. Actually there are plenty more. For another example, look at how he fudged a graph in More Guns, Less Crime.
tlambert | February 17, 2003Atrios points us to a Mary Rosh posting at freerepublic.com where she urges folks to rig the download counters at the Social Science Research Network by downloading a Lott paper as frequently as possible.
tlambert | February 16, 2003A couple of weeks ago I described how Lott used his Mary Rosh sock puppet to blame the New York Post for the fact that an article he wrote omitted to mention the fact that the students who captured a school shooter were police officers.
A couple of months later, however, in Lott drafted his article again, without mentioning that the students were police officers. So we have proof not only that the Post was not to blame for the omission, but that the omission was quite deliberate and not accidental.
tlambert | February 16, 2003Ron Grossman has a story about Lott and his survey in the Chicago Tribune. I have three comments on the story:
This is the first newspaper article that mentions that Lott is looking for the students who conducted his survey and it's in a Chicago newspaper. You would expect that some of the students who conducted the survey would still be in Chicago and hence likely to see the article. Also, with two million readers, you would expect about twenty of them to have participated in the survey. If nobody comes forward after this article, then that is…
tlambert | February 14, 2003Roger Ailes makes an good point---now that Lott's mystery survey is getting wide publicity, why haven't any of the students who allegedly did the interviews come forward?
Archpundit points to a Valentine poem in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Kieran Healy has a Valentine poem too.
tlambert | February 14, 2003Another letter has been sent to the Washington Post, and by an amazing coincidence makes the same error about the Post article as the previous ones:
A column appearing in the Post yesterday (Feb. 11, "Fabricated Fan and Many Doubts") implies that economist John Lott made up the claim that a computer malfunction destroyed data from his research on gun control. At the time Lott was engaged in this research, we were colleagues at the University of Chicago Law School. I clearly recall John relating the computer data-loss incident to me then---many years before the current controversy…
tlambert | February 13, 2003In response to this story in the Washington Post, Lott has apparently orchestrated a letter writing campaign. Eugene Volokh has posted the four letters. Julian Sanchez points out that all four letters make the same incorrect claim: that the Washington Post is questioning whether Lott had a disk crash. In fact, the article is questioning whether Lott lost his survey in the crash.
In his letter, John Whitley also makes a couple more errors:
I am not an expert on the Dr. Bellesiles case, but my understanding is that there was little or no contemporaneous corroborating…
tlambert | February 12, 2003Lott's wife, Gertrud Fremling, has responded to a question I put to her about the similarity between Rosh's Amazon review and Lott's writings.
Obviously " ...this is the review:" is a false statement by you. You should have said that "... this is part of the review:" Am I supposed to believe that this was a mere error? And I notice that you have selectively quoted from my website, too, without indicating that these were selected parts. If this is how you choose to deal with me, then I have no reason to continue any debate.
I will answer the general query about the book…
tlambert | February 11, 2003Lott's wife has posted (I have confirmed via email that it was really her) to the comment section of this Electrolite post:
When the screen name is used, it always, automatically registers as MaRyRoSh, NOT as MaryRosh or Mary_Rosh, which I am sure must have suggested to some that this was some amalgam and not a Mary who happened to have the highly unusual name of Rosh.
The screen name was originally used by the boys for messages within the scout troup, for ordering old coins on the internet, and for posting some book and game reviews.
At some point later…
tlambert | February 10, 2003Otis Dudley Duncan makes an important point: whether or not Lott actually did some sort of survey, Lott is guilty of scientific misconduct. Duncan has uncovered the case of a Dr Duan, who was suspended for two years for publishing a study for which the supporting data had been lost.
tlambert | February 9, 2003Otis Dudley Duncan and Tim Lambert
The discussions on so many blogs on the Lott case have been invaluable not only in turning up new evidence but also in illustrating the wide variety of reactions to the evidence. One thing that strikes a professional researcher is that many who have commented do not look at such cases in the way that researchers are trained to do. What this case is about is the professional work of a a social scientist, and the question is whether that work meets the ethical standards of scientific inquiry and reporting. And commentators are not at liberty to define…
tlambert | February 8, 2003Kevin Drum observes that Mary Rosh has become a TV star.
Don Watkins thinks Lott should be ashamed of himself. Steve also is not impressed.
tlambert | February 8, 2003 kuro5hin has a story on Lott/Rosh. There is even an on-line poll. At the time of writing the results were:
John Lott is..
.. a fraud.
50%
.. a good researcher who made some mistakes.
5%
.. victim of a vast left-wing conspiracy.
13%
.. transgendered.
30%
Of course, the results from an on-line poll like this have no more scientific validity than Lott's 98% statistic.
Blogroots also mentions the unmasking of Rosh. The High Road (a pro-gun message board) has a discussion on Lott. I think this comment is interesting:
My problem with Lott now is his "the dog ate my…
tlambert | February 7, 2003Another link I missed: TBOGG criticizes Glenn Reynolds' attempts to downplay the Lott affair.
tlambert | February 7, 2003John Quiggin has a thoughtful post on the parallels between the Bellesiles and Lott affairs. Meanwhile, Charles Murtaugh, responding to this Tapped piece reckons that there is an important difference: there are pro-gun people like Michelle Malkin criticizing Lott, but there weren't pro-control people criticizing Bellesiles. He's wrong. Consider, for example, this Wall Street Journal article by Kimberley Strassel on Bellesiles:
It's worth pointing out that not all of these professors have an obvious political agenda. Jim Lindgren, Gerald Rosenberg, Erik Monkkonen and Randolph…