tlambert | February 6, 2003I should add one caution to my comments about Lott's "ten years" claim yesterday. It is possible that the reporter misunderstood and/or misquoted Lott.
tlambert | February 5, 2003If you want to see another example of Lott's carelessness towards facts, consider this article, published a few days ago:But, where Vernick and Hepburn said they were unable to find any attribution to the '20,000' statistic, Lott said the proof is readily available in a compendium prepared twice a year by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. He did say the gun law information takes a tremendous amount of time and energy to compile.
"About ten years," Lott said, "somebody actually took the time to go and do this."
Lott said final analysis of the B.…
tlambert | February 5, 2003Michelle Malkin writes an excellent article on the Lott affair. And if you think that she is one of those mysterious people out seeking revenge for Bellesiles, you should look at this 1998 article where she praises Lott.
Atrios explains why he cares about Lott. He quotes Sullywatch:We forget now how much there was an all-out effort (kind of like a certain recent special prosecution) to throw anything they could find at Bellesiles until it stuck, and finally one thing relatively marginal to the whole thesis of the book did.
I can't agree with this statement. If you…
tlambert | February 5, 2003A couple of alert readers have pointed out that while all the reviews have been removed from Mary Rosh's page you can still read her review here.
Mary Rosh got a brief mention on CNN Crossfire.
tlambert | February 4, 2003Atrios points us to Tim Noah's article at Slate. After the Washington Times whitewash, and the US News and Washington Post completely ignoring Lott's survey, we at last have a mainstream media article that gets to the heart of the matter.
One interesting feature that bears repeating because it is hard for it to sink in because it seems so unlikely: Lott will not admit that he attributed the 98% figure to "national surveys". Look at what he tells Slate: "A lot of those discussions could have been written more clearly."
Lott is saying that this sentence does not…
tlambert | February 4, 2003Arthur Silber summarizes Lott's appearance on the Larry Elder. They don't seem to have gotten much past the use of the pseudonym (which in itself is perfectly OK). The problem was what he posted under the pseudonym. And be sure to scroll down to the comment section for some more good comments from Julian.
Atrios, Tom Spencer and Roger Ailes comment on the Rosh-Huntress files. Tapped and John Quiggin also have comments.
Amazon has removed Mary Rosh's reviews. Good thing I saved a copy.
tlambert | February 3, 2003Atrios mentions the Washington Post article on Mary Rosh. Meanwhile, Calpundit reports that Lott has backed out of doing an interview. I guess Lott is never going to answer these questions. Julian Sanchez has an update where he observes that over in talk.politics.guns some folks, having seen Lott's confession, three posts from Clayton Cramer and the Washington Post article have formed the only possible conclusion: there is a massive forgery campaign underway. Julian also points us to the US News article on Lott and Rosh.
tlambert | February 2, 2003In the Washington Post article Lott says: "I probably shouldn't have done it---I know I shouldn't have done it ---but it's hard to think of any big advantage I got except to be able to comment fictitiously,"
Well, I can think of one.
Last January, the New York Post drafted an opinion piece written by Lott. In that piece Lott claimed that a school shooting had been stopped by students armed with guns and that almost all the newspaper stories had failed to mention this fact, thus demonstrating that the media showed a bias against guns. Next, someone posted the…
tlambert | February 2, 2003Mark Kleiman is disgusted by Lott's attempts to blame his 13 year-old son for the Rosh review of More Guns, Less Crime. Kieran Healy is disgusted too, and has a nice example of an honest review of a parent's book. Tom Spencer and Roger Ailes are also disgusted. Greg Beato, meanwhile, is merely sarcastic. skippy also comments.
Meanwhile, Glenn Reynolds notes that this was "Another story broken by a blogger". What Reynolds does not note is that he decided not to mention this story on his blog because it wasn't "actual news". And he still hasn't linked to the post where Julian…
tlambert | February 1, 2003The Washington Post has a story about Mary Rosh. Lott now claims that this review of More Guns, Less Crime was written by his 13 year-old son with some help from his wife."They told me they had done it. They showed it to me. I wasn't going to tell them not to do it. Should I have?"
One of Mary Rosh's reviews (the one of Caesar 3) reads like it was written by a child, the review of More Guns, Less Crime does not. It also seems unlikely that a 13 year-old would have loaned out his copy dozens of times.
Now, compare Rosh's review:This is by far the largest most comprehensive…
tlambert | January 31, 2003Natalie Solent is disappointed in Lott, but is still impressed by More Guns, Less Crime. Unfortunately, the 98% figure is not an aberration. It is typical of the remarkable carelessness with facts that Lott displays and his refusal to back down even when obviously in the wrong. For more examples, see here and here.
Steve Verdon is continuing to work his way through Ayres and Donahue. He has found a misprint in one of their tables where some coefficients are missing and wonders what I would say if I found something similar in Lott and Mustard. Well, I did find…
tlambert | January 30, 2003Meanwhile, over in talk.politics.guns some folks are in denial about Mary Rosh. "The confession must be a forgery!" they said, prompting this exchange:
Clayton Cramer:
I asked Dr. Lott about it the other night, and he confirmed it. He also realizes now that using a pseudonym was probably not very wise.
Morton Davis:
Clayton, clarify please: Was Mary Rosh really John Lott?
gzuckier:
In tonight's episode of Star Trek, the evil gungrabbers from planet Liberal Democrat face the coldly brilliant intellect of the merciless Mortbot; at the last second, their captain saves them when he presents the…
tlambert | January 30, 2003A couple of interesting things about the Mary Rosh postings. First, in her book review Mary Rosh refers to "Professor Lott". At that time he was a John M. Olin Fellow at Chicago and certainly not a professor. In another post she claims that he was a chaired professor at Wharton. You can check Lott's resume and see that he was an assistant professor at Wharton and did not hold a chair.
skippy also has a few comments.
tlambert | January 29, 2003 ArchPundit continues to ponder on Lott's amateurish surveys. One further point you might like to consider: If the surveyors in Lott's 2002 survey were aware that it was vital for Lott to reproduce his low firing rate result, then that introduces a strong source of interviewer bias. People often answer questions with the answer that they think will most please the interviewer. If Lott's interviewer's gave the impression, either consciously or unconsciously that they did not want to hear the person that they had fired the gun, then the results will…
tlambert | January 28, 2003Kevin Drum has persuaded Lott to consider doing an interview. I think that is an excellent idea. With no-one in blogspace defending him, Lott needs a way to get his point of view across.
Atrios points his readers at Mary Rosh's blog, which has been updated again. (Though with only a few new postings.)
tlambert | January 28, 2003Mark Kleiman has a excellent summary of the recent developments. Mark ends with a plea to gun-rights folks ---they should consider cutting Lott loose. (I would add, either that, or defend him---right now, Lott's side is losing the argument by default.)
Archpundit has reply from Lott to his earlier critique of Lott's methodology. ArchPundit makes some excellent points when he compares Lott's survey to Kleck's. Just one small point: I analysed Kleck's data and found that the percent firing in the 1 year recall frame was almost identical to that in the 5 year frame.…
tlambert | January 27, 2003Lott has made some more responses to some of the questions asked and comments made. First, he has responded to my remaining questions I asked a while ago. Let's see how he went:
Why did Lott repeatedly make false claims that the 98% figure came from other studies and from Kleck?
Lott says:As to attributing things, in op-eds or talks I simply don't go through and explain where every statistic that I mention comes from.
This isn't an answer at all. I didn't ask why he didn't give a source, I asked why he gave an incorrect source many times.
Even Lott cannot possibly be sure…
tlambert | January 26, 2003Atrios takes a swipe at the publisher of Lott's new book and it looks like Mary Rosh has started a blog.
tlambert | January 26, 2003James Lindgren makes some interesting points in the comment section to this Jane Galt post. First, he comments on this Lott claim about his tax returns: As to deducting these costs on my income taxes, my 1997 tax form, which I have shared with many others, shows that $8,750 was deducted for research assistants (the heading was under "legal and professional services"). We do not keep the supporting documents past the three years required by the IRS and the $8,750 does include the expenses for other projects. On the other hand, I am sure that I did not keep track of all of my…