tlambert | April 20, 2006David Glenn's article get discussed by Henry Farrell (lots of comments there), Ted Frank and King.
Lott finally mentions the lawsuit on his blog. No comments there, so far.
tlambert | April 20, 2006Patterico catches LA Times columnist Michael Hiltzik using a couple of sock puppets. Hiltzik admitted making the posts but denied that they were deceptive. I disagree. It is not deceptive to use a pseudonym, but it is deceitful to have two identities pretend to be different people and support each other.
Still, his reponse is more honest than Michael Fumento, who I caught using a sockpuppet, and responded with three posts on his blog and a whole pile of comments on other blogs. He called me a liar, claimed that I was insane and falsely accused me of using sock puppets myself. What he…
tlambert | April 20, 2006David Glenn has a stellar article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on Lott's lawsuit. (Free access only for five days.) Glenn writes:
The passage concludes with these 60 words:
Then there is the troubling allegation that Lott actually invented some of the survey data that support his more-guns/less-crime theory. Regardless of whether the data were faked, Lott's admittedly intriguing hypothesis doesn't seem to be true. When other scholars have tried to replicate his results, they found that right-to-carry laws simply don't bring down crime.
It is easy to see why Mr. Lott might find…
tlambert | April 20, 2006More interesting analysis of Lott's lawsuit from Ted Frank. First, after looking at the examples of the use of "replicate" he concludes:
I appear to have been too generous to Lott's complaint when I first criticized it.
Then Ben Zycher, who once mounted a defence of Lott consisting of nothing more than unsupported assertions and insults directed at Lott's critics, popped up in comments to support Lott with an unsupported assertion:
In the context of refereed economics journals, "replicate" has one meaning only: The use of an author's data and model to ensure that falsification of findings…
tlambert | April 19, 2006Since everyone else here was putting up banners, I created a banner for my blog. The text and figure come from Chapter 8 (The Deltoid) of EH Lockwood's A Book of Curves (1961). It was on sale for $1 at a book sale, so I snapped it up.
A deltoid is the concave triangular curve formed when a small circle rolls around the inside of a circle three times as big. Eric Weisstein's Mathworld has a nice animation as well as a description of its properties.
If you've ever played with Spirograph you might have drawn a deltoid. Under the fold is a spirograph applet (courtesy of Anu Garg) that…
tlambert | April 18, 2006
William Ford has two interesting posts analysing the key premise of Lott's lawsuit: that "replicate" can only mean to analyse exactly the same data in exactly the same way.
He looks at the scientific literature on the meaning of replicate and finds that it is used in several different ways. He quotes Paul Sniderman on the different meanings:
Replication in sense 1 involves the use of the same data set, procedures of measurement, and methods of estimation to verify the accuracy of reported results. Replication in sense 2 involves the use of the same data, but not the same methods of…
tlambert | April 18, 2006Science has published an article urging more environmental scientists to take up blogging. Nick Anthis has a summary.
The article gives examples of "excellent, informative sites":
Mark Lynas,
RealClimate,
Climate Science,
James' Empty Blog,
DeSmogBlog,
Prometheus,
Science At Stake,
ScienceBlogs,
Scientist on ice, and
Climate change conference weblog.
A pretty good list, even if I do so say so myself.
tlambert | April 17, 2006Mark Hertsgaard has an excellent article in Vanity Fair
exposing the war on climate science. For instance:
Call him the $45 million man. That's how much money Dr. Frederick Seitz, a former president of the National Academy of Sciences, helped R. J. Reynolds Industries, Inc., give away to fund medical research in the 1970s and 1980s. The research avoided the central health issue facing Reynolds -- "They didn't want us looking at the health effects of cigarette smoking," says Seitz, who is now 94 -- but it nevertheless served the tobacco industry's purposes. Throughout those years, the…
tlambert | April 17, 2006
About a hundred Internet years ago in 1988 I posted this comment on Usenet:
Waste heat does not contribute significantly to global warming. It is all
(if it's really happening - we probably won't be sure until it's too late)
caused by the greenhouse effect. I agree with Brad - burning fossil fuels
could well be more harmful to the environment than nuclear power.
An op-ed by Patrick co-founder of Greenpeace (his middle name is "Moore") has ignited more discussion on global warming and nuclear power. Kevin Drum and Mark Kleiman agree with Mr co-founder of Greenpeace, while David Roberts…
tlambert | April 16, 2006Bob Carter's fraudulent claim that global warming ended in 1998 seems to have been swallowed uncritically by lots of gullible global warming skeptics. Jim at Our Word is our Weapon plays whack a mole with a couple of them, Madsen Pirie and Scott Burgess. Coby Beck has more comments on Carter's cherry picking.
Also worth a look is Daniel Kirk-Davidoff at Real Climate on a Richard Lindzen op-ed that is doing the rounds.
tlambert | April 15, 2006
Here's an interesting timeline:
31 March: Lott's abrupt departure from the American enterprise institute.
10 April: Lott files his lawsuit alleging that Levitt has defamed him.
12 April: First Anniversary of Freakonomics publication.
I think all three events are connected.
There is a one year statute of limitations on libel, so April 11 was the last day he could sue Levitt. There are many reasons why AEI might want to let Lott go, but none of them are new. So it may well be that Lott's determination to sue Levitt was the last straw and caused his dismissal.
The AEI's refusal to…
tlambert | April 14, 2006Online Journalism has an article about ScienceBlogs. I get quoted a couple of times.
tlambert | April 12, 2006
Ted Frank has your must read blog post on Lott's lawsuit against Levitt. He has a copy of the complaint and an explanation from Lott:
When a book sells well over a million copies this goes beyond a mere debate among academics. To say that other scholars have been unable to replicate one's work is the same thing as fraud. I and other academics have written Levitt asking him to fix his claim. He has been unwilling to do so. I have people approaching me frequently asking if it is true that other scholars can not even replicate my research. Apparently the numerous academic articles in places…
tlambert | April 12, 2006
Ever since Lott started at the American Enterprise Institute there have been people there who have wanted to get rid of him.
I was forwarded a copy of Lott's final email to AEI staff. It suggests that he was abruptly forced to leave:
From: John Lott
Sent: Sun 4/2/2006 4:00 AM
To: Everyone
Subject: Goodbye
Dear Everyone:
Friday was my last day at AEI. It has been great to get to know many of you over the past four-and-a-half years. If I can ever be of help or you just want to say hello, I can be reached at: johnrlott@aol.com. I wish you all every success. Thanks.
Best,
John
No…
tlambert | April 11, 2006The Chicago Tribune reports:
A scholar known for his work on guns and crime filed a defamation lawsuit Monday against University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt, co-author of the best-seller "Freakonomics."
John Lott Jr. of Virginia, a former U. of C. visiting professor, alleges that Levitt defamed him in the book by claiming that other scholars had tried and failed to confirm Lott's conclusion that allowing people to carry concealed weapons reduces crime. Publishers Weekly ranked "Freakonomics" eighth this week for non-fiction hardcover books.
According to Levitt's book: "When other…
tlambert | April 10, 2006Someone edited John Lott's wikipedia entry to state that he left AEI in 2006. Sure enough, he is no longer included on the AEI's list of scholars and fellows. The person who made the edit was anonymous, but the IP address tracks to Washington DC.
tlambert | April 10, 2006Jennifer Marohasy has written a rather self-referential response to my criticism of the sixty scientists' letter. Rather than deal with the substance of my criticism, Marohasy, who works for the Institute of Public Affairs, predictably tried to attack my credibility, writing:
Rather than deal with the substance of the letter, Lambert, a computer scientist, predictably tries to attack the credibility of the scientists.
Of course, I did deal with the substance of the letter. When challenged in the comments, Marohasy claimed that there was some substance that I had not dealt with but would…
tlambert | April 10, 2006One of the features of the generally shoddy reporting of Iraqi casualties in the media is the way that if reporters mention the Lancet study they will mention the bogus controversy about it, while the Iraq Body Count number is never given any qualifications, even though it is guaranteed to be too low. The IBC people are at least partly responsible for this presenting a maximum number for deaths, even though the actual number is certainly more than their maximum. Media Lens has
more criticism, including these interesting comments:
One of the world's leading professional epidemiologists, who…
tlambert | April 9, 2006Bob Carter has a piece in the Telegraph where he claims:
For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).
Yes, you…