tlambert | January 25, 2003If you are interested in the question of whether Lott's claim that passing concealed carry laws reduce crime, you might want to read this article, which reports that a new book, Evaluating Gun Policy will be published in February contesting Lott's claim. The book is partly based on the research in the Ayres and Donahue paper I mentioned a few days ago. I also located Lott's response to that paper.
tlambert | January 25, 2003From: John Lott Sent: 1/26/03 1:44 PM Subject: Response to Lindgren's "Lott's Tax Arguments" Response to Lindgren's "Lott's Tax Arguments"
My wife, who took care of our taxes, has a discussion below about how the forms were completed. The main point is that all payments to research assistants if documented by check went into the professional services category. This also includes other expenses that they might have incurred in their work such as their telephone expenses, xeroxing and the like. On the business form, we list out expenses that we directly make ourselves.
As to claims that…
tlambert | January 25, 2003Julian Sanchez is on the case again. This time he has a bit more detail from Mustard. The key point is that Mustard is "fairly confident" that Lott told him in 1997 that he had done a survey. This suggests that Lott didn't invent the survey in 1999 to explain his 98% figure. Well, this makes me lean more towards Lott having done a survey, but it's still not conclusive. Mustard isn't sure about being told in 1997. All this back and forth is making me dizzy. I'm not going to express another opinion on whether he did a survey until I see Lindgren's new report…
tlambert | January 24, 2003From: John Lott Sent: Saturday, January 25, 2003 2:49 PM Please post
Claims by archpundit (apparently reflecting similar claims made in other places):
Lott claims his new survey will solve the problems, but that assumes he oversamples DGU's. If he doesn't, his finding will be as pointless as the above. . . .
So he collected 36 demographic variables in his survey? Or are there 36 breakdowns of a smaller number of demographics collected? Either way this was a pretty involved survey that had to take a lot of time on the phone to collect all that data. Surveying isn't nearly as quick as it…
tlambert | January 24, 2003Atrios has a disturbing report on David Gross. He is an extremely active pro-gun activist and was involved in a dirty trick that stole the name of a pro-control organization. Ouch. Well, I may start getting many more emails from Nigeria, but I'm still inclined to believe him. However, I imagine that lots of other people won't, so we can't consider the question of whether Lott did a survey to be closed. We really need one of his student surveyors to come forward. The Washington Times whitewash may well have hurt Lott, by discouraging people…
tlambert | January 24, 2003Robert Stacey McCain has a disgraceful whitewash of the affair in the Washington Times. The most important thing about this affair has always been whether Lott's 98% brandishing claim is true. By any objective reading of the existing evidence it is not. On the one hand we have nine surveys that say the number is much lower, on the other hand we have Lott's new survey, where even Lott concedes that the sample size is so small that it does not contradict the big surveys. By advancing this 98% figure over 50 times Lott is giving people dangerously misleading advice. Advice…
tlambert | January 24, 2003Bloggers just can't get enough of Mary Rosh. We have Andrew Conway, Tim Dunlop and Jane Finch. G. Beato even has a picture of Mary.
tlambert | January 24, 2003Tom Spencer comments on Glenn Reynolds curious reluctance to mention Mary Rosh, apparently because it is not "actual news". Well, actual people have changed their minds about Lott because of his Mary Rosh deception and the associated lying. One of them is John Quiggin. Yesterday I said that Julian's revelations had caused him to change his mind. Actually it was just the Mary Rosh thing. My error.
tlambert | January 24, 2003And, from the surely-it-can't-get-any-weirder department: After John Lott made people promise not to reveal the questions in his new survey, Mary Rosh posted the questions from the new survey to Usenet. I'm imagining it went something like this:
Lott:
Nasty tricksy bloggers. We hates them, we hates them all.
Rosh:
No, some bloggers are nice. It's Lindgren we hates. He hurts us with his cruel report.
Lott:
I'll show them with my Precious survey questions. Keep them secret, we can escape, even from Lambert, eh? Grow strong, eat fish every day.
Rosh:
No, we should post survey questions…
tlambert | January 23, 2003Ok, so what about this witness being a pro-gun activist? Well, he made it perfectly clear to me that he was strongly pro-gun and greatly admired John Lott in the long message that was sent to firearmsregprof. I should have mentioned it that day, but I knew all of the detail would be in Lindgren's long report so I didn't think to say something. In hindsight, I realize it made it look as if this guy might have concealed that he was a big fan of Lott's from us. He didn't. I apologize for the misleading impression I created.
Lindgren has sent…
tlambert | January 23, 2003Julian Sanchez drops another bombshell: the person who came forward saying that he believed that he had been surveyed is a pro-gun activist. Julian's revelations prompted John Quiggin to change his mind---he thinks Lott's employer should fire him.
tlambert | January 23, 2003Kevin Drum suggests that the large scale of the Lott/Rosh deception suggests that Lott maybe could have carried off a conspiracy with this witness. Sorry, but I still don't buy it. Lott's a liar, but he's a clumsy one. He could have saved himself most of the embarrassment of this Mary Rosh affair, if he had lied and had "Mary" admit to being Lott's wife. Kevin also comments on Lott's fishy statistics.
Tom Spencer also doesn't think Lott is off the hook and seems rather unimpressed by the silence of Clayton Cramer and Glenn Reynolds. Over in the…
tlambert | January 22, 2003Well, after yesterday's revelations, blogspace seems to be split. On the one hand, we have Clayton Cramer, Steve Verdon, Jane Galt, Glenn Reynolds and Marie Gryphon who think Lott has been exonerated. On the other hand Kevin Drum and Tom Spencer are not yet convinced. On the gripping hand we have Jim Henley and John Quiggin who think that it has been established that Lott conducted a survey, but the small sample size means that Lott could not properly use it make his "98% brandishing" claim. Julian Sanchez's friend also makes the point about the sample…
tlambert | January 22, 2003Oh, and in amusing side note, Julian Sanchez uncovered evidence that determined Lott defender Mary Rosh is actually John Lott, and Lott actually confessed. Atrios, Roger Ailes, Kevin Drum and Tom Spencer also seem amused. I've had some discussions with "Mary" on Usenet. Her argument style is that if the facts disagree with Lott, then so much the worse for the facts. You can see an example here. You can read her Amazon review of More Guns, Less Crime here. And check this posting out, where "Mary" defends John from a criticism of his 98% brandishing number and rips into…
tlambert | January 21, 2003Tim Lambert's questions:
Why did Lott repeatedly make false claims that the 98% figure came from other studies and from Kleck?
Even Lott cannot possibly be sure that the correct result of his survey was 98% since there is no way to check his calculations. Why did he repeat the figure over and over again?
Lott has conceded that the size of the defensive gun use sample in his survey was very small. Too small, in fact, for the result to be statistically reliable. Why did he never even mention the markedly different results obtained from the other surveys…
tlambert | January 21, 2003If you don't know who Mary Rosh is, you might want to read "The Mystery of Mary Rosh". Also of interest might be the blog post that unmasked Mary, and the latest Mary Rosh news.
[Editor's note: Most of these postings were made to Usenet. Some were made to comment sections on blogs, two are comments on www.freerepublic.com and one is a review posted to Amazon.com. I collected them here for easy reference. ]
1999-08-18
Mary Rosh:
SAVE YOUR LIFE, READ THIS BOOK -- GREAT BUY!!!! Reviewer: maryrosh (see more about me) from Philadelphia If you want to learn about what can stop crime or if you…
tlambert | January 21, 2003Julian Sanchez posts some comments from someone who believes he was surveyed by Lott. Lott is in error when he states that there were no other gun use surveys at that time, but once these have been eliminated, we can regard it as established that Lott conducted a survey in 1997.
James Lindgren writes:I am very pleased to be able to say that my informal inquiry has been brought to a successful conclusion. I had a long substantive interview with David Gross Sunday night and a short discussion tonight (Monday). I will write up my Sunday interview sometime in the next 5 days. It has…
tlambert | January 19, 2003[This is an email sent to John Lott that Lott posted to the firearmsregprof mailing list on January 20, 2003.]
I believe that in my emails to you and in my conversation with James Lindgren, I have stimulated just about all of my memories and impressions that I'm going to have concerning the survey that I took, without having any substitutions and additions by any possible suggestion, express or implied. I do not wish to be seen as a partisan in this matter, for I am not. I also am unwilling to speculate. My recollections and impressions of the survey that I took are now closed to prevent any…
tlambert | January 19, 2003From: John Lott Sent: Monday, January 20, 2003 1:58 PM To: Eugene Volokh [Critical Commentary by Tim Lambert. This is a copy of a January 20 email by Lott to the firearmsregprof list. My comments appear in italics like this.]
Response to Lindgren's January 17th posting:
Lindgren's role in this process seems to be that of a prosecutor. [This is not correct. Lindgren is careful to present any evidence that supports Lott. ] He claims that he "never heard of a professor doing anything of that size with no funding . . . ." Well, I did the 2002 survey paying students $10 per hour out of…
tlambert | January 19, 2003If you haven't looked at the new section 4 in Lindgren's report, you should.
In his latest response Lott asks: "There is also a question as to why people have waited so long to ask for this additional information when people have known about the lost data for years."
A few people have known about the lost data since the Sep/Oct 2000 edition of The Criminologist came out. I only heard about it when Duncan contacted me in August last year. Most people probably only heard about the problem when this story broke.
In the summer of 2002 Duncan asked for more…