MaryRosh
tlambert | July 11, 2003
This is an annotated list of John Lott's on line reviews at Amazon
and at Barnes and Noble.
Most of his reviews were posted anonymously or under a false name, and he used this anonymity to post many five-star reviews of his own books and to pan rival books.
When you post a review at Amazon.com, you can choose to post it
anonymously (in which case it is attributed to "A reader"), or under a
pseudonym that you choose. Lott posted some his reviews using
pseudonyms: maximcl and
href="#sherwinrl">sherwinrl, the names of two of his children andwashingtonian2 and
href="#maryrosh">…
tlambert | July 6, 2003Lott was on MSNBC's Buchanan & Press on May 26. From the transcript:
PRESS:
After that book came out, there was a person who showed up on the Internet by the name of Mary Rosh, who said you were the best professor she ever had in college. She praised the book in her review on the Internet. She said any critics of your book should slink away into a hole and hide. And it turns out this Mary Rosh is a total invention of yours.
Now, why should I believe anything you say in this book if you are lying to people on the Internet?
LOTT:
Well, first of all, not all of those were from me.
PRESS:…
tlambert | May 6, 2003Julian Sanchez has an article in the May issue of Reason on the role blogs played in the investigation of the Lott affair.
tlambert | April 8, 2003Lott has a long message at his website where he discusses Mary Rosh and argues that when he claimed that he had "not participated in the firearms discussion group nor in the apparent online newsgroup discussions", he was not lying: Another misunderstanding in the media is that I was lying as to whether I had ever participated in internet chat rooms. I have never made any general statement that I do not participate in such groups. And, obviously, I did participate under my own name for a substantial period of time. There are however two separate statements, one in an email to Glenn…
tlambert | March 28, 2003I've done some more investigation in Lott's latest explanation for his Mary Rosh postings:I originally used my own name but switched after receiving threatening and obnoxious telephone calls from other Internet posters.
The first group of Lott postings were made between 3 June 1998 and 14 July 1998. All the responses were polite. In one of his postings Lott complains about getting threatening phone calls, but not about phone calls from other Internet posters. You ought to see what happens to my telephone calls when someone like a Charles Schumer or Josh Sugarmann…
tlambert | March 26, 2003Mac Diva comments on Lott's claims in his Washington Post letter. Mac doesn't believe Lott's story about the threatening phone calls that forced Lott into the Mary Rosh deception.
tlambert | March 23, 2003The Washington Post has printed a letter from Lott responding to two Washington Post articles, one about his survey, and one about Mary Rosh. Lott makes several false claims in his letter:
that the Post did not print a letter from "an academic who wanted to correct a statement attributed to him that was the opposite of what he had written." You can check the two articles and see for yourself that the only statements attributed to an academic were those attributed to Lott, and he has not disputed those ones.
"Academics have confirmed ... discussions that I had back in 1996 and…
tlambert | March 2, 2003Patti Thorn investigates how many other fake reviews there are at Amazon.com.
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 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 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, 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…