Misc
apalazzo | March 14, 2006Ever wanted to see a minimally-invasive thoracic aortic aneurysm repair? Visit OR-Live, tomorrow starting at 4:00pm EST to see the whole operation live.
Yes live.
Not only can you watch them slice through the tissues but you can actuyally email the surgeon any questions you may have.
stoat | March 9, 2006So says The Grauniad. Its talking about public access to publicly collected data in the UK. As near as I can determine, in the US most govt-collected data is in theory and in practice freely available to citizens. In the UK this is very definitely not true: the most obvious example is the Ordnance Survey, which collects mapping data. Instead of being what it should be - a government body funded to collect, organise and disseminate mapping data, it is a psuedo-commerical organisation with revenue targets to meet by selling data, mostly straight back to other government bodies. Other examples…
apalazzo | March 9, 2006Ok time for a corny entry,
Some cuttlefish are red
Some octopods are blue
But PZ, on your B-Day,
This squid's for you!
apalazzo | March 2, 2006A brief history of my life as a blogger.
I started about a year ago. Then being plagued by creationist ads, I moved my blog from Tripod to Blogspot. Everything was fine until (as one person later said) I was Degoogled. Finally after being invited to move to Scienceblogs, I ditched my old blog and ...
here I am.
Think of this blog as a daily "water cooler chat" with a Cell Biologist.
The focus of my current research is mRNA, the product of activated genes that is used as a template for protein production. Since mRNAs are copied from genes, they're known as transcripts, and hence the title…
tlambert | February 7, 2006In the comments to Lott's post where he failed to notice that the study on guns and road rage reported a multi-variate regression in table 1, someone asked him about my post pointing out his mistake. Lott's response:
I haven't bothered looking at Lambert's page, but he typically
doesn't have a clue what he is talking about. Assuming that he
actually made the claim that Hemenway et al reported regressions in
the tables, that is definitely not the case. The Tables just show
the means, or conditional means. They are not regression estimates.
Clue: you can't have a regression where you have a…
tlambert | February 5, 2006New Scientist reports:
A survey of 2400 drivers carried out by David Hemenway and his colleagues at the Harvard School of Public Health shows that motorists who carry guns in their cars are far more likely to indulge in road rage - driving aggressively or making obscene gestures - than motorists without guns. Some 23 per cent of gun-toting drivers admitted making rude signs, compared with 16 per cent of those who did not carry guns (Accident Analysis and Prevention, DOI:10.1016/j.aap.2005.12.014).
Not surprisingly, Lott is criticizing the study:
While one regression with a few very basic…
tlambert | January 25, 2006Kevin Drum is is dismayed that theNew York Times has published an op-ed by John Lott:
I note that the New York Times has published a piece by John Lott today and I just have to ask: what is Lott doing writing op-eds for them? The man is a fraud and the Times demeans itself by allowing him space on their pages.
Lott says that he conducted a multivariate statistical analysis of the ABA rankings of judicial nominees and like all of Lott's other statistical analyses the results were favourable for Republicans -- Lott "found" that the ABA was biased against Republicans. For all I know, they…
tlambert | November 6, 2005Todd Zywicki links to Lott's take on Alito. Lott cites a study by Choi and Gulati but gets taken to task in comments by Frank Cross who writes:
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this review by John Lott is quite misleading. Under Choi & Gulati's citation-based measure of judicial quality, Alito comes out very poorly, well down in the bottom half of all circuit court judges. That was their primary measure, and Lott doesn't mention it.
Lott, cherry picking? Who'd have thought it? Lott defends himself in later comments (under his own name, even!) . I haven't read Choi and Gulati's paper so I don'…
tlambert | September 8, 2005David Hardy writes:
USA Today reports, with customary horror, that 1,700,000 children are in homes with unsecured guns, and that one-third of American homes have firearms in them. It goes on to say 1,400 "children and teens" are shot to death each year, and pumps for laws on gun storage (i.e., to criminalize failure to store in various ways). "It's a frightening problem," says Michael Barnes, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a lobbying group that favors limiting gun ownership.
Let's look at the figures. Actually, in 2003 762 Americans of all ages died in gun accidents…
tlambert | July 26, 2005Keiran Healy observes that the U Chicago Federalist Society acted with integrity when Lott libeled Donohue. In the comments, Michael Maltz posts the letter that he sent with Dudley Duncan to the AEI about Lott and the reply they received:
October 21, 2003
Christopher DeMuth
President
American Enterprise Institute
1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036
Dear Mr. DeMuth:
As you are doubtless aware, a number of commentators have recommended that AEI initiate an inquiry into allegations of unprofessional and unethical behavior by John R. Lott, Jr., an AEI Resident Scholar. They…
tlambert | July 25, 2005Lott has a response to my post about his libel of John Donohue. He writes:
2) Unfortunately, the second planned debate was also cancelled. The debate was rescheduled for April 13th this year, and I made sure to reconfirm it because of the previous cancelation. The student at Chicago who set up the debate said that even though he had confirmed the debate with me multiple times and even though we had taken a date that I was told that Donohue wanted, the claim is that the debate somehow hadn't been completely confirmed with Donohue.
Compare that with what the student told Lott:
If there is…
tlambert | June 30, 2005Kevin Drum is not pleased that the LA Times has yet again published a piece by John Lott. You generally expect some dodgy statistics from Lott and he duly delivers:
Well, more than nine months have passed [since the assault weapons ban ended] and the first crime numbers are in. Last week, the FBI announced that the number of murders nationwide fell by 3.6% last year, the first drop since 1999. The trend was consistent; murders kept on declining after the assault weapons ban ended.
Even more interesting, the seven states that have their own assault weapons bans saw a smaller drop in murders…
tlambert | June 27, 2005On his blog, Lott writes:
Penn & Teller will be airing a show on their television series name "Bullshit" that examines gun control and apparently focuses on my research. The show will first air on June 27th. The show airs at 10 PM and is replayed at 11 PM. I have been told that the show comes across very well.
In other words, Penn and Teller will uncritically swallow everything Lott says and savagely mock anyone on the other side of the question. Steve Milloy on second hand smoke, Lott on guns -- they sure can pick their experts, can't they?
tlambert | March 7, 2005 In Lott's latest piece he is once more complaining that the media doesn't report defensive gun use. Mark Wilson intervened to try to stop a shooting rampage in Texas. Unfortunately, the shooter was wearing body armour and Wilson was shot and killed. The police eventually killed the shooter (full story).
Lott concedes that Wilson's bravery was widely reported, but also writes:
For example, in about 30 percent of the multiple victim public school shootings that have captivated Americans' attention starting in 1997, people used guns to stop the attacks before…
tlambert | January 4, 2005 John Lott and Michael Bellesiles are both mentioned in a new book, Historians in Trouble by Jon Wiener. Wiener argues that the reason why Lott still has his job but Bellesiles doesn't is power:
The answer briefly is power---especially power wielded by groups outside the history profession. Historians targeted by powerful outside groups can face intense media scrutiny and severe sanctions for transgressions, while historians connected to powerful outside groups can be shielded from the media spotlight as well as from the consequences of malfeasance;…
tlambert | October 27, 2004 Lott has responded to Media Matters criticism of his comments on Florida 2000. Lott writes:
Media matters makes it look like I was talking about "voter disenfranchisement" (which I assume includes the non-voted ballot issue) by adding into what I said the broader statement "[on voter disenfranchisement]," and misconstrued what I was saying. I have written extensively on the myths regarding the Florida vote here, and would have been happy to get into the issue of non-voted ballots, but the amount of time available was just so limited we barely got to talk about the intimidation part of Dobb…
tlambert | October 27, 2004 Via Ralph Luker I find Andrew Ackerman's correction of a Boston Globe article that downplayed Michael Bellesiles' misconduct. The Emory panel rightly found Bellesiles guilty of falsification and other academic misconduct. It is disgraceful that the American Enterprise Institute refuses to conduct a similar investigation into John Lott's conduct.
tlambert | October 25, 2004 Media Matters for America details Lott's latest bizarre claim about the 2000 election in Florida---on CNN Lott claimed:
I think a lot of the discussion about disenfranchising African-American voters, in particular I think it's been fairly sad, because I think there have been a lot of myths in Florida, for example. I mean, you have the Commission on Civil Rights did an extensive set of hearings, they weren't able to identify even one person.
Media Matters for America has the links to the Commission on Civil Rights report that puts the lie to…
tlambert | October 21, 2004 Orin Kerr writes writes about Wikipedia
My very tentative conclusion, based on a just few sample queries, is that I hope no one relies on Wikipedia for anything very important. Its entries seem to be a strange mix of accurate statements and egregious errors.
My own experience is that Wikipedia is quite accurate and errors get corrected. An erroneous description of the Patriot Act that Kerr pointed to was quickly corrected. It seems counterintuitive that letting anyone edit any page would result in quality information, but that seems to be what has happened.
Kerr argues:…
tlambert | September 30, 2004This is David Hemenway's response to criticism of his book Private Guns Public Health by Kevin Baker at The Smallest Minority.
September 27, 2004
I was asked to respond to what is claimed to be a critique of my book by Kevin Baker. I have neither the time nor inclination to have a detailed response to the many assertions and arguments he makes, many of which are wrong or misleading.
It turns out that Baker isn't really discussing my book Private Guns Public Health, but a magazine article about it. Unfortunately it seems that Baker may not have read my book (or the hundreds of journal…