Misc
tlambert | September 19, 2004Summary: Lott and Hassett have not analyzed their data correctly---it actually shows no evidence that headlines are biased against Republicans. (My previous posts are here and here.)
The essence of Lott and Hassett's case that newspapers are biased against Republicans is given in their presentation:
"In the case of unemployment, 44 percent of the headlines under the Clinton administration were positive while that same number was only 23 percent under Bush II. By comparison, the average unemployment rates were fairly similar, 5.2 percent under Clinton s eight years and 5.5…
tlambert | September 14, 2004 The AEI now has a video of the Lott/Hassett show alleging media bias against Republicans. (My previous post is here.) What is wrong with their study can be explained very briefly. First look at the graph on the left of unemployment rates. Now, here's what Lott and Hassett say:
"In the case of unemployment, 44 percent of the headlines under the Clinton administration were positive while that same number was only 23 percent under Bush II. By comparison, the average unemployment rates were fairly similar, 5.2 percent under Clinton s eight years and 5.5 percent…
tlambert | September 13, 2004 By popular request I'm going to comment on Lott's LA Times oped on the assault weapons ban. Basically, I agree with Lott here. As I noted earlier the ban doesn't make sense.
However, Chris Mooney has a point when he writes:
Providing balance is one thing, and it's something op-ed pages should strive for. But if op-ed editors can't get the other side from a credible expert---which Lott emphatically isn't---they shouldn't just publish anybody for the sake of having different perspectives represented.
It's not as if the LA Times couldn't have found someone…
tlambert | September 12, 2004 Lott has teamed up with Kevin Hassett to study whether economic reporting is biased. The paper, Is Newspaper Coverage of Economic Events Politically Biased?, concludes, surprise, surprise that the newspapers are biased against Republicans.
The trouble with their study is that the economy was stronger under Clinton than under either Bush, so of course the reporting of the economy under Clinton was more positive. Lott and Hassett claim to have controlled for this with a multivariate analysis but you should only find this persuasive if you have complete…
tlambert | August 29, 2004 On his blog Lott reports that he was recently asked by a reporter whether President Bush was evil or just stupid. If a reporter asks a question like that it raises serious questions about her objectivity. How can a reporter with such a negative opinion of the President write unbiased news articles? Seems like a clear case of media bias.
Oops, sorry, I made a mistake it the previous paragraph. The reporter actually asked Lott whether Jimmy Carter was evil or just stupid. Fortunately, the rest of my paragraph is still valid. Lott doesn't tell us who the…
tlambert | August 10, 2004 Kevin Baker observes that Lott has removed Baker from his blogroll, presumably because Baker has described Lott as the pro-gun version of Michael Bellesiles.
This fits in with Lott's practice of not linking to criticism, which suggests that he thinks his position is a weak one. Rather than link to crticism and refute it he tries to pretend that it does not exist. Even when he does respond to criticism I make here, he does not link or correctly inform his readers what the source of the criticism is, instead claiming that someone emailed it to him. (For…
tlambert | August 8, 2004From pages 469 and 471 of Richard North Patterson's novel Balance of Power:
If the purpose of deposing an expert witness was to help him hang himself, Sarah meant to be as helpful as possible to Dr. Frederick Glass.
"Dr. Fred," as he cheerfully called himself, was as chipper as he was conservative, having risen from academic obscurity to prominence as a prolific contrarian who boldly challenged what he labeled "fatuous liberal orthodoxy." With the unflappable good nature of someone well pleased at the attention this had garnered, he proffered his research on topics…
tlambert | July 29, 2004 The Akron Beacon Journal reports that a trial on whether punch card ballots were constitutional has been delayed. Why? Read on:
ACLU lawyers complained Wednesday that the state's last-minute filing hadn't given them enough time to study the evidence---a report comparing punch cards with other voting methods. ...
The ACLU had wanted the judge to declare punch cards unconstitutional.It argues that the ballots---the bane of the 2000 presidential election---aren't uniform and don't alert voters to a mistake, as electronic machines do. The ACLU also…
tlambert | July 28, 2004 Some weeks ago Lott wrote this article, where he dismissed concerns about fraudulent electronic voting as "conspiracy theories". As far as I can tell Lott has no expert knowledge about computers, and rather than do any research into the electronic voting machines, he has just invented his own version of the way these machines work. For example, he wrote:
After the election, most electronic voting machines transfer the election results to a compact disk or some other "read only" format. These CDs are then taken to a central location where they are read into a…
tlambert | June 29, 2004 Mike Adams has an article on John Lott and Michael Moore where he writes:
The thesis of "Bowling for Columbine" is sometimes difficult to ascertain because Moore frequently contradicts himself in the movie. Nonetheless, I think that he is trying, above all else, to assert the following:
The United States has more crime than other countries (like Canada). The United States has more guns than other countries (like Canada). Therefore, guns cause crime and, of course, more gun control is necessary.
What Moore actually says is that Canada has as many guns as the US and does not make the…
tlambert | June 27, 2004 On his blog, John Lott writes
The Public's Response to Michael Moore's Sources
David Letterman: How do we know what's in your film [Fahrenheit 9/11] is true? Michael Moore: Because I got most of my information from The New York Times. Audience: Wild laughter. Letterman: [Strains to repress laughing] Moore: What's so funny?
Late Show with David Letterman June 18, 2004
However, this transcript seems to be a fabrication. Nathan at BlueB has the correct version:
Letterman: And, and we can absolutely believe the sources you've used in assembling your documentary?
Moore: Oh yeah, it's…
tlambert | June 2, 2004 At the The High Road there was some discussion of the cherry picked Lott article I discussed here. One poster, "agricola", criticized Lott, linking to my blog. Another poster, "fallingblock", responded:
I contacted John Lott a while back and asked him for the details of his discussions with Tim Lambert.
According to Lott, he has offered several times to provide data for Tim and Lambert does not reply.
Lott tried to make it look like I refused to look at the data and attacked him regardless. In fact, I have not received any email from Lott since 1999. All of…
tlambert | March 26, 2004 The Australian published a letter to the editor the day after Lott's piece on laser pointers:
John Lott (Opinion, 24/3) claims an Australian academic with a laser pointer would cause panic. I'm an Australian academic and when I use a laser pointer it does not cause a panic. Lott has confused high-powered lasers, which are restricted because they can cause eye damage, with the low power laser pointers we use in lectures. He also thinks that the Victorian ban on swords applies to steak knives. It's funny when a foreign newspaper has a story…
tlambert | March 24, 2004 Lott has an opinion piece on page 15 of today's Australian. Lott writes:
Americans may feel safe when an academic addresses a conference using a laser pointer. In the hands of an Australian, however, there is understandable fear that these devices could do untold harm. An Australian academic with a laser pointer would cause real panic.
Well, I'm an Australian academic and I use a laser pointer in my lectures and guess what? There was no panic. They don't even cower in their seats in terror. Weird.
As far as I can tell, the fact that the sale of high-…
tlambert | March 18, 2004 Via David Bernstein I learn that the finalists for the Lysander Spooner award are:
James Bovard, Terrorism and Tyranny;John Lott, Bias Against Guns;Charles Murray, Human Accomplishment; and[his] own, You Can't Say That!
My congratulations to all the finalists. To get into the final four just required emailed votes and it wasn't even against the rules to vote more than once by using multiple email accounts. Winning the award will be more difficult for Lott, since it will be decided by a jury of members of the Center for Independent Thought's…
tlambert | March 12, 2004 Dan from Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics has a problem:
I'm working in a fairly esoteric field in which there are very few existing academic papers (because it's a highly politically charged topic, I've decided not to discuss it here until I have at least have all the data before me). One of the papers was co-authored by John Lott. I'm seriously queasy about citing Lott, given his spectacularly unprofessional behavior in the past surrounding "More Guns, Less Crime" and the Mary Rosh fiasco. So, the question is: do I cite Lott, cite Lott with a…
tlambert | March 10, 2004 Via Randy Barnett we learn that Lott's Bias Against Guns has been nominated for a Spooner award for the best book on liberty published in 2003. On the voting page they state:
only one vote per email address will be accepted
I predict that Lott's book will get a Lott of votes.
tlambert | March 1, 2004 Glenn Reynolds writes:
Here's another in a steady stream of reports along these lines:
76 million people own a gun in this country. And now more than ever, the number of women who are buying and learning to fire guns is increasing.
It is indeed one of a steady stream of reports. A steady stream of bogus reports that gun ownership by women is increasing.
Tom Smith and Robert Smith thoroughly debunked this notion in a paper published in The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (86:1 1995). They examined such claims and the evidence and concluded:
Through the…
tlambert | February 27, 2004 Allan Lichtman posts on spoiled ballots in Florida 2000. (Hat tip: Ralph Luker). He rightfully refers to Lott's claims about ballot spoiling as "bizarre". Lott claims:
African-American Republicans who voted were 54 to 66 times more likely than the average African American to cast a non-voted ballot (either by not marking that race or voting for too many candidates). To put it another way: For every two additional black Republicans in the average precinct, there was one additional non-voted ballot. By comparison, it took an additional 125…
tlambert | February 19, 2004 Seems like everybody is trying out the Gender Genie, which analyses a piece of text and guesses the gender of the writer.
So I gave it Mary Rosh's writings to analyse. The verdict? Male. Well done, Gender Genie!