Tim Lambert
tlambert
Posts by this author
May 6, 2003
William Sjostrom gamely defends Lott against the charge that he anonymously accused Levitt of being "rabidly antigun".
May 5, 2003
Archpundit has some thoughtful comments on Mark Kleiman's post. Ryan Barrow has a short comment. Glenn Reynolds would like someone else to check to see if the Ayres and Donohue are correct about the coding errors. I think the way that Lott persistently ducks the question gives a strong…
May 5, 2003
Lott's corrected Table 3a from "Confirming More Guns, Less Crime"
May 4, 2003
Brian Linse comments on Mark Kleiman's post and suggests that people should write to the University of Chicago Press and ask them to investigate Lott. Tom Spencer also comments on Kleiman's post, as do Kevin Drum and Matt Yglesias.
Lott has just published an op-ed in the Minneapolis Star…
May 3, 2003
In his email to Mark Kleiman, Lott accused Ayres and Donohue of lying:However, the Stanford Law Review allowed Ayres and Donohue to add an addition to their piece commenting on all this. They said that:"It is important to note that what we now refer to as the PW response has already been widely…
May 2, 2003
Mark Kleiman has written a must read post covering the recent developments and concluding:
defenders of gun rights should stop citing Lott as an authority
the University of Chicago Press should conduct a formal enquiry into the existence of the 1997 survey
the AEI should conduct an enquiry into…
May 1, 2003
Still nothing from Lott on whether he concedes or denies the charge of coding errors.
In the mean time, let's examine his other claim: "Ayres and Donohue have simply misread their own results." This is a remarkable claim. Lott is saying that crime went down but somehow Ayres…
May 1, 2003
A gun control group has set up a "fan" site for Mary Rosh.
April 30, 2003
One more quote from yesterday's Chronicle of Higher Education article: Mr. Lott also points out that because the claim of coding errors appears in a law review, it has not been subject to review by third-party scholars, as would have been the case in a peer-reviewed economics…
April 29, 2003
David Glenn has an article (subscription required) in The Chronicle of Higher Education on the Ayres/Donohue/Lott dispute. Here are the responses from Lott and Whitley to the allegation of coding errors: Mr. Lott replies that the alleged coding errors are irrelevant to the larger debate. "…
April 28, 2003
John Quiggin comments on the collateral damage the Lott affair has inflicted on Lott's allies and supporters. Chris Lawrence has an update to his earlier post. Tapped has a brief summary of the latest installment in the saga.
Julian Sanchez and Kevin Drum mention Lott's response,…
April 27, 2003
skippy comments on Lott's "coding errors". Tom Spencer thinks that Lott's days are numbered. Mike Spenis has written off Lott.
Chris Lawrence agrees that there were coding errors but argues that is easy to make such errors. I agree that such errors are easy to make, but, he did it…
April 26, 2003
Several people have commented on the latest developments. Atrios has resolved that Lott is a liar and a fraud. Kevin Drum has his usual nice summary. Jesse Taylor isn't really interested because he believes that Lott has already been discredited. Julian Sanchez and Chris Lawrence are…
April 26, 2003
Kevin Drum provides a nice summary of Friday's long posting about weighting.
Cosma Shalizi tells us that his wife's boss is on the NAS Panel on firearms. Right now I'm thinking of a line of clothing emblazoned with: "I got smeared by Glenn Reynolds and all I got was this lousy t shirt".…
April 25, 2003
This is a long post, so I'll start with two summaries. One sentence summary: It looks as if Lott might have been caught cooking his "more guns, less crime" data.
One paragraph summary: Ian Ayres and John Donohue wrote a paper that found that, if anything, concealed carry laws lead…
April 25, 2003
Donald Kennedy, Editor-in-Chief of Science has an editorial (subscription required) in the April 18 edition entitled "Research Fraud and Public Policy". Here is some of it: Michael Bellesiles, of Emory University, supported the gun control case with a book called Arming America. Part of his…
April 25, 2003
A few days ago I observed that Lott had changed his story from his original, unworkable, claim that he had used 1836 categories (sex, race, age and state) to weight his data to the claim that he had used just six (sex and race). If this is indeed the scheme he used then two…
April 25, 2003
I was mistaken when I suggested that the email Dooher sent Reynolds was a hoax. I emailed Dooher asking him if he had written the letter and when I didn't get a reply, because of the weird stuff about goatees and because he got every single fact wrong (including the claim about the…
April 24, 2003
David Kaun, who is Professor of Economics at University of California Santa Cruz has an article over at BuzzFlash discussing Lott's More Guns, Less Crime.
April 24, 2003
It would seem that some wag has had some fun at poor Professor Reynolds' expense. Reynolds has an update with an email supposedly from one Brendan Dooher that reads: I worked with the study director at the National Academy of Sciences (he is actually in the National Academy of…
April 23, 2003
Some responses to Glenn Reynolds' post yesterday: Tbogg considers Reynolds to be washing his hands and changing the subject. Tom Spencer observes that it is dishonest of Reynolds to respond to criticism without providing a link to that criticism. Roger Ailes reckons that Reynolds is being…
April 22, 2003
Kevin Drum comments on Lott's weighting scheme. He also links to a January posting which has this explanation from Lott explaining how he might have got a weight of 1/8 from his weighting procedure (my emphasis). Whether it is possible depends upon how finely you do the weighting. If…
April 22, 2003
Glenn Reynolds finally gets around to blogging on the accusation in his article that Levitt is "rabidly antigun". Remarkably, Reynolds does not mention or link to any of the discussion about this that has occurred on many blogs.
April 21, 2003
Last September Lott told Lindgren that he "weighted his respondents by demographic information taken from his main national study in More Guns, Less Crime"
On January 14 he provided more details: I did not weight the sample by household size but used the state level age, race, and sex data that I…
April 20, 2003
Roger Ailes comments on Reynolds and Kopel's failure to show any evidence in support of the "rabidly antigun" claim. Greg Beato also has some extensive comments. Tom Spencer has two comments, as does Atrios here and here.
April 19, 2003
Otis Dudley Duncan has written an excellent article on Lott and defensive gun use surveys. I'll quote from the conclusion, but you really should read the whole thing:
Investigators are obliged to tell the truth about what they take from the work of other investigators and to provide…
April 17, 2003
Ted Barlow thinks that Mac Diva overstates her case against Lott's views on non-gun issues. I agree with him. While it is relevant to note that Lott's research always seems to produce results supporting a right-wing agenda, in most of those issues he does not indulge in advocacy. You can'…
April 17, 2003
Max Sawicky links here, as does Brad Delong and Hesiod.
Meanwhile, in a post that seems to have drifted in from some alternate reality, the William Sjostrom take on the Kopel/Reynolds/Lott attacks on Levitt is that Brad Delong is a sleaze.
In a previous message Glenn Reynolds…