Julian Sanchez finds evidence that Lott lost data because of a computer crash. I'm afraid that he hasn't discovered anything new---his time would have been better spent reading Lindgren's report:
"I talked with one of Lott's co-authors on another paper, Bill Landes, and received emails from David Mustard, another co-author, and Gregory Huck, Lott's editor at the time at the University of Chicago Press. With varying degrees of certainty, all give circumstantial support to Lott's story of a sudden loss of data and text on projects, requiring delays and regeneration of work."
Marie Gryphon, who broke this story into blogspace has posted Lott's latest response.
In his latest response, Lott accuses both Lindgren and Duncan of making false statements. Some of the points in dispute involve what was said in a conversation between Lindgren and Lott. Here there is no direct evidence who is right, so readers will have have to judge for themselves who is the more credible witness. I can offer one piece of evidence on this question. I went over both Lindgren's "Fall from Grace: Arming America and the Bellesiles Scandal" and Lott's "More Guns, Less Crime" looking for holes. Here is the long list of errors I found in Lott's work. I don't have a list for Lindgren's work because I couldn't find any. Lindgren's work was written with meticulous care, Lott is careless with his facts.
On the other points it easy to find out who is telling the truth. For example, Lott claims: "My response in the Criminologist also discussed other incorrect claims by Duncan.". Let's see then. In his critique Duncan writes:
"The 'fifteen national polls' evidently include the thirteen summarized by Kleck and Gertz (1995), which is referenced by Lott, and by Kleck in Kates and Kleck (1997). The summary in Kleck (1997) adds to these the NSDS and NSPOF results, to make fifteen altogether."
In his response Lott writes:
"Duncan (p. 5) is concerned about where the reference to 'fifteen national polls' comes from, when the Kleck and Gertz (1995) piece provides a table that only lists twelve national and three state level polls. What is not mentioned by Duncan is that the twelve polls do not even include Kleck's own work and do not include subsequent surveys by Cook and Ludwig as well as my own research, thus producing a total of fifteen surveys."
So does the table in Kleck and Gertz (1995) contain thirteen polls as Duncan says, or fifteen polls as Lott says? Well, I counted thirteen, but you don't have to take my word for it---you can follow the link and count them yourself.
Lott writes:
"As to the attribution of sources, look at the complete context of the quote Lindgren mentions:Polls by the Los Angeles Times, Gallup and Peter Hart Research Associates show that there are at least 760,000, and possibly as many as 3.6 million, defensive uses of guns per year. In 98 percent of the cases, such polls show, people simply brandish the weapon to stop an attack.---August 6, 1998, Chicago Tribune and August 14, 1998, Washington Times"
OK, I looked at the complete context and is perfectly clear. The phrase "such polls" clearly refers to "Polls by the Los Angeles Times, Gallup and Peter Hart Research Associates". Lott has attributed the 98% figure to "Polls by the Los Angeles Times, Gallup and Peter Hart Research Associates". He hasn't attributed it to his own study. And none of the Los Angeles Times, Gallup, or Hart polls even asked if the gun was fired. Lott still refuses to admit that there is anything wrong with his attribution above. Lott writes:
As to so-called technical problems, I am have always acknowledged that these are small samples, especially when one breaks down the composition of those who use guns defensively. Even the largest of the surveys have few observations in this category.
Readers can easily check for themselves that on the over 50 times that Lott has cited the 98% statistic he never once stated that it was based on a small sample (a mere 25 incidents it seems), or that it was statistically unreliable. What's worse is that on several occasion he has claimed that 3/4 of the shots were warning shots. Here the sample size is the number of incidents where the gun was fired. Which was 1/2. Yes, that is not a typo, Lott put forward an estimate based on a sample size of less than one. Furthermore is not true that "Even the largest of the surveys have few observations in this category. Kleck's survey had 222 defensive gun uses, the NCVS has even more. The best case scenario for Lott is that on over 50 occasions he put forward a number based on a sample size he knew was to small to be statistically reliable, from a survey he knew that had been lost, and which was markedly different from the numbers produced by vastly more reliable surveys. In the best case he is guilty of scientific misconduct.