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 footnote indicating that the man is all but entirely discredited, or just ignore the paper?
Usually it is best to provide all relevant information to your readers, so you can't ignore his paper or his misconduct. So you cite the paper and add a footnote warning your readers that he is not a reliable source of information.
More like this
The Chicago Tribune reports:
Last year an anonymous person from the American Enterprise Institute
repeatedly tried and failed to remove all
criticism of Lott from his
wikipedia page. He
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.
On July 12 The Columbus Dispatch published a letter from Paul van Doorn replying to an earlier letter from David Mayer that I commented on. Here is an extract (hyperlinks added by me):