Two additional comments on John Lott:
First, from Mac Diva:
It is NOT a good time to be named Lott.
Having been interested in constitutional law issues at least since law school, I read Lott's book when it first came out and was not impressed. That 98 percent of assailants tuck tail and run if a gun is brandished claim bugged me from the get go. Nothing is ever THAT pure, including Ivory soap. Another thing that struck me as strange is that based on crime reports, many self-injuries happen when people brandish guns. So, there is definitely another important aspect to pistol waving moms and pops Lott ignores. Heck, maybe they scare off assailants by shooting themselves.
I have taken the liberty of updating the reviews of 'More Guns, Less Crime' at Amazon. And entry including the fact that Lott's research is in dispute should appear within five days.
Glenn Reynold's other 'stellar' source, Dave Kopel, is almost as bad. His book is a polemic echoing about every conspiracy theory of the far Right.
Mac Diva
Second from Matt Weiner:
A minor point about fraud:
It looks like J-Lott has reached a new level of fraud, and one that should get him read out of the academia the way Bellesiles should be.
His old work was shitty and intellectually dishonest (as far as I remember/could tell), but it doesn't count as fraudulent. The thing about that work is that anyone who read it through, and thought about it, could tell that he hadn't established the required causal relationship. So the only people who are deceived are the ones foolish enough to believe his argument (and the ones who pass it along).
Making up a survey is on a whole different level. There's no way the reader can check for herself whether J-Lott really did the survey he claims to have done, and so everyone runs the risk of being deceived by this. This is why academic work depends on researchers' not making up facts, but it doesn't depend on their not making up crappy arguments. Crappy arguments can be knocked down by anyone, phony facts are uncheckable.
In short: If anyone can see that your argument is wrong, it's just intellectual dishonesty (or stupidity). If only you can tell that your argument is wrong, it's fraud. J-Lott has crossed a line.
Matt Weiner
