Re: Whole Lott of Trouble for Gun-researcher

Bjórrúnar skaltu "daklute" <DaKlute@gmail.com> rista-

> http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/
> la-oe-wiener31may31,0,5587044.story?
> coll=la-news-comment-opinions
>
> Gun-research 'Freak'-out
> 'Freakonomics' shot holes in his data, but why does pro-gun
> writer John Lott need a lawyer to defend himself?
> By Jon Wiener, JON WIENER is professor of history at UC Irvine
> and the author of "Historians in Trouble," which contains a
> chapter on John Lott.
> May 31, 2006
>
> COULD IT BE that more guns cause less crime? Could it be that
> criminals who suspect their potential victims are armed would
> be deterred from committing crimes? That's what John R. Lott
> Jr. argued in his 1998 book, "More Guns, Less Crime."
>
> But could it be that Lott is wrong; that other researchers
> have been unable to confirm his thesis? That's what Steven D.
> Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner argued in their bestselling 2005
> book, "Freakonomics." How should this debate be resolved?
> Lott's solution is to try to get the U.S. District Court in
> Chicago to issue an injunction blocking the sale of
> "Freakonomics." That's a terrible way to deal with
> controversial research about a crucial public policy issue.
> Instead of trying to silence his critics, Lott ought to
> respond to their criticisms.
>
> Lott contended in his book that crime was reduced by so-called
> right-to-carry laws in 35 states allowing people to carry
> concealed weapons. His supporting research is considered only
> briefly in "Freakonomics," which has sold more than 1 million
> copies and has remained a bestseller for more than 56 weeks.
> Instead, Levitt and Dubner briefly mention the "troubling
> allegation" that Lott "invented some of the survey data" in
> "More Guns, Less Crime" and then go on to discuss more broadly
> that Lott's overall argument is apparently wrong.
>
> "Regardless of whether the data were faked," they say, "Lott's
> admittedly intriguing hypothesis doesn't seem to be true. When
> other scholars have tried to replicate his results, they found
> that right-to-carry laws simply don't bring down crime."
>
> That last sentence, Lott says in his lawsuit, is false and has
> "seriously damaged" his reputation. Therefore, he argues, the
> sale of the book should be stopped until the offending
> sentence has been removed. Yet many other scholars have
> criticized Lott in stronger terms without triggering a
> lawsuit.
>
> If you Google "John Lott" and "research fraud," you get nearly
> 150 results, starting off with a 2003 article published in
> Science magazine by Donald Kennedy, the editor in chief, which
> criticizes Lott's "cooked data." You get an article by Yale
> Law School professors Ian Ayres and John Donohue, published in
> the Stanford Law and Economics Working Paper series, who have
> run the numbers. "In most states," they wrote in 2002,
> right-to-carry laws "have been associated with more crime,"
> not less. Most important, you get the exhaustive 2004 report
> from the prestigious National Research Council, which found
> "no credible evidence" supporting Lott's thesis - pretty much
> what "Freakonomics" said.
>
> But Lott and his supporters disagree. They say it's not true
> that other researchers have been unable to validate his
> results. They point to a 2001 issue of the Journal of Law and
> Economics that contains several articles by scholars who agree
> with Lott.
>
> But it turns out that all the papers in that issue were
> originally presented at a conference organized by Lott,
> according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. The Chronicle
> reported that Lott not only "arranged for the papers to be
> published in a special edition" of the journal, which is not
> unusual, but he also paid for the printing and postage.
>
> Levitt complained in an e-mail to a colleague that "for
> $15,000 he was able to buy an issue and put in only work that
> supported him." (Lott's lawsuit also targets that e-mail as
> false and defamatory - yes, you can be sued for a statement
> made in an e-mail to a single person.)
>
> The charges that some of Lott's research was "faked" or
> "cooked" refer to the first statistic cited in "More Guns,
> Less Crime," in which Lott says "98% of the time that people
> use guns defensively, they merely have to brandish a weapon to
> break off an attack." In Op-Ed articles in the Chicago Tribune
> and elsewhere, he said the source of the 98% figure was "polls
> by the Los Angeles Times" and other organizations.
>
> When critics noted that no such polls existed, Lott changed
> his story, and the second edition of "More Guns, Less Crime"
> gave a new source for the 98% figure: "a national survey I
> conducted." But when critics asked to see the data, Lott told
> the Washington Post and others that he had lost it all in a
> computer crash.
>
> Scholars, including James Lindgren, professor of law at
> Northwestern University, asked Lott for other evidence that he
> had conducted his own survey: names of employees who made the
> calls, phone records, tally sheets, pay stubs. Lott replied
> that he had nothing, according to Lindgren.
>
> But Lott is not suing those who have said some of his pro-gun
> research was "invented," "faked" or "cooked." The lawsuit
> turns on the definition of "replicate," from the
> "Freakonomics" sentence about how other scholars have tried
> and failed to "replicate his results." Lott maintains
> "replicate" means "analyze the identical data in the way Lott
> did." Because nobody tried to do that, he argues,
> "Freakonomics" is wrong. Most people, however, understand
> "replicate" to mean something like "confirm."
>
> Lott's reputation has indeed been "seriously damaged" by
> critics, but only because they have described many apparent
> holes in his dubious research and misleading citations.
> Blocking the sale of a book based on a literal interpretation
> of a single word would be outrageous.
>
> The U.S. District Court should throw this case out promptly.
>
>


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