Been busy, haven't been able to follow-up on the thread.....
rgl wrote "Huh? Bellesiles is (was) an anti-gun hack that wrote a debunked anti-gun book. Bellesiles disgraced He was thoroughly lambasted for his shoddy work. So I think he has a lot to do with your sniping at Lott. Lott is still held in high regard last I looked."
Again, you brought up Bellesiles as a strawman, as no one else mentioned him. If you want to support him or not not support him that's fine, but he has nothing to do with Lott unless Lott's work was based upon Bellesiles work. Don't make an assumption, suggest that I support that assumption, and then use that assumption as some sort of indication of something bad as a smokescreen for Lott's problems. As an example:
I'll assume [since you're obviously a right wing gun nut who wants to overthrow
the government, based upon eralier comments made about the intent of the
2nd amendment] that you support Liddy. Well, Liddy stated that people needed
to shoot the feds in the head, so I guess that all that you're trying to do is to get
automatic weapons so that you can shoot it out with the feds.
See, you never said such a thing, but by using a strawman I can try to make you look bad, or divert attention from other points, or make a case that two unrelated issues are somewhow related. Bush did this by saying 'Iraq' and 'Saddam' often when speaking about 9/11, even though he and others have had to state that there is no link. Still, when polled something like 70% of people believed that Iraq was responsible for 9/11.
The academic credibility and personal integrity issues affecting John Lott are so prominent that even pro-gun supporters are having to let him go, as they know that failure to do so will only damage their own credibility.
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At least ten different academics from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Harvard School of Public Health, University of
Chicago, Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, Emory, and Northwestern University, have called Lott's work into question.
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The Journalist's Guide to Gun Policy Scholars and Second Amendment Scholars, Featuring experts -- liberals, moderates, and
conservatives -- whose research has led them to be skeptical of gun control, (compiled by Prof. Eugene Volokh, UCLA Law School,
(310) 206-3926),
http://gunscholar.com/ , used to list Lott, but has dropped him due to the integrity issues.
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David Hemenway
Professor of Health Policy
Department of Health Policy and Management
Harvard School of Public Health
In his analyses, Lott virtually always uses complicated econometrics. For readers to accept the results requires complete faith in
Lott's integrity, that he will always conduct careful and competent research. Lott does not merit such faith. It is unfortunate, for Lott
analyzes important policy issues in a contentious policy arena where more good research is needed. It is also disheartening for the
many careful academic researchers who are trying to conduct competent studies to see the impact that Lott's less careful research
has had on the policy debate.
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The (John) Lott Controversy
By Michelle Malkin
[other integrity issues with Lott deleted]
Lott now admits he used a fake persona, "Mary Rosh," to post voluminous defenses of his work over the Internet. "Rosh" gushed that
Lott was "the best professor that I ever had." She/he also penned an effusive review of “More Guns, Less Crime” on Amazon.com: "It
was very interesting reading and Lott writes very well." (Lott claims that one of his sons posted the review in "Rosh's" name.) Just last
week, "Rosh" complained on a blog comment board: "Critics such as Lambert and Lindgren ought to slink away and hide."
By itself, there is nothing wrong with using a pseudonym. But Lott's invention of Mary Rosh to praise his own research and blast other
scholars is beyond creepy. And it shows his extensive willingness to deceive to protect and promote his work.
Some Second Amendment activists believe there is an anti-gun conspiracy to discredit Lott as "payback" for the fall of Michael
Bellesiles, the disgraced former Emory University professor who engaged in rampant research fraud to bolster his anti-gun book,
“Arming America.”
But it wasn't an anti-gun zealot who unmasked Rosh/Lott. It was Internet blogger Julian Sanchez, a staffer at the libertarian Cato
Institute, which staunchly defends the Second Amendment. And it was the conservative Washington Times that first reported last
week on the survey dispute in the mainstream press.
In an interview Monday, Lott stressed that his new defensive gun use survey (whose results will be published in the new book) will
show similar results to the lost survey. But the existence of the new survey does not lay to rest the still lingering doubts about the old
survey’s existence.
The media coverage of the 1997 survey data dispute, Lott told me, is “a much-ado about nothing.”
I wish I could agree.
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