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December 09, 2003 MY NAME IS JOHN LOTT, AND I'M A SOCK PUPPET ADDICT....It now appears that John Lott isn't just corrupt, he's also stupid. Apparently after "Mary Rosh" was outed as Lott's sock puppet earlier this year, and after Lott admitted "I should not have done it," he kept on doing it anyway under a different name. Crikey, John, when are you going to learn that tech weenies are really good at tracking down aliases on the internet? Needless to say, this latest bit of Christmas cheer comes from
tech-weenie-in-chief Tim Lambert, and I am assured by a reliable source —
Tim — that there's much, much more fun to come. I, for one, can't
wait. Comments
Maybe "Washingtonian" and "Mary Rosh" can meet and have a passel of imaginary gun-loon kids. Posted by: Ras_Nesta at December 9, 2003 12:30 PM | PERMALINKThis story is simply too complicated for me. It's still too early to say anything at this point. Posted by: Glenn Reynolds at December 9, 2003 12:44 PM | PERMALINKI removed Bellesiles "Arming America" from my library's shelves because even his employer reprimanded him. Is there a similar unimpeachable source accusing Lott of research fraud? We happen to have his book in the shelves also. Posted by: David the Obscure at December 9, 2003 01:07 PM | PERMALINKThis is somewhat in the nature of damning Lott with faint praise, but while Lott is an embarassment, Bellesiles resides on a whole different plain. There's scarcely anything in "Arming America" that isn't some sort of fraud or misrepresentation. And it's not subtle stuff, we're talking altered quotes, non-existant records, sources cites as supporting which actually contradict the thesis. All to grossly stand the truth on it's head. Even Lott's critics would have to admit that the difference between their results and Lott's are right on the edge of statistical significance, and worlds away from the ravings of newspaper editorialists about "blood in the streets". A pickpocket and a mass murderer are both "criminals". But you don't equate them. Posted by: Brett Bellmore at December 9, 2003 01:37 PM | PERMALINKBrett wrote: "Even Lott's critics would have to admit that the difference between their results and Lott's are right on the edge of statistical significance" I'm neither a supporter nor a critic of Lott. However, your statement is not accurate. Lott's critics are saying a lot more than "the stats don't work out". They're questioning whether the studies were ever even done. That puts him in the same sphere, world, universe, whatever, as Bellesiles. Posted by: Jeff Boatright at December 9, 2003 01:56 PM | PERMALINKI'd have to agree with Jeff, but for the purposes of withdrawing a book, I'd need something more than accusations in a blog. Posted by: David the Obscure at December 9, 2003 02:07 PM | PERMALINKWhen it comes to honest mistakes, the fact that Lott's results are on the edge of significance might be a saving grace. That's not what Lott's critics are accusing him of. They're accusing him of taking data which doesn't support his preferred political conclusions, and (a) miscoding it and (b) tweaking his models until he got the results he wanted. Then, of course, there's a study which many people are convinced he never did. (I'm one of them.) When it comes to basic honesty in his research, a miss is as good as a mile. Since his book is built around a model that his critics believe to be fraudulent, it's hard for me to see how he's not in the same category as Bellesiles. (If the charges are true, of course.) Posted by: Ted Barlow at December 9, 2003 02:07 PM | PERMALINKBellesiles worked for an academic institution, where intellectual dishonesty (fraud) is not and can not be countananced. Lott works for the American Enterprise Institute, which is
essentially a propaganda house. Fraud (or should I say tendentious
dissembling) is what they do. Of course AEI isn't going to reprimand him . Don't hold your breath, David. Brett, do you have a cite for saying Bellesiles's work was completely rotten? From the descriptions I've seen it was more like "the cornerstone of the argument - the main table - is rotten, but much of the rest is defensible." Posted by: rilkefan at December 9, 2003 02:36 PM | PERMALINKThis is the sausage-making aspect of libraries, which is you can't really evaluate the books you acquire before you buy them. Sometimes only complaints alert you to problems in the stacks, and then the evidence has to be overwhelming for removal of a title. At least the Lott aliases are embarassing (assuming he has a sense of shame, which is unlikely). Posted by: David the Obscure at December 9, 2003 02:36 PM | PERMALINKA lot of circumstantial evidence to be sure, but I'm holding judgement until further evidence is in... Posted by: Dennis at December 9, 2003 02:46 PM | PERMALINKIf David the Obscure wants the whole down and dirty, he should of course check out Tim Lambert's web site, which has all the details. I think it's fair to say that we have entered serious Bellesiles territory here with Lott. He is alleged both to have (a) wholly fabricated evidence (the mysterious 98 percent survey); and (b) altered data after it had been shown to have been miscoded; and (c) lied repeatedly about matters large and small relating to his More Guns, Less Crime book. The sock puppet thing is part of (c), which makes it the least of these. On the other hand, as far as I am aware no one has disputed the accuracy of his underlying data; people disagree, sometimes strenuously, with what he does to it with his statistical analysis. The made-up survey is not central to the MGLC argument, though his increasingly tortured defense of it is, I think, testament to his character. So this would be in not-quite-Bellesiles territory, I think. There is also something to the notion that because Lott works at AEI, allegations of fraud have not been taken with the seriousness that similar allegations were taken at Emory. You will note, incidentally, that Lott has gone from a tenure track position at Wharton to a non-tenure-able position at Chicago to a Research Fellow position at Yale to AEI. No doubt Mary Rosh will tell you it's anti-conserative bias in the academy, but I think that kind of career path is also somewhat telling. Posted by: Mark S. at December 9, 2003 02:54 PM | PERMALINKThere's really not much doubt any longer that Lott deliberately miscoded data and then tried to hide it. Regardless of how the actual numbers work out, that's fraud. http://www.calpundit.com/archives/002120.html Does it mean all the rest of his stuff is lousy? Who knows? But that's the problem: once you know that someone is willing to make up phony stuff in one case, there's no way to trust anything else he does. Posted by: Kevin Drum at December 9, 2003 02:55 PM | PERMALINKPhew! Now the AEI will fire his ass for sure. Kevin's right. I was under the impression that the A&D dispute with Lott was over a second set of regressions, not the data in More Guns, Less Crime. A forward-thinking librarian would take a month to learn some statistics, and then remove the book; it's pretty clearly going to eventually end up in Bellesiles-ville. That's a hard call, though. Good luck to D the O. Posted by: Mark S. at December 9, 2003 03:16 PM | PERMALINKThe right-wing love of sock puppets doesn't stop at inventing yes-men, of course. Adam Yoshida, who has received a few Indeeds from Professor Instalinker, was caught red-handed by Roger Ailes, creating a fake "Schizophrenics for Dean" blog, then linking to it from his own blog 15 minutes later to prove... something, I think. Posted by: neil at December 9, 2003 03:38 PM | PERMALINKI can't recall the website, but someone has focused on John Lott's Here is his piece (long) Many of the same patterns in his election study and his gun studies. He really won't bother to do good science. Rilkefan, the table was about the only thing the University would look at, it's not the only thing that was rotten. Cramer's got a list of bad quotes and the like in the book that I've provided a link to. (Warning, it's LONG.) I spotted some of them myself, and I'm no historian, I just didn't sleep through high school. In particular, it was rather amazing to see him alter the text of the 1792 militia act, which wasn't exactly an obscure document. Guess I'd say that removing Bellesiles was an easy call, (Though I'd just have printed out something pointing out that it was a fraud, and where to get the evidence, and pasted it on the inside cover.) removing Lott a hard one. But not a call I'd fault you for. Posted by: Brett Bellmore at December 9, 2003 04:15 PM | PERMALINKI think a great help to understanding this story is to see what this man actually looks like:
yup, that looks like a libertarian to me's. Posted by: Troy at December 9, 2003 05:36 PM | PERMALINKIf for some reason AEI did fire Lott, Slate would probably hire him as Mickey Kaus's research assistant. Posted by: Instahack at December 9, 2003 06:00 PM | PERMALINKPerhaps the University of Tennessee Law School would hire him. Posted by: Barry at December 9, 2003 08:04 PM | PERMALINKPlease do not make fun of Lott's appearance. It's not his fault so it's unfair to mock him for it. Mock him for the things he chose to do. Lott and Bellesiles are alike in both the depth (fabricating research results) and the breadth of what they did. People have focussed on one aspect (Lott's survey and Bellesiles probate records) because it is complicated enough to understand that one issue, but in both cases there are many more things. I have hundreds of entries in my blog on Lott because I need that many to list all the things he has done wrong. And it's gotten to the stage where I don't even bother with the little things any more. Nor is it true that Bellesiles' case was as obvious as you claimed. To look at your example, he misquoted the 1792 militia act. Does that mean he lied? He says that he made an editing error and mixed up the text of the 1792 act with the 1803 amendment, and he corrected it in the next edition. This is very sloppy and shows that we should not rely on him but it is not obviously fraud. And just to be clear here, I think he did committ fraud but the case is nowhere near as obvious as you make out. Posted by: Tim Lambert at December 9, 2003 08:35 PM | PERMALINKTrading in gossip and rumors is bad for our democracy. Posted by: Gabe at December 9, 2003 09:25 PM | PERMALINKdata will confess to anything if you torture it enough. Lott is a cherrypicker (viz. Florida, not to mention his hilarious regression model to back up Rush Limbaugh's on-air racism). any statistical result he produces can be assumed to have been twisted back and forth to comply with Lott's preconceptions. in the absence of convincing, independent work to the contrary, I would assess all of Lott's statistical output as worthless. if there's only enough shelf space for either Lott or some objective work, Lott goes. I hate to defend Lott (I've met the man, and he's an arrogant jack*** who does no right and knows no wrong), but if Washingtonian hasn't posted since Rorsch was discovered, it's really not news. That he didn't admit all his secret identities shows he lacks character (and, duh, we're talking about Lott here) but it doesn't show that he continued to perpetrate a fraud in any real sense. On the other hand, if Washintonian continued doing business after Rorsch got outed, then the guy's more of a complete joke than I thought. Regardless, what the heck does one have to do to get fired by the AEI, or even disliked by ANYBODY on the right? Posted by: Justin at December 9, 2003 10:07 PM | PERMALINKNevermind, Washingtonian seems like he's still alive and well. Lott's a prick. Posted by: Justin at December 9, 2003 10:10 PM | PERMALINKCome on, Lambert, don't undermine your credibility at this late date, with some lame defense of Bellesiles. That was scarcely the only error in the book, and nobody has pointed out a similar number of errors that are neutral, or undermine the thesis. Aren't accidents supposed to be randomly distributed? Sheer incompetence doesn't cut it here; About the only plausible alternative to deliberate fraud is mental illness. As for "cherry picking", that's got to be the most ironic attack on Lott I've ever heard, considering that most of the early attacks on his work consisted of finding some pretext or other to exclude large portions of the data. I'm not saying that it might not be true of some of his work, just ironic. Maybe he got a distorted idea of what's acceptable research, based on what the VPC and Brady Center got away with funding? Posted by: Brett Bellmore at December 10, 2003 03:50 AM | PERMALINKBrett, if you thought that was a defence of Bellesiles, you weren't paying attention. It is quite possible for a sloppy and biased researcher to make a lot of mistakes all favouring his thesis. This happens when he only double checks the facts that oppose his thesis. Those errors get corrected but the others don't. And if a whole pile of errors in one direction prove fraud in Bellesiles, how come you don't apply the same standard to Lott? As for your take on "cherry picking", you do youself no good at all by repeating Lott's dishonest attack on Black and Nagin. What they did was not cherry-picking. In fact, Lott used exactly the same technique in his original paper. Lott just wanted an easy argument he could use against their work and you guys swallowed it, hook line and sinker. Posted by: Tim Lambert at December 10, 2003 05:04 AM | PERMALINKI guess this goes to show that not everyone can be as cool and honest as Bryan. I think bryan is cool. Tim, you have to understand. Brett just doesn't want his Howitzer to be confiscated by the black helicopters of United Nations Nation. He really, really doesn't want that. Having dealth with Brett on other fora, that has become clear. Posted by: raj at December 10, 2003 06:48 AM | PERMALINKAh, so you ARE that "Raj"; I wasn't sure. I'm not too concerned about black helicopters, and the UN's a joke, but yeah, I don't want the government confiscating my guns, (Like they've done in many jurisdictions in the US, so let's not pretend it's an unrealistic fear.) any more than I want them censoring my speech, or denying me my right to a jury trial. You know me well enough to know that I'm a fiend for the entire Constitution, right? Posted by: Brett Bellmore at December 10, 2003 07:37 AM | PERMALINKBrett, the fact that you can't seperate your pro-gun views with your opinion of Lott's integrity is, to say the least, an indication that you are unqualified to judge him. I'm a (mostly) pro-gun Democrat (I'm actually somewhere between the
two camps), but I think Lott is full of it. And I don't think it's a
close call. I think Lott just likes to use big words so his listeners
believe there really isn't a right or a wrong answer. Finny: The combover can be forgiven. Those eyebrows can't. Posted by: Joe Grossberg at December 10, 2003 01:53 PM | PERMALINKI never knew Lott was a Cardassian. I removed Bellesiles "Arming America" from my library's shelves because even his employer reprimanded him. I can certainly understand not buying books that fail to meet an established scholarly standard, but removing books of doubtful value? That must be a full time job. Posted by: Paul at December 10, 2003 02:17 PM | PERMALINKGenius hath electric power which earth can never tame. Posted by: Brooke Nicholas at January 20, 2004 12:47 AM | PERMALINKIts rather interesting for me.. http://puppy.healz.com/ Hi, I just wanted so say thank you guys ! I really like your site and i hope you will continue to improving it. http://nutrition-information.bcure.com/ foot fetish jobs | naked amateurs | adult movie station | petite sex | hardcore anal sex | amateur facials | ifriends webcams adult chat | shaved pussy | upskirt voyeur sex | teen porn videos | mature sex gallery Posted by: mikes apartment at June 30, 2004 07:03 PM | PERMALINKBest XXX Sites - Is it true or not? Could the pill work for me? Get more information! 1606 check out the hot blackjack at http://www.blackjack-p.com here you can play blackjack online all you want! So everyone ~SMURKLE~ Posted by: blackjack at August 23, 2004 04:21 AM | PERMALINK6762 Herie http://blaja.web-cialis.com is online for all your black jack needs. We also have your blackjack needs met as well ;-) Posted by: blackjack at August 25, 2004 07:46 AM | PERMALINK5292 check out http://texhold.levitra-i.com for texas hold em online action boodrow Posted by: online texas hold em at August 26, 2004 10:30 PM | PERMALINK |
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