again from Media Matters - here's the first one:
I don't know if Michelle Malkin is a friend to gun control, but Media Matters included this in their article.
What's your opinion? Have conservative folks who usually side with the gun rights people given up on Prof. Lott?But, the most eloquent evisceration of his integrity comes from Michelle Malkin who wrote about one of his many controversies:
MALKIN: The most disturbing charge, first raised by retired University of California, Santa Barbara professor Otis Dudley Duncan and pursued by Australian computer programmer Tim Lambert, is that Lott fabricated a study claiming that 98 percent of defensive gun uses involved mere brandishing, as opposed to shooting. When Lott cited the statistic peripherally on page three of his book, he attributed it to "national surveys." In the second edition, he changed the citation to "a national survey that I conducted."[...]Lott claims to have lost all of his data due to a computer crash. He financed the survey himself and kept no financial records. He has forgotten the names of the students who allegedly helped with the survey and who supposedly dialed thousands of survey respondents long-distance from their own dorm rooms using survey software Lott can't identify or produce. Assuming the survey data was lost in a computer crash, it is still remarkable that Lott could not produce a single, contemporaneous scrap of paper proving the survey's existence, such as the research protocol or survey instrument.
Please leave a comment.
Isn't that the same sort of activity Michael Bellesiles was accused of doing?
ReplyDeleteWhat's worse, Lott's activities are at least as well known as Bellesiles's.
Me smells massive hypocracy here!
Lott's a prevaricating container of feces; his research is "biblical" in its propensity for conflating previously reached conclusions with whichever facts seem to support them. What's not to like about him?--if you're answer to any "threat" in life is a gun.
ReplyDeleteThere's a lot of other surveys that show similar findings:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guncite.com/kleckandgertztable1.html
We need a REALLY comprehensive RECENT study. When I win the lottery, I think I'll finance one.
...Orygunner...
Lott's ethical and fradulent transgressions go far beyond this particular instance.
ReplyDeleteHere's the deal: almost all gunloons know John Lott is a fraud. They've followed the debates and the revelations; they know Lott has been caught playing fast and loose with his 'studies.' They're also aware of the whole Mary Rosh foolishness. Can you imagine the outrage from gunloons if a Paul Helmke had pretended to be a woman for the purpose of pimping Paul Helmke?
Anyway, as I sagely noted, gunloons are fully aware of Lott's baggage. So why do they insist on citing him? The reason is pretty simple: they understand the vast majority of people aren't immersed in the gun policy debate; they understand 98% of the population has never heard of John Lott and have certainly never heard of his ethical issues. Since there is hardly any science or studies that support the pr-gunloon agenda--Lott becomes very useful to the NRA quislings.
From what I've read of the "More Guns = Less Crime" study, it appears there is almost no substantial change in the rate of violent crime when the people are allowed to carry concealed firearms.
ReplyDeleteThe reason is simple enough. There's no proven direct correlation between rate of gun ownership and crime, or gun control changes and crime.
If guns don't CAUSE crime, they aren't going to LOWER crime either.
Neither will changes to gun control laws.
...Orygunner...
Laci, You're absolutely right there's big hypocrisy there. But it's even worse than that. John Lott continues to be in the spotlight of the gun debate, as Jadegold pointed out, while Michael Bellesiles is all but unknown nowadays.
ReplyDelete