Comments on: John Lott Strikes Again

By: Quiddity

Quiddity — Sat, 14 May 2005 17:10:38 +0000

The follow-on review (immediately after Lott’s) reads:

*****

I’ve not read the book yet, but given that Mr. Lott and the AEI find fault with the author’s methodology and conclusions, I know that Mr. Levitt and Mr. Dubner are on the right track. Folks should know that the American Enterprise Institute is a neoconservative think tank. Unbiased they are not.

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By: junius ponds

junius ponds — Thu, 12 May 2005 19:29:17 +0000

This would make a good horror movie plot. “John Lott could be any of us!”

By: bi

bi — Thu, 12 May 2005 17:54:56 +0000

I think even the best anonymizers are useless when they’re used by fools… :|

By: Kristjan Wager

Kristjan Wager — Thu, 12 May 2005 16:45:38 +0000

Doesn’t annonymizers still exist? I am baffled why someone can’t hide it better than that.

By: bi

bi — Thu, 12 May 2005 16:19:10 +0000

Lambert, that's a no-brainer.

By: Tim Lambert

Tim Lambert — Thu, 12 May 2005 14:02:17 +0000

Sorry sebastian, my bad.

Now, who can spot the Lott sock puppet?

By: bi

bi — Thu, 12 May 2005 12:12:04 +0000

derrida derider: Exactly. And that’s why I hate the terms “open-minded” and “closed-minded”… they say nothing about the intelligence of the people who hold these traits.

By: derrida derider

derrida derider — Thu, 12 May 2005 12:04:46 +0000

bi, you shouldn’t be so open-minded your brains fall out. Lott and his nom-de-plumes have consistently misrepresented themselves. If someone behaves like that, why should I give credence to any of their work? It doesn’t mean I won’t listen to some other researcher claiming that concealed guns reduce crime; it just means I’l ignore assertions made by Rosh as I cannot trust their good faith.

I save my credulousness for those who do not have a track record of abusing it.

By: bi

bi — Thu, 12 May 2005 07:59:38 +0000

derrida derider: the term is “open-mindedness”. :-)

By: Sebastian Holsclaw

Sebastian Holsclaw — Thu, 12 May 2005 06:35:18 +0000

“Sebastian believes that the claim of the book “More Guns, Less Crime” is “gun availability does not seem to have a big correlation to crime rate”.”

Huh? I was talking about the claim of Freakonomics. Which is pretty obvious even if you had to rely on contextual clues since I mention Freakonomics by name and “More Guns, Less Crime” contains its thesis is the title. So if you can’t tell which book I’m talking about when I talk about ‘its’ thesis (which by the way we have noted Lott disagrees with) perhaps you should question your own reading comprehension rather than shooting yourself in the foot while suggesting that mine is lacking.

By: Tim Lambert

Tim Lambert — Thu, 12 May 2005 05:37:19 +0000

Nick, jet is not John Lott. Try again.

By: Barry Freed

Barry Freed — Thu, 12 May 2005 04:31:20 +0000

Hey guys! Sock-puppet rumble on CT again! gets popcorn

By: derrida derider

derrida derider — Thu, 12 May 2005 03:40:23 +0000

dsquared once bemoaned (apropos Iraq and WMD, actually) that there was no short name for the common error of “giving known liars the benefit of the doubt”. It is interesting to see some commenters persisting in that error here.

For all I know, Lott’s substantive argument about crime rates and concealed guns could be true – but I’d never take his word for it. The only thing honest people should do is completely disregard him.

By: BruceR

BruceR — Thu, 12 May 2005 00:08:24 +0000

Tim Lambert’s next post, where he identifies by IP the new Lott-sock, “Tom H” that showed up in his comments to argue over today’s earlier sock puppet story, is a classic. It really is pathological: http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/2005/05#lottcomments

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 11 May 2005 23:08:00 +0000

If by “mortally wounded” Jet means that someone else put forward a competing explanation of the data that Levitt immediately showed wasn’t empirically adequate, then yeah I’d say his theories were mortally wounded. This is a sense of being mortally wounded that I wish applied to more of my theories.