Good Old John Lott

What I love about Crooked Timber is the site’s high standards. It is not a site where one finds personal insults substituting for evidence, or where vulgarity is used by adolescents to attack opponents. The mostly academics who run the site set a high standard for the rest of the blogosphere, and have done much to raise the level of debate everywhere.

There are some who think that our colleges and universities desperately need reform. The rational discussions at Crooked Timber, which never descend to ad hominem attacks, are evidence that such concerns are mistaken.

It’s simple. If you mention the name of your opponent in your argument, you are using an ad hominem attack and should be disregarded. If your opponent insults your height, weight, school tie and nationality, he is merely being satirical and his argument should be addressed independently of his playful personal japery.

As long as Lott gets published, whether on op-ed pages or books or (it’s possible, I guess) peer-reviewed journals, it is a public service to point out that anyone who publishes his work without vetting every single word shames themselves.

Jim Miller, I don’t know you, but my only data point on your ability to think is not positive.

Here I compliment Kieran and his fellow Timberites and he thinks I am being sarcastic. It is a sad, distrustful world we live in.

One would almost think that he disagrees with my claim that the standards of debate here are high. For instance, when he says that Donald Luskin is the “stupidest man alive” I am sure that he has the IQ tests to prove that. And will produce that evidence, if asked to.

wcw: What Michelle Malkin pointed out is that the broadcast of the Super Bowl did not contain any tribute to the troops. If she is wrong about that, send me the evidence and I will correct the post, and thank you for your help.

And if I may say so, you may want to read further at my site. For example, Chris Bertram, in a post at this very site, agreed that I was right in my argument that the first reports of the Iraqi museum looting were exaggerated. (And I might add that some conservatives went too far the other way.)

Some time ago, I did a post on public opinion on Vietnam to correct the common belief that the young were more opposed to the war than the old. I find that piece often gets linked, usually by those on the left, because I supply data that is not easily available elsewhere.

As for Michelle Malkin, I think that sometimes she is right and sometimes she is wrong. I once criticized Malkin and Paul Krugman in the same post for committing the “ecological fallacy”. (Both have made that mistake more than once, by the way.)

Finally, I would add a point that is sometimes forgotten in the blogosphere. Most nations, certainly including the United States, still have laws against slander. I am not a lawyer, so I have no idea whether the claim that another person is the stupidest person alive, assuming for the moment that the claim is false, is actionable, but it does seem to me the sort of thing that a prudent person would avoid. (And I would say the same about some comments from Daniel Davies that I inspired here last fall.)

“Jim Miller” must be Mary Rosh’s sock-puppet.

Brad Delong is hosting a “stupidest man alive” contest. His nominee is Jonah Goldberg, who has Lott beat.
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/

Oh, how we are going off topic. To reiterate: every word that comes out of John Lott’s keyboard is suspect. Every coefficient he copies from a stats program is dubious. Every conclusion he reaches should be considered cherrypicked, misleading or just-plain lying unless proven beyond any doubt to be otherwise. Full stop.

Jim, I would be very sorry to have to subject you to a similar judgement. Alas, you appear, like Lott, to be congenitally incapable of swallowing legitimate criticism. Here’s one more chance.

To reiterate, the first phrase I noticed on a clickthrough to your screeds read, “as Michelle Malkin points out.” I suggested you test your hypothesis that either Lott or Malkin shows the ability to “point out” anything. You were gracious enough to drop any defense of Lott (though fairness ought to have militated for an explicit denunciation), but you got all snippy on Malkin, retorting, “[w]hat Michelle Malkin pointed out is that the broadcast of the Super Bowl..” [snip claims] and proceeded to playact at fairly taking insult.

Should anyone have the patience for a second clickthrough, he will find that what Malkin said, to which you linked, is, “I didn’t watch the football game yesterday.” It was not she, but others who “pointed out” that the Stupid Bowl’s halftime show lacked the requisite militarism.

It is, I suppose, true that Malkin pointed out that other people pointed out that the halftime show didn’t include any explicit tributes to the armed forces.

You might, however, see that I feel it doesn’t do much for your attempt to refute my point.

I shall reiterate the point that John Lott is a sycophantic, cherrypicking, useful idiot. Malkin’s no better, but math scares people, so it’s more important to underline Lott’s utter intellectual bankruptcy.

John Lott is an exceptionally erudite and masculine hunk of a man. I think you’re just envious of his superior intellect and fabulous good looks. How could anyone say such things about such a fine example of a human being/sheep’s ass is beyond me.

“I am not a lawyer, so I have no idea whether the claim that another person is the stupidest person alive, assuming for the moment that the claim is false, is actionable, but it does seem to me the sort of thing that a prudent person would avoid.”

OK, this has to be satire; obviously, it’s a clever allusion to Luskin’s risible threatened lawsuit against Atrios! Really, I would prefer not to even consider the alternative interpretation.

I get it. This comment thread is a sequel to the Satire Is Dead thread below.

I don’t see what all the fuss is about. Maximizing a “three-variable function defined by stupidity, error and sheer bad faith” is not necessarily bad. Who’s to say that the three-variable function isn’t -(s+e+sbf)?

It’s unfair to lump Michelle Malkin and John Lott together, especially as Malkin (unlike Jim Miller) has accepted the evidence showing that Lott is a serial fraudster. I’m no fan of Malkin, but Lott/Rosh are in a class of their own.

John Q, Malkin does seem to have some intellectual integrity issues of her own.

I’m sure you remember them – they are the guys who didn’t know the difference between degrees and radians…

Birds of a feather flock together.