John Lott sues "Freakonomics" author Steven Levitt

[Carl N. Brown]

very similar, well documented ?

Let's see, Lott claims whole percentage points decline in crime from
Right-To-Carry laws; his critics claim plus 0.15 or minus 0.20.

Bellesiles claimed that probate records showed only 7 percent of
Colonial Americans owned firearms, while other researcvhers
found 40, 70 or 80 percent based on location, with an estimated
average in the high 60s.

Not similar.

Lindgren found that 75% of colonial probate records showed guns
but only 25% showed clothing. To reduce the point to absurdity,
probate records show that 25% of colonial Armericans were
unarmed and 75% were nudists.

Flash back time (wobblity wobblity ripple effect):

Five months before Bellesiles' book Arming Americacame out,
Anthony Ramirez of the New York Times promoted the book in
the NYT book reviews, saying that the probate records were
"Mr. Bellesiles's principal evidence."

2000 Sep --- For Fall, Alfred Knopf published Arming America.
Knopf's publicity claimed that Arming Americawas "the NRA's
worst nightmare" and would "completely transform America's gun
debate." Press releases by Knopf gushed: "A myth-busting tour
de force... deeply researched, brilliantly argued... good
history.... an authoritative account.... sensible analysis...
a superb piece of historical work.... a classic work of
significant scholarship.... an eye-opener."

Knopf Press Release and back cover of Arming America
quoted Stewart Udall: "Thinking people who deplore Americans'
addiction to gun violence have been waiting a long time for
this information. Michael Bellesiles has uncovered dramatic
historical truths that shatter the 'Ten Commandments' hokum
peddled by the National Rifle Association and its ersatz Moses."

John Chambers, a military historian from Rutgers, reviewed
the book for the Washington Post saying that the probate records
were Bellesiles' "freshest and most interesting source."

Edmund Morgan, one of the country's leading historians of
colonial America, followed suit, exclaiming in the New York Review
of Books, "The evidence is overwhelming. First of all are the
probate records."

2000 Sep 10- New York Times Book Review, Gary Wills:
"Arming Americahas dispersed the darkness that covered the
gun's early history in America." Wills praised Bellesiles for
debunking the myths of the gun lobby: that early gun ownership
was common and the Second Amendment is an individual right.
Bellesiles' research, especially the probate data, showed that
Colonial Era gun ownership was rare; therefore, Second Amendment
only guaranteed the power of the state to arm the militia.

2000 Sep 25- National Public Radio's "Fresh Air":
Q: "Do you think that the gun lobby in America has been drawing
upon false history to justify its desire to prevent any further
regulation of guns?"
Bellesiles: "If I may restate that, I think they have been drawing
upon a mythologized past to justify their position in terms of
opposing any gun regulation today. I think that is correct...."

Chicago-Kent Law Review, Vol. 76, No.1, symposium edited by
Carl T. Bogus was devoted to articles criticising the
"Standard Model" or individual rights interpretation of the
Second Amendment, right to keep and bear arms.
Michael Bellesiles' article, Second Amendment in Action,
concludes: "The Second Amendment confirmed [a] commitment to
organize and arm a militia."
Most participants recruited by Bogus had joined Brooklyn Law
School Professor David Yassky in signing amicus curiae briefs
in the case of United States v. Timothy Joe Emerson
(U.S. Court of Appeals, 5th Circuit, case no. 99-10331)

2000 Nov 14- Bellesiles appeared on KQED, San Francisco.
When asked his position on gun control, Bellesiles responded
that he had never taken a position on current gun policy.

When "amatuer" historians like Clayton Cramer raised questions
about Bellesiles book, professional academia poo-pooed them.
Then self-professed liberal and self-described gun control
advocates in academia began looking at the criticism, with
a view to debunk the critics, and instead ended up debunking
Bellesiles.

Bellesiles claimed that there were so few gunsmiths in colonial
Virginia, that when the Virginia armory was established they had
to import gunsmiths from Ireland. In fact, as pointed out by
Clayton Cramer, local gunsmiths refused the low pay offered by
Virginia because the private sector paid better, and Virginia
imported Irish-American gunsniths already at work in Pennsylvania.

Researchers who bothered to look up sources cited by Bellesiles
found they seldomn said what he claimed they said. Bellesiles
claimed that an 1630 gun census showed only 100 guns in a colony of
a thousand men: the source cited in the footnote was an order for
100 guns and 100 sets of clothes for 100 new colonists dated 1628.

Two words about Arming America: Caveat Lector!

Historian Gary Wills wrote a glowing NYT review of Arming America
when it first appeared. After the book became a controversy, Wills was
asked to defend it; Wills replied: "I was took. The book is a fraud."

William & Mary Law Review, Law Professor James Lindgren and
attorney Justin Heather, "Counting Guns in Early America."
The authors found that Bellesiles claimed he examined about a hundred
wills in Providence, R.I., that do not exist, and that he also miscited
the records that could be found. They found that Bellesiles's main 1700s
probate contentions, included in this book and in an article in 1996,
were "mathematically impossible."

++ And this was not like the John Lott case where nine articles got
similar results and eight articles got minor differences: this was
every attempt to look at Bellesiles' probate research got radically
different results, even those who started as his defenders.

On Bellesiles comparison of guns in San Francisco County
probate records comparing 1849-50 with 1858-59:
"When I asked [Bellesiles] point-blank whether he had used probate
records from San Francisco County, he answered: "I used county probate
records from the Superior Court. I had to go the courthouse -- the San
Francisco Superior Court." But the deputy clerk of the court, Clark
Banayad, says flatly, "Every record at the San Francisco Superior
Court predating 1906 was destroyed . . . in the 1906 earthquake.""
--Melissa Sekora, reporter

According to the Emory University Wheel student newspaper, Bellesiles
has told them several contradictory stories about the Bowden Hall Flood
of 2 Apr 2000 that allegedly destroyed his probate notes.

"If I am wrong, I want you to be able to fix my mistakes. The only
way that can happen, however, is if I share my data and make clear
exactly what sources I looked at. Michael hasn't done that yet."
--Professor Randolph Roth, Ohio State University

The probate data--cited as key to Arming America by Gary Wills
in the NYT Book Review, as "Mr. Bellesiles's principal evidence" by
Anthony Ramirez (NYT) and as Bellesiles' "freshest and most interesting
source" by John Chambers (Rurtgers)--vanished in the sunlight like
a will-of-the-wisp.

"Bellesiles fails to provide even basic information about the probate
figures that form the basis of his claims for the rarity of guns. And
he repeatedly makes general statements that are extreme. But if you
check his footnotes, a more disturbing pattern emerges. It is not just
an odd mistake or a difference of interpretation, but misrepresentation
of what his sources actually say, time after time after time."
--Professor Joyce Malcolm, History, Bentley College

The Federal Lawyer published a favorable review of Arming America
written by Michael Coblenz in January 2001. In the October 2002 issue,
Coblenz retracted his review:
"As a result of my limited knowledge, I have always been skeptical
of NRA claims of universal gun ownership .... Bellesiles' book
confirmed many of my suspicions.... Bellesiles' argument ... has been
shown ... to be wrong. As a result, it is inescapable that Bellesiles'
book is fundamentally flawed. My previous review of the book was ...
to a large degree wrong ... the evidence shows ... a significant
percentage of the population did own guns, somewhere around
two-thirds or three-fourths...." [Bellesiles claims one-seventh.]

"I don't hold with book-burning, but I think we ought to consider
burning Bellesiles at the stake as punishment for the harm he has done
to the cause of gun control and to the credibility of America's left."
--David Lloyd-Jones, American student, liberal

"I still do not believe in any shape or form he fabricated anything.
He's just a sloppy researcher."
--Jane Garrett, Bellesiles' editor at Knopf Press

19 April 2001 Columbia U awarded the Bancroft Prize to Arming America.
13 Dec 2002 Columbia rescinded the Bancroft Prize and asked Bellesiles
to return their money, the first time in the history of the Bancroft award.

To label John Lott a "Bellesiles of the Right" is an exaggeration
or the result of ignorance of the problems with Arming America.
The objections raised to John Lott and MoGuLeCr are tiny next to
Michael Bellesiles and Arming America. This speaks to nothing
about the validity of MoGuLeCr but speaks volumes about bias on the
subject of gun control in Academia and the Media.

 

[agricola]

Carl,

For a start, you use Lindgren as a source and yet ignore important strands of what he said. To me, thats inexcuseable, given that you were provided the link, and yet you maintain that it was "amateur" historians like Clayton Cramer (if indeed someone who has been published at least five times on historical topics prior to Arming America being released can be considered an amateur) who raised concerns that were poo-pooed by "professional" academia.

Lindgren showed that Bellisiles' initial work was scrutinized and found wanting by academics, years before Clayton Cramer examined it. Of course, some people backed Arming America, and probably would have done so irrespective of the facts, but once he was exposed Bellisiles was shunned.

Lott, on the other hand, has only found one tiny piece of evidence that his 98% survey was completed, and thats after claiming the figure came from Kleck's work, then "national surveys", and finally his own survey. We also have his history of cherry-picking data in order to prove his various theories, almost all of which have shown to be wrong. There is then the issue over who actually wrote the response to Ayres and Donohue, which (as we have found) depends on who you ask. There is also the question of why, when he was the person who slandered Steve Levitt, he then feels the need to sue him over two claims, one of which is - as even you concede - deeply wrong (everyone has replicated his results! except Ayres and Donohue! and the other seven studies!). All of that, without even starting to talk about Mary Rosh and the various Amazon reviews....

 

[Carl N. Brown]

boring afternoon, sleepless night

I went out to the public library and refreshed myself on the
Dewey Decimal 363.33 category; got a laugh out of the absurdity
of Josh Sugarman's Every Gun is Aimed at You: The Case for
Banning Handguns; I know that no one wants to ban handguns
that is a lie by the gun lobby. Har har. Bellesiles rubs shoulders
with Wayne LaPierre.

In reviewing my archives on Don Kates and History News Network:
Tim Lambert has accused Donald B. Kates and Gary Kleck of the
same kinds of "misconduct" of which he accuses John Lott of
being guilty.

For History News Network on or about August 2002, Don Kates wrote
"Do Guns Cause Crime?" as an examination of Joyce Lee Malcolm's
"Do Guns Cause Violence?" (Guns and Violence: The English
Experience (Harvard, 2002))

Tim Lambert responded that Kates "carefully selects the evidence
he presents to prevent his readers from learning about facts that
contradict Mr Kates' thesis" in other words, cherry picking
his favorite accusation aimed at John Lott.

Lambert accused Kates of citing "only quotes from pro-gun
criminologists."

Lambert accused Kates of disservicing the readers by not citing
works by Zimring and Hawkins or Cook and Ludwig: "it is misleading
to pretend, as Kates does, that their work does not even exist."

On another point, Kates had quoted a passage by Kleck; Lambert
responded that "Kates fails to mention that Kleck was forced to
correct his claims in the passage quoted."

In Kates response, we begin to see illumination of the rhetoric
techniques used by Lambert:

Kates quoted a Kleck passage from an NAS presentation. The
correction was to an error in a later Kleck-McElrath article on
the same subject. Both were actually in favor of the point that
Kates made. The fact that Kleck had to correct his K-M statement
was not germane to the issue. Kates claims the corrected statement
was even more supportive of his point.

Since his article did not include anything contradicted by Zimring
or Cook, Kates did not realize he had a need to mention them,
especially since he was constrained by the editors to 3,000 words.
Don is on a first name basis with Frank and Phil, has co-authored
with them, and would hardly snub them intentionally.

One of the "pro-gun criminologists" cited by Kates was Marvin E. Wolfgang!?!?

"I am as strong a gun-control advocate as can be found among the
criminologists in this country. If I were Mustapha Mond of Brave
New World, I would eliminate all guns from the civilian
population and maybe even from the police. I hate guns--ugly,
nasty instruments designed to kill people."
--Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology Fall, 1995, Northwestern
University, School of Law; Guns and Violence Symposium, Page 188.
A Tribute to a View I Have Opposed, by Marvin E. Wolfgang

What made Marvin E. Wolfgang a "pro-gun criminologist" in the eyes
of Lambert? After Wolfgang went over Gary Kleck's data on defensive
gun use, Wolfgang was willing to consider that the benefits of defensive
guns might possibily outweigh the costs of criminal guns. He still
hated guns and supported most forms of gun control, but to the
Witchfinder General of OZ Wolfgang was a heretic.

Kates accused Lambert of "meaningless quibbling."

I concur.

If Lott is guilty of cherry picking, Lambert is guilty of nit-picking.
Anyone who gets their information on Lott from Lambert is getting
a very skewed and one-sided picture.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

Before Tim Lambert's inquisition of Lohn Lott, I actually
considered Lott a Johnny-come-lately and was more willing
to hang my hat on Kleck, Kates, Rossi, Wright, and that
classical pundit Et Alia (op cite). I still am.

But all this has forced me to raise my head out of the moss
and take an overview of the forest.

In the popular imagination, Levitt, Donohue, Lambert threaten
to do for Lott what the mob did for the Frankenstein monster:
generate sympathy. Talk about unintended consequences!

For a published academic like Steven Levitt to claim that
he was using the term "replicate" in the layman's sense
of "confirm" is disappointing. Replicate should mean
something specific in Academia. Esse est esse. Replicate
is replicate.

In the long run, a lot of this is meaningless.
After all, the convoluted econometric regressions in
- The Impact of Legalizing Abortion on Crime Rates, by
John Donohue and Steven Levitt, Quarterly Journal of Economics,
May 2001
- Abortion and Crime: Unwanted Children and Out-of-Wedlock
Births, by John Lott, John Whitley; Yale Law School
Working Paper Series, Year 2001 Paper 254
have not affected my revulsion to the killing of the innocent
out of convenience.

I would no sooner support a ban on guns from an econometric
regression, than I would have told the three girls I knew with
problem pregnancies to get abortions based on an econometric
regression by Levitt and Donohue.

And in my re-view of gun control sources other than Lott and
Lambert, I was reminded of the emotional context of all this:
this is not occurring in a historical or political vacuum.

GUN CONTROL: A REALISTIC ASSESSMENT
By Don B. Kates Jr.

4. RESPECTABLE BIGOTRY.

We are so inured to the vituperative terms in which the gun
debate is carried on that it may be useful to consider the issue in
a wholly different context. Recently a psychiatrist publicized the
terrifying story of her repeated vain attempts to control, or have
incarcerated, a malicious bi-sexual patient who continues to have
promiscuous, unsafe sex with people who don't know that he has the
AIDS virus.{20} Doubtless other examples could be cited of people
who spread AIDS irresponsibly or even deliberately. But enlightened,
liberal people would not jump from the few such examples to
vilifying bi-sexuals or gays or gay rights activists, in general.
Enlightened, liberal people rightly see it as bigotry to blame the
wrong-doing of an irresponsible, aberrant few on a whole group of
innocent, responsible people.

Returning to gun control, studies trying to link gun ownership
to violence rates find either no relationship or a negative, i.e.,
cities and counties with high gun ownership suffer less violence
than demographically comparable areas with lower gun ownership.{21}
Summarizing these and other studies, a recent National Institute of
Justice analysis finds:

It is clear that only a very small fraction of privately
owned firearms are ever involved in crime or [unlawful]
violence, the vast bulk of them being owned and used more
or less exclusively for sport and recreational purposes,
or for self-protection.{22}

Concommitantly, it has been estimated that 98.32% of owners do not
use a gun in an unlawful homicide (over a 50 year adult life
span).{23}

In sum, murderers comprise only a small, highly aberrant (and
malignant and irresponsible) subset of all gun owners. Why, then,
is it enlightened and liberal: to vilify the 50% of American
householders who have guns as barbaric and/or deranged ("Gun
Lunatics Silence [the] Sounds of Civilization"{24}), "gun nuts",
"gun fetishists", "anti-citizens" and "traitors, enemies of their own
patriae"{25}, as sexually warped{26} "bulletbrains"{27} who engage
in "simply beastly behavior"{28} and represent "the worst instincts
in the human character"{29}; or to traduce pro-gun groups as the
"pusher's best friend"{30} and their entire membership as
"psychotics", "hunters who drink beer, don't vote and lie to their
wives about where they were all weekend"{31}; to characterize the
murder of children as "another slaughter co-sponsored by the
National Rifle Association"{32} and assert that "The assassination
of John Lennon has been brought to you by the National Rifle
Association"{33}; and to cartoon gun owners as thugs and/or
vigilantes, intellectually retarded, educationally backward and
morally obtuse, or as Klansmen?{34}

The NIJ Evaluation accurately describes how the anti-gun
advocates sees gun owners: as "demented and blood-thirsty
psychopaths whose concept of fun is to rain death upon innocent
creatures both human and otherwise." It is really quite remarkable
for such calumnies to issue from people who, rightly, regard it as
egregious bigotry when other bigots: seek to blame AIDS deaths on
gays whom they revile as sexually warped, moral degenerates who
engage in simply bestial behavior; or blame gay rights activists
for AIDS because they lobby against ordinances that would close
bath houses; describe abortion rights activists as murderers, "baby
butchers" and abortion clinics as "merchants of death"; dismiss all
homeless people and welfare recipients as slackers, drug addicted,
alcoholic or retarded; or traduce the ACLU as the "best friend" of
criminals and drug pushers.

The fact that anti-gun crusaders are commendably eager to
oppose racism, gay bashing and other evils they recognize as
bigotry does not excuse their inability to recognize their own
bigotry. On the contrary, it compounds that bigotry with myopia, if
not hypocrisy.

5. The Political Cost of Bigotry.

As important as the issue of bigotry is that this incessant
vilification of gun owners precludes reasonable compromise over gun
laws. The gun lobby press faithfully reports the philippics, and
reprints the most vituperative anti-gun cartoons, to inflame its
readers.{35} Why would the gun lobby actually pay royalties to
Herblock, Oliphant etc. for their anti-gun cartoons? Because the
gun lobby's purposes are best served by convincing gun owners they
are a hated minority. There can be no greater incentive for
monetary contributions to the gun lobby and fanatic hatred of gun
law proposals, no matter how apparently reasonable.

Gun owners are convinced (in part, by bitter experience) that
gun laws will be invidiously administered and unfairly enforced;
and, just as important, that gun owners are anathema to persons
and groups like the ACLU to whom other American can look for help
against mistreatment at the hands of the state.{36} So gun owners
hysterically oppose controls substantially similar to ones they
readily accept for cars and prescription medicines. This is only
natural, given the rancor with which controls are advocated and
the purposes avowed by their more extreme advocates. Would driver
licensing and automobile registration have been adopted if they had
been advocated on the basis that having a car is evidence of moral,
intellectual or sexual incapacity -- or that the desired end is to
progressively increase regulation until cars are unavailable to all
but the military and the police? Would not diabetics and others
with chronic illness hysterically oppose the prescription system
if doctors were under constant pressure from church groups and
editorialists denouncing medication as immoral? Do not gay rights
activists vehemently oppose policies (however apparently
reasonable), they see as motivated by enmity to gays and likely
to be administered in that spirit of enmity?

Two clarifications are in order here: 1) I recognize that
cars, guns and medicines are different commodities that may require
very different policy responses. My point is only that no policy,
however rational in the abstract, can succeed if those it regulates
see it as motivated by hatred, contempt and denial that they have
any legitimate interests to be considered. 2) I also recognize that
gun owners respond to anti-gun attacks no less hatefully. But there
is a crucial difference: gun owners are not seeking to make their
enemies own guns. In contrast, what control advocates do by heaping
contempt on gun owners is forever alienate those whose compliance
is indispensable if gun laws are to work. However satisfying it may
be to anti-gun crusaders to portray gun owners as "demented and
blood-thirsty psychopaths whose concept of fun is to rain death
upon innocent creatures both human and otherwise", the result is
catastrophically counter-productive to the cause of gun control.

REFERENCES

20. "A Doctor's Horror: Death on the Loose", reprinted from THE
WASHINGTON POST by the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, May 14, 1989.

21. See, e.g. Murray, "Handguns, Gun Control Law and Firearm
Violence", 23 SOCIAL PROBLEMS 81 (1975); Lizotte & Bordua and
Bordua & Lizotte, above; Kleck, "The Relationship between Gun
Ownership Levels and Rates of Violence in the United States" in D.
Kates (ed.) FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE (1984); McDowall, Gun
Availability and Robbery Rates: A Panel Study of Large U.S. Cities,
1974-1978, 8 LAW & POLICY Q. 135 (1986); Bordua, "Firearms
Ownership and Violent Crime: A Comparison of Illinois Counties"
Kleck & Patterson, "The Impact of Gun Control and Gun Ownership
Levels on City Violence Rates", a paper presented to the 1989
Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology (available
from the authors at Florida State University School of
Criminology). See also Eskridge, "Zero-Order Inverse Correlations
between Crimes of Violence and Hunting Licenses in the United
States", 71 SOCIOLOGY & SOCIAL RESEARCH 55 (1986).

22. J. Wright & P. Rossi, ARMED AND DANGEROUS: A SURVEY OF FELONS
AND THEIR FIREARMS 4 (N.Y., Aldine: 1986) (hereinafter denominated
NIJ felon survey).

23. As to the aberrance of homicide perpetrators, see the section
of this paper devoted to that issue. The estimate of handgun owner-
murderers is Prof. Gary Kleck's and derives from a comparison of
handgun homicide data to the number of respondents to the 1987 GSS
Survey answering that they personally owned a gun.

These estimates probably grossly over-estimate the number of
legal handgun owners who murder. After all, illegal gun owners
(a group that composes a very substantial proportion of murderers)
are disproportionately unlikely either to be asked to respond to a
GSS Survey or to incriminate themselves by honestly answering that
they own a gun. Prof. Kleck was kind enough to give me this set of
estimates as a personal communication. It will eventually appear
in an as yet untitled book he is preparing for Aldine de Guyter
Press (c. 1991), hereinafter cited as Kleck-Aldine.

24. Braucher, MIAMI HERALD, July 19, 1982; see also his Oct. 29,
1981 column "Handgun Nuts are Just That -- Really Nuts."

25. Wills, "John Lennon's War", CHICAGO SUN TIMES, Dec. 12, 1980,
"Handguns that Kill", WASHINGTON STAR, Jan. 18, 1981 and "Or
Worldwide Gun Control", PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, May 17, 1981.

26. The psychiatric evidence for and against this aspersion is
discussed infra. Its advocates include Harriet Van Horne (N.Y. POST
magazine, June 21, 1976, p. 2), Dr. Joyce Brothers, Harlan Ellison
("Fear Not Your Enemies", HEAVY METAL, March, 1981), U.S. CATHOLIC
magazine (editorial "Sex Education Belongs in the Gun Store",
August, 1979).

27. Grizzard, "Bulletbrains And the Guns That Don't Kill", ATLANTA
CONSTITUTION Jan. 19, 1981.

28. "Gun Toting: A Fashion Needing Change" in 93 SCIENCE NEWS 613,
614 (1968).

29. WASHINGTON POST editorial, "Guns and the Civilizing Process",
Sept. 26, 2972.

30. Guest editorial by Senator Edward Kennedy, "Pusher's Best
Friend, the NRA", March 22, 1989 NEW YORK TIMES. See also P.
Hamill, NEW YORK POST, "A Meeting of NRA's Harlem Branch", April 4,
1989, LOUISVILLE COURIER-JOURNAL MAGAZINE, Aug. 7, 1988, p. 6 ("The
National Rifle Association, its propagandists and it supporters
work day and night to make sure that every hood in the country can
get his hands on a gun. They couldn't be more guilty if they stood
there slipping pistols to the drug dealers and robbers. If justice
were done, they would be in prison."). In fact (though it has often
obtusely opposed even reasonable controls that affect law abiding
citizens), the NRA has consistently supported, indeed is the
principal architect of, laws comprehensively barring gun ownership
by anyone who has been convicted of a felony. Cf. 82 MICH. L. REV.
209-210 (citing state laws dating from the early 20th Century and
federal laws from the 1930s through the present day).

31. A remark by N.Y. Governor Mario Cuomo who subsequently wrote
the NRA to apologize because it is "unintelligent and unfair" to
"disparage any large group." TIME, May 27, 1985.

32. Editorial cartoon, MILWAUKEE JOURNAL, Jan. 22, 1989, p. 12J.

33. Ironically, the assassin, who was himself a gun control
advocate, was legally licensed in one of the highly restrictive
states that (over the NRA's fervent objection) require licensure
to purchase a handgun. Moreover he obtained his license as a
security guard, a status that would carry legal entitlement to
a handgun under even the most stringent anti-gun proposals.
Jacobs, "Exceptions to a General Prohibition on Handgun
Possession" 49 LAW & CONTEMP. PROB. 5, 6-7 (1986).

34. Morin (Miami Herald) cartoon, ARIZONA REPUBLIC, March 21, 1989
(showing gun store with sign "drug dealers, gangs, welcome"),
Herblock cartoon, WASHINGTON POST, March 21, 1989 ("these guys who
want to spray the streets with bullets"); SAN JOSE MERCURY-NEWS,
March 3, 1989 ("I.Q.-47"), LOS ANGELES HERALD EXAMINER, January 31,
1989 (showing "Crips, Bloods and NRA" as "Three Citizen Groups
Opposed to Outlawing Assault Rifles"), Interlandi cartoon, LOS
ANGELES TIMES, Dec. 16, 1980.

35. Stell, "Guns, Politics and Reason", 9 J.AM.CULTURE 71, 73
(1986). See, e.g. GUN WEEK, February 1, 1980, p. 2 ("Roger Caras
Labels NRA 'Collection of Psychotics'"); also the July 8, 1983 and
August 30, 1985 issues reprinting anti-gun cartoons.

36. See examples given and general discussion in Kates, "The Battle
over Gun Control", 84 THE PUBLIC INTEREST 42 (1986) (hereinafter
cited as "Gun Control", 84 THE PUBLIC INTEREST).

(c) Doanld B. Kates 1990
____________________________
Extracted from GUN CONTROL: A REALISTIC ASSESSMENT
By Don B. Kates Jr.
THE PACIFIC RESEARCH FOUNDATION
177 POST ST.
San Francisco CA 94108
Available in printed form for $10.00 under the title
GUNS, MURDERS AND THE CONSITUTTION.

 

[agricola]

Carl,

So Lambert is correct, he is just being finicky?

Some views:

i) Lambert does not accuse Kleck or Kates of the same kind of misconduct as Lott - as anyone who has read his site knows. Lott is accused of a lot of things, especially being dishonest, wheras Kates and Kleck are accused (with good reason, Kleck was wrong) of being mistaken. One also has to compare the volume of Lott stuff with that of items on Kleck and Kates;

ii) I dont know why you didnt provide the HNN links for that article and the debate which followed -

http://www.historynewsnetwork.org/articles/871.html (article)
http://www.historynewsnetwork.org/readcomment.php?id=1904&bheaders=1#1904 (debate)
http://hnn.us/articles/906.html (Kates response)

What is interesting is that Kates doesnt respond to most of Lambert's points, only the one about "pro-gun criminologists", ignoring the statistical questions and the issues about comparing England with the US.

Instead, he creates a strawman about the efficacy of guns for self defence, and tries to show that he himself might be considered anti-gun.

What is of course relevant to this debate is that, even if you ignore the questionable parts of Kates article, even he rubbishes (though he isnt actually nice enough to come out and say it) Joyce Lee Malcolm and Lott's contention that gun crime / crime in general has risen as a result of the various bans in the UK. I hope you will remind people of this the next time the issue comes around.

iii) again, you try and pretend a strict and exclusive definition for "replicate" where non exists - as the two critique's of Lott's suit show below (it seems even Lott doesnt use "replicate" in such a strict definition):

http://www.elsblog.org/the_empirical_legal_studi/2006/04/lotts_of_replic.html
http://www.elsblog.org/the_empirical_legal_studi/2006/04/lotts_replicati.html

Finally, can you please format your text so it fills the page properly.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

To stick to the thread start:

iii) it is not my "strict and exclusive" definition:

Random House Websters Unabridged Dictionary
replicate
adjective
1. folded; bent back on itself; also, replicated.
verb transitive
2. to bend or fold back: a replicated leaf.
3. to repeat, duplicate, or reproduce, esp. for experimental purposes.
verb intransitive
4. to undergo replication.
noun
5. something that is replicated, as an experiment or procedure.

replication
noun
6. the act or process of replicating, esp. for experimental purposes.

In the physical sciences, "replicate" has a specific meaning:
chemists and physicists confirm one another's experiments by
rerunning the experiments to see if they get the same results
by the methods claimed by the experimenter. Prof. Gary King at
Harvard, among others, have been promoting the same sense of
"replicate" for the social sciences, including economics.

If economics is to be something more than the illegitimate
stepchild of the sciences, yes, replicate should have a strict
and exclusive definition.

Now, whether a lawsuit against the author of a book entitled
"Freakonomics" is the best way to advance the issue, that is
another question, all together. (And the chorus chimes in
unison, that is another question.)

Steven Levitt, Freakonomics:
Then there is the troubling allegation that Lott actually
invented some of the survey data that support his more-guns/
less-crime theory. Regardless of whether the data were faked,
Lott's admittedly intriguing hypothesis doesn't seem
to be true. When other scholars have tried to replicate
his results, they found that right-to-carry laws simply
don't bring down crime.

According to the engineers and chemists I have met through
family members employed at the local chemical plant, to
"replicate" the experiment of another, you use the same data
and methods as published to test the original experiment.

In the context of Levitt and Lott: Levitt offered the
hypothesis that abortion--by reducing the crime prone
demographic of unwanted children born into impovershed
single parent households--redced crime. Lott and Whitley
(L-W) replicated the results reported by Donohue and
Levitt (D-L) using the data that D-L supplied L-W; that
is, L-W used the D-L data, D-L regression and got the
same result. L-W did not claim that the D-L results could
not be replicated. L-W then examined variations of the
method with supplemental data and got different results;
L-W referred to that as replicating using supplemental data.

I think the use of replicate in "Freakonomics" and
in the second sense of L-W is sloppy and both deserve
erratum slips. L-W state they replicated the D-L results
with the original data and method; they then ran variations
with supplemental data and got different results. The same
thing can be done with the Lott-Mustard study: Levitt
implies in "Freakonomics" that L-M cannot be replicated
with the same results when it can.

 

[agricola]

Carl,

i) Economics is not a physical science;

ii) Even Lott doesnt use "replicate" in the narrow definition required for his lawsuit to be successful, so in front of a jury even an incompetent hick lawyer could make him look like an idiot simply by quoting his own words at him;

iii) both HarperCollins and Levitt have filed motions to dismiss.

http://www.elsblog.org/the_empirical_legal_studi/2006/06/lott_v_levitt_m.html

 

[grampster]

CAnnonneer hit the nail on the head.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

Least we forget:

No carry: Perp kills unarmed victim. Statisticians mark one crime-related death.

Carry: Armed victim blows away perp. Statisticians mark one crime-elated death.

Conclusion: Statistics may not change, but practical results do.

Food for thought: RKBA is a "right". It does not need to be justified by statistics to be upheld. People that put equal value on the life of a victim and the life of a perp are dangerous lunatics.

i. Granted that economics is not a physical science, the sloppiness
of "social" sciences like economics is due to inexact use of concepts
like "replicate." To physical scientists, the Reagan era term "voodoo
economics" is redundancy.

ii. As I pointed out, the Lott-Whitley article uses "replicate " "with
supplemental data," which strictly speaking is not replication.
A lawyer should have asked Lott "You intend to sue the author of
a book entitled Freakonomics over strict scientific terminology?"

iii. If they did not file motions to dismiss, they would be remiss.

One, I feel with Prof. King that if the "soft" sciences continue to be
sloppy with concepts like "replicate" they will never have the respect
of the "hard" sciences.

Two, should fundamental rights, say freedom of speech, depend on
the weighting of econometric regressions? NO.

Three, Levitt was wrong to claim that the More Guns, Less Crime
hypothesis could not be replicated with the same results. I cannot
escape the impression that has some connection to Lott's and
Levitt's zinging over the More Abortions, Less Crime hypothesis.

 

[agricola]

Carl,

One, I feel with Prof. King that if the "soft" sciences continue to be
sloppy with concepts like "replicate" they will never have the respect
of the "hard" sciences.

Does anyone care what "hard" science thinks? I know I dont - in my University days, my dissertation was on Roman campaign camps in the North of England and their relationship to the sources (mostly Tacitus), and got to spend a summer walking around that most picturesque of areas. My Physics-studying friend had to describe the motion of a spring. He quit.

Two, should fundamental rights, say freedom of speech, depend on
the weighting of econometric regressions? NO.

I agree - but Lott using statistics exposes his argument to the same kind of scrutiny, and the danger is that while he is supported by pro-gunners he can damage your argument when he falls.

Three, Levitt was wrong to claim that the More Guns, Less Crime
hypothesis could not be replicated with the same results. I cannot
escape the impression that has some connection to Lott's and
Levitt's zinging over the More Abortions, Less Crime hypothesis.

Levitt didnt claim that. Once again:

"When other scholars have tried to replicate [Lott's] results, they found that right-to-carry laws simply don't bring down crime."

Other scholars did try and replicate his results and they did find that RTC laws dont bring down crime. Lott can argue about the meaning of "replicate", but he himself doesnt use it in the strict definition that it requires, so his opposition is fundamentally meaningless. Finally, the argument predates Freakonomics because of Lott's slandering of Levitt when the NAS panel was announced, and possibly earlier.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

Levitt (or Dubner or Levitt edited through Dubner) wrote:
"When other scholars have tried to replicate [Lott's] results, they
found that right-to-carry laws simply don't bring down crime."
That still implies to my reading that (all) scholars, other that Lott,
could not replicate his results.

Scholars other than Lott have not been unanimous on this point.
Some other scholars have confirmed the MoGuLeCr hythothesis.
Some other scholars have, by different weighting or supplemental
data, found small increases.
Even other scholars have found small decreases in some crimes and
increases in other crimes.

Lott has been subjected to unfair criticism in the past--that the
grant from the John Olin Foundation represented Winchester
influence for example--that Lott reacts defensively and criticism
of Lott is often viewed as more of the same.

Writing a dissertation on Roman campaign camps and spending a
summer walking around the original sites in North England sounds
good to me. Beats arguing on the internet over squabbles between
economists--or sitting home eating mush.

 

[agricola]

Carl,

I think you are reading it wrong, given thats not a point Lott's lawsuit or the summary of facts picked up on.

Oh, and if I could traipse around that part of the world all day I would, but I cant, and I am poor until payday so this will have to do.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

Lott v Levitt

Re-reading the lawsuit, I think Lott did not raise a minor point
that irritated me the more I thought about it.

Levitt and Dubner, Freakonomics:
Then there is the troubling allegation that Lott actually invented some of the survey data that supports his more-guns/less-crime theory....

James Lindgren's inquiry into the 1997 survey:
I recently contacted Otis Dudley Duncan, who first raised questions about Lott's claim that 98% of defensive gun uses involved the mere brandishing of a weapon. He agrees (as I do) with this statement of Tim Lambert on Lambert's website:

I should comment on the overall significance of this question. Lott's 98% claim takes up just one sentence of his book. Whether or not it's true, it doesn't affect his main argument, which is about alleged benefits of concealed carry laws.

So there is agreement even among those who have raised questions about Lott's work that his 98% claim is not central to his book, More Guns, Less Crime.

Lott has pointed out that he brought up the 98 percent
no-shooting statistic in the context of the issue that the
news media ignore self-defense shootings, because most of
the time in defensive gun use there there is nothing
newsworthy: no blood, no ER, no body in the morgue.

Levitt is wrong on his first point: the allegedly invented survey
data does not support Lott's More Guns, Less Crime hypothesis,
according to critics Duncan and Lambert and investigator Lindgren.

The allegedly invented survey data does support Lott's Media Bias
Against Guns hypothesis. Can anyone argue with a straight face
that the Media are Biased in Favor of Guns?

Unlike "Dr. K" who refused to share with the rest of the class,
or "Prof. B" who boxed his wet notes in the attic and could not
be bothered to bring them down and dry them out (or which notes
were thrown away by third parties while B was in England that
summer of 2000, or which B threw away when he came back from
England that fall, whatever story from B you care to believe),
Lott has shared his data with friend and foe alike:

From: "Ian Ayres" <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 14:39:08 -0500
To: "John R. Lott, Jr." <[email protected]>
. . . . . .
You have been incredibly generous with us and others already
(and Levitt and I have not responded in kind) . . . .
. . . . . .

It has been Lott's willingness to share data with all comers that
has put Lott in this predicament, where a question over one
survey clouds rest of his work.

 

[agricola]

Carl,

I wonder why Lott didnt raise that point? After all, as I mentioned above, one would think it (saying that he made up his study) would be far more defamatory than saying someone couldnt replicate his findings.

That said, I think you are deluding yourself when you just pass on its significance with no comment on whether or not its true. IMHO its fairly clear that - in all probability - the "98% study" did not actually take place, and he did make it up (see previous posts on this thread).

Finally, it was dealt with as part of More Guns Less Crime because that is the book in which he first made the claim. I think any criticism you can make of Levitt on that basis is pretty much worthless for that reason.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

The "troubling allegation" about the survey was cited by Levitt
as an allegation.
The not replicate was cited as a matter of fact.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

DEJAVU all over again

In further research on "Lott" AND "Levitt" AND "lawsuit"
I found postings by Ted Frank at OverLawyered.

Separately, Tim Lambert recaps my previous post (Lott v Levitt III).
See if you can spot the subtle differences.

Well, let's see. Lambert summarizes a passage of Frank's
discussion with Ben Zycher of Lott's strict definition of
"replicate" in paragraph 12 of his lawsuit against Levitt:

Ben Zycher:
"In the context of refereed economics journals, 'replicate'
has one meaning only: The use of an author's data and model
to ensure that falsification of findings is not an issue."

Lambert's recap of Frank:
So Frank looked in economics journals and found lots of
examples contradicting Zycher's claim.

Frank's full text that Lambert recapped above:
Edward Kane, "Why Journal Editors Should Encourage the Replication
of Applied Econometric Research," 23:1 Q.J. Econ.:

"Replication includes but is not limited to slavish duplication
of a predecessor study's specific procedures."

The Foote and Goetz paper criticizing Levitt/Donohue's
abortion-crime thesis:

"The first column replicates the odd-numbered columns of
Table VII (DL 2001), using an updated data set from Donohue's
internet site."

In other words, same analysis, different data.

Justin McCrary, in a paper trying to replicate a 1997 AER paper
by Levitt:

The weighting procedure used in producing [Columns (2) and (3)]
is incorrect, and gave crime categories with higher variance
more weight. Column (3) instruments police growth rates with
election year indicators and the covariates described above.
Weights for column (3) are based on the 2SLS standard deviations
in column (1). Columns (4) and (5) replicate Levitt's estimates
using correct weights.

In other words, same data, different analysis (albeit the analysis
apparently originally intended but not performed).

Lambert then quotes Frank verbatim:

Frank quoted by Lambert:
And, perhaps most importantly, Steven Levitt himself. If Levitt uses
"replicate" consistently in [Lott's] sense, perhaps he can't hide
behind the ambiguity argument. But in Donohue & Levitt's "The Impact
of Race on Policing, Arrest Patterns, and Crime," we see:

We perform this calculation using parallel estimates to Table 5,
but based only on the set of 45 states for which we have arrest
data. When we replicate Table 5, but with only these 45 states,
the coefficients are 10-15 percent larger.

Another "subtle difference":

Ted Frank NOT quoted by Lambert:
Same analysis, different data. (Or should we interpret the "but"
to mean that this isn't a real replication?) In Donohue and Levitt's
Reply to Foote and Goetz, we see the following discussion:

The data set we provide to researchers who want to replicate
our findings reflects the improvements we made to our approach
after the original paper was published, e.g. it includes
abortion measures both by state of occurrence and state of
residence, and also extends the years covered beyond the original
sample. We find it puzzling that Foote and Goetz chose to use
the longer data series (which slightly reduces the point
estimates) when "replicating" our original Table 7, but did
not elect to use or even discuss the better abortion measure
(which substantially increases the estimates), in spite of
citing Donohue and Levitt (2004) which argues strongly for
the improved measure.

Again, discussing the use of the same analysis and different data
to replicate--unless the scare quotes indicate otherwise. Is there
a clearer example? I haven't found it yet. The other two uses of
"replicate" in the response to Foote & Goetz are within [Lott's]
definition; in Donohue & Levitt's Reply to Joyce, the four
instances of "replicate" are consistent with Lott's definition.

Let me repeat some of the "subtle differences" between Frank's posting
and Lambert's reportage: according to Ted Frank,
- Unresolved: should we intrepret D&L's "but" as not real replication?
- Unresolved: should we intrepret D&L's quoted "replicating" as not
real replicating?
- D&L in responding to Foote & Goetz did use "replicate" twice
within the semse of Lott's definition; and,
- D&L in replying to Joyce did use "replicate" four times consistent
with Lott's definition.
These are eight instances in Donohue and Levitt that tend to indicate
that Lott's definition of replicate is not outside the mainstream of
economics.

____________________________________
I presume Q.J. Econ. is Quarterly Journal of Economics;
AER is American Economic Review.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

Now if this adds anything to the mix . . . .

I recently contacted the managing editor of an economics
journal that I did computerised typesetting for from 1974
to 2003 for a working definition of "replicate."

I have usually heard "replicate" in economics to mean either you use the
author's model and data and get the same results OR you use the model
with different data and verify the result - the same thing is happening
with different data.

In the first case, replication checks the accuracy of the model and data
to verify the result; in the second case, replication checks the accuracy
of the model to verify the model.

 

[agricola]

Carl,

Yes, Tim Lambert was so determined to hide what Ted Frank had said he linked to Overlawyered twice in the context of his post so people could check it for themselves:

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/04/ted_frank_on_lott_vs_levitt.php

Besides, on ELS (as linked previously) its quite clear that, while Lott's definition of replicate is valid, it is by no means an exclusive definition of it:

http://www.elsblog.org/the_empirical_legal_studi/2006/04/lotts_replicati.html

Indeed, even your typesetter friend states that Lott is wrong in his exclusive definiton of what "replicate" means. From the complaint:

12. The term "replicate" has an objective and factual meaning in the world of academic research and scholarship. When Levitt and Dubner allege that "other scholars have tried to replicate his results," the clear and unambiguous meaning is that "other scholars" have analyzed the identical data that Lott analyzed and analyzed it in the way Lott did in order to determine whether they can reach the same result. When Levitt and Dubner allege that when "other scholars have tried to replicate his results, they found that right-to-carry laws simply don’t bring down crime,” they are alleging that Lott falsified his results. . . .

(emphasis mine)

http://www.overlawyered.com/lott_complaint.pdf/Lott v Levitt.pdf

Surely even you must realise he is wrong now?

 

[Carl N. Brown]

Gee, Ted Frank asked: "See if you can spot the subtle differences."
And all I did was list the subtle differences. I ascribed no motive to
Lambert and he very well may have not copied the whole post due
to lack of space for all I know. His recap does have subtle differences.

I was the "typesetter friend" for the journal for 29.5 years; it was
the Managing Editor who gave me the usual meaning of
replication in economics. My previous post is clear on that point.

The quote from Civil Action O6C 2007 paragraph 12: "the clear
and unambiguous meaning is that "other scholars" have analyzed
the identical data that Lott analyzed and analyzed it in the way
Lott did in order to determine whether they can reach the same
result" breaks down likr this: "the clear and unambiguous meaning "
refers to the meaning of the Levitt-Dubner statement that ""other
scholars have tried to replicate."

The clear and unambuguous meaning of "when other scholars have
tried to replicate his results, they found that right-to-carry laws simply
don’t bring down crime," is that when the other scholars used the
author's model and data, they did not get the same results, under
the usual meaning of replication. But other scholars have used Lott's
data and model to replicate his results successfully, different
other scholars, several times.
Therefore, Levitt and Dubner are wrong.

 

[agricola]

Carl,

I think we have reached the point where you are being deliberately obtuse.

"the clear and unambiguous meaning is that "other scholars" have analyzed the identical data that Lott analyzed and analyzed it in the way
Lott did in order to determine whether they can reach the same
result"

This is Lott and his legal team attempting to define what the sentence means. It is not Levitt and Dubner. For Lott to be correct about how the sentence defames him he has to show that "replicate" has the narrow and exclusive meaning that "clear and unambiguous" suggests, and that Levitt and Dubner were wrong to say that other people hadnt been able to replicate it.

Firstly, it has been demonstrated by numerous sources on this thread, including you and Lott himself, that "replicate" does not hold such a narrow and exclusive meaning, even in economics.

Of course, Levitt and Dubner werent using "replicate" in that narrow and exclusive term, which is why (which was also contained in the link) they cited Ayres and Donohue as a source. Also note that Levitt and Dubner did not give any exclusivity (which is implied in your last post) to the statement, as if no-one had been able to replicate Lott's research - such a statement comes from Lott's suit:

In fact, every time that an economist or other researcher has replicated Lott's research, he or she has confirmed Lott's conclusion.

That is patently false, as the last four pages have demonstrated.

The fact that you persist with this, even when you yourself have shown that the main plank of Lott's lawsuit is a crock, is a shame.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

I try to be neither obtuse nor acute, but to be right.
That's my angle.

Levitt and Dubner wrote:

Then there is the troubling allegation that Lott actually
invented some of the survey data that support his more-guns/
less-crime theory. Regardless of whether the data were faked,
Lott's admittedly intriguing hypothesis doesn't seem to be true.
When other scholars have tried to replicate his results, they
found that right-to-carry laws simply don't bring down crime.

The allegedly invented 1997 survey about the 98% brandishment stat
supports the li]Media Bias Against Guns[/i] theory. It does not
support the More Guns/Less Crime theory. It is not a premise
on which the MoGuLeCr theory rests. Falsus in that uno does not
render the MoGuLeCr omnibus falsus.

The Lott-Mustard dataset that supports the More Guns/Less Crime
hypothesis has been distributed to over a hundred scholars none
of whom say that data was faked, as a plain reading of Levitt-Dubner
implies to me as a lay reader.

When other scholars use Lott's model and data, they get the same
results; that is the usual meaning of "replicate" to test results
in economics. Other scholars can and have replicated Lott's results
with his data and his model.

I believe that when Lott set up his cost-benefit regression on
guns, ran the data through it and found that the benefits
exceeded the costs, he was genuinely surprised, since this goes
against the common wisdom of academia, which is overwelmingly
biased in the anti-gun direction. (In the 1995 symposium attended
by Kleck and Wolfgang among others, Wolfgang was surprised by
Kleck's showing that there were social benefits from guns as
well as social costs. Marvin E. Wolfgang, "Tribute to a View
I Have Opposed," The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology,
Fall 1995, pp. 188-192.)

I also believe that the problems that Lott has had are the
result of his defiance of the conventional wisdom of academia
and his refusal to yield in the face of criticism. Otis Dudley
Duncan wrote "There is no excuse for continuing the practice
of labeling critics or defenders of Lott's work with offensive
epithets and imputing motives to them." Duncan called for an
end to the ad hominem attacks. I feel the ad hominem attacks
started with the critics. 14 Mar 2006 I posted "Blatant liar
is a little harsh" in response to an assessment of Lott;
15 Mar 2006 TimLambert rejoined "Blatant liar is accurate."
I at first was willing to ignore Lott over 1) widely quoting
a stat without the survey to back it up, and 2) using the
MaRyRoSh pseudonym in on-line defenses. The more Lambert has
forced me to re-examine Lott, the more I am convinced that
Lambert is riding a hobby horse grinding an ax. The overblown
hyperbole of dismissing Lott as a "blatant liar" and
"Bellesiles of the Right" has actually forced me to defend
the guy. Chrisomitie, I see his eyebrows like River Tam saw
Shepherd Book's dishevelled hair: EEEEEK!

John R. Lott, Jr., v
Steven D. Levit and Harper Collins Publishers, Inc.
Received APR 10 2006 Civil Action No. O6C 2007

Extract on Count One:

9. Levitt amd Dubner devote approximately one page of their book to Lott and his reseach. At pages 133-134, they allege as follows:

Then there is the troubling allegation that Lott actually invented some of the survey data that supports his more-guns/less-crime theory. Regardless of whether the data were faked, Lott's admittedly intriguinghypothesis doesn't seem to be true. When other scholars have tried to replicate his results, they have found that roght-to-carry laws simply don't bring down crime.

10. Levitt and Dubner cite two scholarly articles in footnotes at the back of their book which purportedly support the above quoted statement. At page 221, the authors state as follows:

133-34 Lott's gun theory disproved: See Ian Ayres and John J. Donnohue III, "Shooting Down the 'More Guns' Less Crime Hypothesis,' Stanford Law Review 55 (2003), pp. 1193-1312; and Mack Duggan, "More Guns, More Crime." Journal of Political Economy 109. no. 5 (2001), pp. 1085-1114.

In fact, neither of the two articles relied on by Levitt and Dubner states or concludes that they have been unable to "replicate Lott's results."

11. The allegation that when "other scholars have tried to replicate his results, they found that right-to-carry laws simply don't bring down crime" is false and defamatory. On information and belief, there are no published articles in which an economist or other researcher has attempted to replicate Lott's results and concluded that "right-to-carry laws simply don't bring down crime." In fact, every time that an economist or other researcher has replicated Lott's research, he or she has confirmed Lott's conclusion. While other scholars have used different data or methods to analyze the relationship between gun control laws and crime, and in some cases have reached a conclusion that has lead them to disagree with Lott's conclusion, no scholar who has replicated Lott's statistical analysis has concluded that the data and methods on which he relied don't support his conclusion.

12. The term "replicate" has an objective and factual meaning in the world of academic research and scholarship. When Levitt and Dubner allege that "other scholars have tried to replicate his results," the clear and unambiguous meaning is that "other scholars" have analyzed the identical data that Lott analyzed and analyzed it in the way Lott did in order to determine whether they can reach the same result. [/b]When Levitt and Dubner allege that when "other scholars have tried to replicate his results, they found that right-to-carry laws simply don't bring down crime," they are alleging that Lott falsified his results.

13. The allegation that "other scholars" are unable to "replicate [Lott's] results" is not an expression of opinion. Whether or not a scholar can replicate another scholar's results is a fact which is either true or false.

14. The allegation that "other scholars" have been unable to "replicate [Lott's] results" is defamatory per se because it attacks Lott's integrity and honesty in his profession as an economist, scholar and researcher. The aforesaid allegaion is defamatory per se because it damages Lott's reputation in the eyes of the academic community in which he works, and in the minds of the hundreds of thousands of academics, college students, graduate students, and members of the general public who read "Freakonomics."

15. Levitt's allegation that "other scholars" have been unable to "replicate" Lott's conclusion was made with actual malice and with the knowledege that it is false or with reckless disregard for whether it is false. ....(Lott cites evidence of Levitt's familiarity with research on all sides of the gun control issue).... Levitt's statement that "other scholars" have been unable to "replicate [Lott's] results" was made with the knowledge that it is false or with reckless disregard for whether it is false.

Dang, reading this stuff reminds me of the Farscape episode
about the planet Litigara where the main economic activity was litigation.

 

[agricola]

I guess when a poster ignores the evidence in favour of a theory, even when his own evidence wholly disproves the same theory, the debate is pretty much over.

Carl:

i) The 98% claim is in the book "More Guns Less Crime". It is not in the book "The Bias Against Guns". It is that blatant fact that should show you why you are wrong. The fact that Lott appears to have made it up does not detract in itself from his theory, but the fact that he did it means that his work needs to be regarded with extra scrutiny - which is what you criticize Lambert and others for;

ii) Even you provided evidence that replicate does not mean what Lott claims it exclusively means. That, in addition to the whole reams of evidence you, and I, have posted showing that replicate doesnt mean what Lott claims it exclusively means, should show you (just as it should show anyone able to read) that Lott is wrong.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

I have criticised Lott for publishing the 98% stat knowing he
could not produce the dataset. I have stated in other threads
that I avoid citing Lott because it ends up discussing not the
gun issue but the 98% question and MaRyRoSh. Of course, this
thread is about Lott and the Freakonomics lawsuit, so
it is hard to avoid mentioning Lott.

Lott is not above criticism or scrutiny, but neither are his critics.
Gun control and right-to-carry have a lot of people on both
sides in ossified positions. I think we need to bear in mind
what I call Otis Dudley Duncan's last request:

Otis Dudley Duncan:
There is no excuse for continuing the practice of labeling
critics or defenders of Lott's work with offensive epithets
and imputing motives to them. This kind of rhetoric simply
obscures or distorts the plain evidence of the public record.
Maybe it would help if all parties would imagine themselves
in a court, serving as witnesses or attorneys. They would
quickly be called down for any ad hominem remarks.
--April 2003

Lott does not claim an "exclusive" meaning for "replicate"--
He claimed: "The term "replicate" has an objective and factual
meaning in the world of academic research and scholarship."
An objective and factual meaning for replicate is to run an
author's data through the author's model to verify that the
author's results are not miscalculated or even falsified.

In Par.11 of the complaint, Lott writes: "While other scholars
have used different data or methods to analyze the relationship
between gun control laws and crime, and in some cases have
reached a conclusion that has lead them to disagree with Lott's
conclusion, no scholar who has replicated Lott's statistical
analysis has concluded that the data and methods on which he
relied don't support his conclusion."

One theme of Freakonomics and the lawsuit is other
scholars' failure to replicate Lott's study. Jim Lindgren
mentions a couple of definitions for "failure to replicate"
that bear repeating:

One might mean that:
1. Using different data drawn from a different era or a
different population, a replicator found that the patterns
in the data between the new study and the earlier one are
meaningfully different.
OR
2. Supposedly using the exact same data, a replicator was
unable to get the same coefficients in the same models.

Jim Lindgren, June 13, 2006
. . . . . .
First, on the narrow view of replication, it may be factually
incorrect if Carl Moody has indeed replicated Lott's analysis
using the exact same data and published the results. Accordingly,
it may be somewhat misleading to say that Lott's results have not
been replicated when they have been in the narrow sense, but not
usually in the broader sense (even in the broader sense, the
results may be a bit more mixed than Freakonomics implies).

Second, and more troubling to me, Freakonomics juxtaposes
concerns about whether Lott ever did his 1997 study with the
nonreplicability of Lott's main studies presenting his main
thesis: "More Guns, [lead to] Less Crime." These are completely
different studies, linked mostly by the person who reported them.
If I didn't know this fact, I might conclude from reading the
passage in Freakonomics that the reason that Lott's research
asserting that more guns leads to less crime supposedly hadn't
been replicated (in either sense of the word) is that he may not
have done it in the first place. That strikes me as misleading,
since the work that people have tried to replicate was most
assuredly done (and Lott has shared the data from his main
study).

It would seem to me that this passage in Freakonomics should be
revised to separate more clearly the two points being made and to
explain the sense in which Lott's work has and has not been
replicated.

Even though I find Freakonomics misleading in its juxtaposition
of problems with two very different Lott gun studies, Lott
obviously has an uphill quest in persuading a court that the book
is defamatory. . . . .

Bottom line: I think that Freakonomics is misleading in its
juxtaposition of different studies, a juxtaposition that might
bring one to conclude that the reason that the main More Guns,
Less Crime research was not usually replicated in other studies
is that there was some chance that a study was never done. Yet,
to the extent that Lott's lawsuit is based on a failure to
replicate being per se defamatory, I would think he has a
difficult chance of winning.

(Full Lindgren posting at: http://volokh.com/posts/1150219697.shtml)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For different data and methods, compare graphs on trends in
rape before and after right-to-carry (RTC). (Rape is a crime one
might expect to be deterred by the prospect of an armed victim.
Since the figure for Black and Nagin full sample shows five years
before and five years after, I have cut all four graphs off at
five years before and five years after.) Here are John Lott's
results on effect of RTC on Rape using two different data sets:

This figure shows the Black and Nagan 'full sample' using different
variables from Lott, and the Ayres and Donohue state-level data,
showing percent of change in rape rates 5 years before and 5 yeers
after RTC:

Dan Black and Daniel Nagin used different variables and compared
the average rate two or three years before RTC to the average two
or three years after and published that there was "no evidence of
an impact on rape" contrary to Lott. I do note that while A-D
consider the state-level data more reliable than the county-level
data, they do NOT consider the county-level UCR data used by
Lott-Mustard to be faked or invented as a casual reading of
Levitt-Dubner in Freakonomics implies. I believe that I
am correct in saying that, although Lott, Mustard, Nagin, Black,
Ayres and Donohue use different data and models for different
conclusiona, they do not accuse each other of "faking" or
"inventing" or falsifying anything.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

Stephen Levitt in "Freakonomics" implies that Lott's data
is faked and invented, and his results cannot be replicated.

Chicago Tribune reporter Linnet Myers in 1999
Three professors interviewed at separate universities
said Lott's data and computations were mathematically
correct. But because each professor's analysis differed,
one didn't find significant drops in crime while another
found more dramatic decreases than Lott did.
The third said Lott's results have been "confirmed
in the sense that they've been replicated."

The first meaning for replicate in published research is
to run an author's data through the author's mathematical
model to see if the computed results match the published
results.

If the results cannot be replicated, that implies that the
published results were done with older data or with a model
that has been updated, or some such problem. Or, in the
worst case, that the results were falsified.

Levitt claims to be using a less strict meaning of replicate.
The Ayres-Donohue article, the Lott-Plassman-Whitley response
and the A-D reply were cited previously in this thread to
illustrate this less rigorous definition of replicate.

However, A-D wrote:
"Table 9, line 1 presents our replication of Lott's 2SLS
estimates for the 1977-1992 time period. . . . we were
gratified to see that we had basically succeeded in
replicating Lott's 2SLS results. . . . Line 2 of Table 9
presents the results of the identical 2SLS regressions of
line 1, except excluding the logs of crime rates as
instruments."

Unlike Levitt, Ayres-Donohue do not claim that Lott faked or
invented the Lott-Mustard county-kevel data set or the
More Guns, Less Crime mathematical model. They actually
pride themselves on replicating the original results with
the original data and model. A-D got different results either
by using different data sets (state level data sets vs county
level) or by using different variables in their regression.

As Ted Frank found, Steven Levitt used "replicate" in the
same strict sense as Lott at least six times, and Levitt used
replicate with different data as 'replicate but' or as
"replicating" in quotes, the but and quotes implying that
was not strict replication.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

John Donohue is Steven Levitt's frequent co-author and
shares his POV on John Lott and Defensive Gun Use (DGU).

Fordham Law Review, November, 2004
Symposium:
The Second Amendment and the Future of Gun Regulation:
Historical, Legal, Policy, and Cultural Perspectives
Panel III: Public Policy Perspectives
GUNS, CRIME, AND THE IMPACT OF STATE RIGHT-TO-CARRY LAWS
by John J. Donohue
(Cite as: 73 Fordham L. Rev. 623)

These views are largely polarized between those who believe
that guns are primarily used to protect law-abiding citizens and
those who believe that guns mainly serve to exacerbate lethal
violence--both intentional and accidental--and encourage more
frequent suicides.

I ask anyone on The High Road forum to list why you own guns and
what you use them for: there are more uses for guns than allowed
for by the philosophers of Academe.

And the legislation they propose is more likely to regulate and
restrict the law-abiding than to affect those who break the law.
I believe that crime causes guns: means is not motive , in either
homicide or suicide.

Those who have followed the troubling tales of alleged misconduct
in academic research by gun researchers Michael Bellesiles (from
the left) [FN2] and John Lott (from the right) [FN3] may draw the
conclusion that in America the topic of guns is so ideologically
charged that no researcher can be believed.

[FN2]. Michael A. Bellesiles, Arming America: The Origins of a
National Gun Culture (2000); see also infra note 5.
[FN3]. See infra note 6 and accompanying text.

Proven misconduct by Michael Bellesiles includes:
1. Sources cited in text that say the opposite of Bellesiles' claims
1.a. e.g., MB cited a 1630 census of 100 guns in a colony of 1,000 men.
1.b. Document was 1628 order for 100 guuns for 100 new colonists.
2. Claims about Colonial probate law supported by no other probate scholars.
3. His analysis of San Francisco probate data lost in the 1906 earthquake
4. Multiple stories about the 2 Apr 2000 Bowden Hall Flood and pulped notes
4.a. MB went to England; flood; 3rd parties threw away notes; MB returned
4.b. Flood; MB went England Mid-May; MB came back; discarded notes himself
4.c. Flood; MB took wet notes home and stored in attic in boxes.
5. Fabrication of Colonial laws on gun ownership and storage
6. Representing arms status of one militia unit as status of whole company

For hundreds more lies by Bellesiles, see: Fall from Grace: Arming America
and the Bellesiles Scandal, by James Lindgren, Professor of Law, Yale Law
Journal, Vol. 111: p.2195-2249, April 26, 2002 4/26/02 12:34 PM.

Alleged misconduct by John R. Lott, Jr, consists of
1. Citing the 98% statistic after allegedly losing the survey data.
2. Allegedly not conducting the survey since there is little evidence.
3. Lott and his family using am email pseudonym MaRyRoSh to defend him.

For elaboration of these allegations see: Donohues' source Tim Lambert at:
http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/guns/lott98update.html
For an interesting intellectual exercise, capture Lambert's recaps of
sources on Lott, follow the link and capture the original source, then
do a text compare between the recap amd the original.

Back to Donohue on Lott:

John Lott, who has championed the view that more guns
lead to less crime, was also accused--by one of Bellesiles' major
accusers, Northwestern Law Professor James Lindgren, as well as
by the eminent sociologist Otis Dudley Duncan--of manufacturing
data to support his claim that 98% of the time, merely
brandishing the gun was enough to terminate a violent attack. [FN6]
The point was important because critics of the "more guns, less
crime hypothesis" noted that if defensive gun use were as
prevalent as Lott has claimed--he accepts claims that there are
roughly 2.5 million defensive gun uses per year--one would expect
that there would be far more dead criminals lying around than the
relatively meager number (less than 170 per year) that the federal
government identifies in the Uniform Crime Reports. [FN7] Cook and
Ludwig find that a more reasonable estimate is "that there are
about 100,000 instances per year in which someone uses a gun to
defend against an assault or break-in." [FN8]

[FN6]. The details of the charges against Lott raised by Lindgren
and Duncan are recounted in exhaustive detail in a web page by
the highly talented Australian professor Tim Lambert. Tim
Lambert, John Lott's Unethical Conduct, at
http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/guns/lott98update.html (last
modified Sept. 20, 2004). Lambert also notes that Lott has
repeatedly generated estimates based on data sets flawed by
coding errors and refused to acknowledge these problems when the
errors were brought to his attention. Id.
[FN7]. FBI, Crime in the United States 2002: Uniform Crime
Reports 28. Justifiable homicide by private citizens using all
types of firearms averaged almost 170 during that period. Id.
[FN8]. Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig, Principles for Effective
Gun Policy, 73 Fordham L. Rev. 589 (2004).

The claim "....Lott ... was also accused--by ... Lindgren, as
well as ... Otis Dudley Duncan ... of manufacturing data" is
not precise. The timeline sequence is:

1999 May - Otis Dudley Duncan questions the accuracy of
Lott's 98% brandishment only DGU statistic: "The '98 percent'
is either a figment of Lott's imagination or an artifact of
careless computation or proofreading.".
1999 May 21 - Lott calls Duncan and tells him that the 98%
figure came from a 1997 phone survey by Lott.
2000 Sep/Oct - in the Criminologist John Lott claims that he
lost the Spring 1997 survey data in a Summer 1997 harddrive crash.
2002 Sep 15 - Tim Lambert claims on FirearmsRegProf that Lott
fabricated the study. Tim Lambert is a lecturer on Computer Graphics
at U of New South Wales, Australia, who has pursued statistics on
gun control as a hobby since at least 1993.
Shortly therafter, James Lindgren, law professor, offers to
investigate the charges against Lott on FirearmsRegProf.
Lott calls Lindgren and accepts his offer to investigate the issue.

Lindgren did not make the accusation: he investigated it after
Duncan first questioned the statistic, then Lambert claimed Lott
fabricated the survey.

Not only did Donohue get that wrong, but he exaggerates the
importance of the 98% statistic to the More Guns/Less Crime
hypothesis. To quote James Lindgren:

Comments on Questions About John R. Lott's Claims
Regarding a 1997 Survey, Personal Note, January 17, 2003:

I recently contacted Otis Dudley Duncan, who first raised
questions about Lott's claim that 98% of defensive gun uses
involved the mere brandishing of a weapon. He agrees (as I
do) with this statement of Tim Lambert on Lambert's website:

"I should comment on the overall significance of this
question. Lott's 98% claim takes up just one sentence of his book.
Whether or not it's true, it doesn't affect his main argument,
which is about alleged benefits of concealed carry laws."

So there agreement even among those who have raised questions
about Lott's work that his 98% claim is not central to his book,
More Guns, Less Crime. Both Duncan and Lambert, however, emphasize
their belief that whether the study was done does go to John Lott's
credibility.

Donohue then claims that Lott's 2.5 million DGU per year figure is
too high and other scholars find only 100,000 DGU per year. Lott
is not alone in claiming far more than 100,000 DGU per year in USA:
Gary Kleck published a figure of 1 million DGU in 1988; in a later
study in 1995, Kleck published a figure of 2.5 million DGU. When
Prof. Philip J. Cook reviewed Kleck's figures for the Clinton DoJ,
Cook said the DGU figure could be as high as 4.7 million.

The DGU figure published by Lott from his 'lost' 1997 phone survey
was 2.1 million, not 2.5 million. Less than Kleck, less than Cook.
While the 100,000 DGU from Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig (DGU in
assaults and break-ins) may be more pleasing to Donohue's prejudices,
it is lower than total DGU estimates from scholars other than Lott.

The FBI Uniform Crime Reports UCR2001 gives these figures for "the
killing of a felon, during the commission of a felony, by a private
citizen" by year: number--
1997: 238, 1998: 170, 1999: 158, 2000: 138, 2001: 176.
Donohue claims "less than 170 per year" but the average for these
five years is OVER 170 per year, ranging from 138 to 238 per year.

The UCR itself points out that the uniform crime report data
reflects police reports, and does not reflect adjudication by
district attorney, grand jury, judge, trial jury or appeals court.
In many jurisdictions, self-defense is not adjudicated by the
officer making the initial police report. The actual number of
"voluntary manslaughters" eventually adjudicated as self-defense
or justifiable homicide is probably more than 170 per year.
The UCR definition of "the killing of a felon, during the
commission of a felony, by a private citizen" is a narrow
definition for justifiable homicide to begin with. The state
law definitions may vary by jurisdiction, but justifiable
homicide law covers more than just the UCR circumstance.

Gary Kleck has often published DGU studies showing 8,000 to
16,000 woundings, more than ten times that many misses or warning
shots, with the remainder of DGUs being "brandishment only" or
"chase offs." It is actually very easy to take the UCR ~175
justifiable homicides, extrapolate woundings, misses and warning
shots, then divide into Kleck's 2.5 million DGU or Cook's
possibly high 4.7 million DGU and get 95 to 99 percent
non-shooting DGU. As Gary Kleck has established to most
fair-minded observors, 99.99% of DGU do not involve killings.
Gun control advocates minimize self defense first by counting
only killings, then by counting only killings where the
"victim-offender" had a verified felony connviction record.

Then this passage in Donohue's article left me speechless:*

A. Gun Brandishing Saves Lives--Or Does It?

In 2001, two boys aged sixteen and seventeen killed two popular
Dartmouth College professors in Hanover, New Hampshire. [FN16]
Since their assault was with hunting knives, guns cannot be
blamed for the murders. Indeed, there is reason to credit guns
with saving two lives in the period prior to the Dartmouth
killings, since the two boys had previously planned on killing
the inhabitants of a cabin in Vermont. But when the boys knocked
late one night, the Vermont cabin owner refused to open the door
to them and showed them a handgun through a window. No gun was
fired, but the mere brandishing of a handgun certainly may have
discouraged the two aspiring criminals from trying to force their
way into the house (they had already cut the phone lines to the
cabin). [FN17] It is not unreasonable to think that gun ownership
by the Vermont cabin owner did save him and his son, which at
first sounds like this was a case of crime deterrence. [FN18]

But the ostensibly beneficial use of guns in this case might not
show up in any reduction in crime because the defensive gun use
may have saved two specific lives, without reducing the total
number of killings. In other words, this may be a case not of
crime reduction, but rather a case of crime transfer, since the
gain of the two in Vermont was the loss of the two in New
Hampshire. Thus, a successful defensive use of a gun through
brandishing--as opposed to the killing of an offender--may not
reduce the total crime count if the offender just moves on to
the next target.

[FN16]. Lawrence J. Scholer, Zantop Murderers Sentenced: Tulloch
Gets Life, The Dartmouth Review, April 9, 2002, available at
http:// dartreview.com/archives/2002/04/09/
zantop_murderers_sentenced_tulloch_gets_ life.php.
[FN17]. See id.
[FN18]. Id. All we know is that the cabin owner would have been
viciously attacked if he had opened the door to his cabin and
that things worked out well for the cabin owner when he showed a
gun and refused to open the door. It is also possible that things
might have ended happily if he didn't have a gun and had just
refused to open the door. Still, without the brandishing, they
might have (we will never know for sure) tried to knock his door
in, which would certainly have been a criminal violation
regardless of the outcome, and the gun was almost certainly a
comfort for the cabin owner who had to spend the night in the
cabin with his phone lines cut. Id.

If the home invaders had used guns, Donohue would blame the guns
for the murders of the NH profs; apparently, he blames not only
the knives used by the home invaders, he indirectly blames the
gun used by the VT cabin owner to scare off the home invaders
when they pounded on his door earlier.
I blame the home invaders for the murders.
Means is not only not motive, means is not an actor.

Apparently Donohue believes that if the Vermont cabin owner and
his son had been killed, the two home invaders would not have
broken in and killed the two New Hampshire professors "since
the gain of the two in Vermont was the loss of the two in New
Hampshire." Get real. If the two Vermonters had been killed,
there is no reason to believe that the two predators would not
have gone on to kill others, if not the two professors. The
successful killing of the Vermonters could just as easily have
lead to more than two more, by emboldening these home invaders
to go on a killing spree. The fact that they killed the two
NH professors is probable cause to surmise that they would have
killed the VT father and son if they had not been scared off by
handgun brandishment. The equation could just as equally have
been two lost in VT AND two lost in NH, not two gained in VT
for 2 lost in NH.

_______________________________________
* Yes, me speechless is an inconceivable concept.