Michelle Malkin is absolutely right in her coverage of the John Lott affair — he’s done a lot more damage to his reputation than he realizes with his latest actions.
Lott, of course, is the author of the excellent More Guns, Less Crimes which argues that increases in concealed gun ownership in areas reduces crime levels in those areas. Lott’s book is very well written and researched and Lott himself does very well in television debates and op-eds defending his position.
But Lott was recently caught up in two separate controversies — one over a survey of gun use and the other over his online posting habits.
The gun survey is the more serious issue. Lott has repeatedly cited a “national study” that found 98 percent of the time a gun is used to stop a crime the gun is merely brandished rather than fired. This is a very important point, since measuring such incidents — where police are rarely likely to be called or involved — is crucial to parts of Lott’s argument.
The problem is that a) the survey was conducted by Lott himself, even though he occasionally attributed to others, b) Lott claims the survey data was lost in a computer crash, and c) the survey upon closer examination seems to be statistically weak.
Lott is redoing the survey on a larger scale, but frankly the damage is done. Lott oversold the results of this survey and inexplicably attributed it to others to make it appear stronger than it was. This is the sort of thing I expect from a group like the Violence Policy Center, not from Lott.
The story got creepier (as Malkin puts it) when it turned out that Mary Rosh — a very active defender of Lott’s work in Usenet and web forums — was none other than John Lott using a pseudoym. As Malking puts it,
“Rosh” gushed that Lott was “the best professor that I ever had.” She/he also penned an effusive review of “More Guns, Less Crime” on Amazon.com: “It was very interesting reading and Lott writes very well.” (Lott claims that one of his sons posted the review in “Rosh’s” name.) Just last week, “Rosh” complained on a blog comment board: “Critics such as Lambert and Lindgren ought to slink away and hide.”
By itself, there is nothing wrong with using a pseudonym. But Lott’s invention of Mary Rosh to praise his own research and blast other scholars is beyond creepy. And it shows his extensive willingness to deceive to protect and promote his work.
These problems don’t necessarily invalidate Lott’s point in More Guns, Less Crime, but they do mean his claims warrant far more skepticism. Some pro-gun control folks have tried to draw the comparison with disgraced historian Michael Bellesisle. Lott is still a long way from Bellesisle, but here’s hoping people will give Lott’s books the same sort of scrutiny as Bellesilesiles received to make sure there aren’t more such problems.
Source:
The other Lott controversy. Michelle Malkin, TownHall.Com, February 5, 2003.