Oh dear; Julian links to disturbing new reports of clumsy dissembling on the part of gun researcher John Lott. This former darling of the gun rights movement has surely become its premier enfant terrible. Get us a new economist, please!
Posted by Marie Gryphon on September 13, 2003Whether or not a new economist is in order, we must take care not to be bamboozled by the gun-grabbers into thinking that statistics (or statisticians' behavior) should in any way limit the Second Amendment. Right now, they seem to think that discrediting Lott does the latter. After being ridiculed (by a leading Lott critic) for making this rather simple point about the Second Amendment, I realized that any economist replacing Lott will find himself under personal attack regardless of whether he invents fake cyber fans or commits coding errors.
Love your blog!
Posted by: Eric Scheie on September 14, 2003 2:02 PMEric,
I'm glad you like this little place.
I agree that vicious personal attacks are annoyingly common to the gun debate, but think you wrongly minimize the extent of Lott's bad conduct by referencing only fan invention and "coding errors." The problem here is not Lott's transcription mistakes, but his probable attempt to falsify records and mislead the public following the discovery of those mistakes.
Posted by: Marie on September 14, 2003 7:07 PM