(Vanity) Is John Lott still credible in arguing for CCW?

self | 4/20/03 | self

[rudy45]

Has the controversy over "Mary Rosh" and the controversial 98% figure (% of time crimes are averted by simply displaying a gun) affected his credibility? Or are these controversies merely distortions? Thanks.

[Restorer]

IMNTBHO, he's damaged his credibility as an advocate, but his statistics and their analysis should stand or fall on their own merits.

You'd think a guy who's done so much research on guns would know enough not to shoot himself in the foot. :)

[Tahoe3002]

I don’t know Mary Rosh, and have not read his books. Does not matter, I will not be a helpless victim. Rudy45 as in 45ACP? Great caliber---big and heavy! Preferred by American shooters! (Or maybe it is your age.)USMC 1974-1981
(BTW, I did not run out and by duct tape and plastic sheeting.)

[basil]

I think he has gained at least some of his credibility back. He has recently come out with a new book, and I hear sales are going well.

[need_a_screen_name]

What is this Mary Rosh thing? I haven't heard a word about it.

[marktwain]

This is typical of the double standard on any issue that the OldDominantLiberalMedia favors. Anyone who looks at the several surveys that have been done on using guns to stop crimes or for self defense sees the "98%" number. It just jumps out at you. Look at the number of times guns are to have been used, and the number of times fired, and the number of times anyone gets shot. The surveys all show that that the gun does not have to be fired in the 90% up range, at least the ones I have read.

I suspect that this is mostly a tempest in a teapot, because Lott used a pseudonym to try to make some points in a debate does not discredit him, in my opinion. At least he quickly fessed up to it. The 98% number was apparently confirmed in an interim part of his other, published studies. Since it was never published or credited, haveing a computer crash that wiped it out doesn't seem much of a problem to me.

[Rodney King]

Do you have a background link? I don't know what the controversy is.

[m1911]

Short answer - no.

Long answer - depends. The research in More Guns, Less Crime has been beat on enough to know it stands up pretty well.

The Mary Rosh thing was stupid.

The 98% thing was incredibly stupid. Either he did the study or he didn't. I suspect he didn't.

But either way his credibility is down the toilet. A bunch of good research wasted as argument material because he didn't want to use his own name online, and he picked up the 98% from "everybody knows". I first heard it three years ago, when it was being attributed to Kleck.

[m1911]

You said that better than I did. Nice tagline too.

[LS]

WHAT IS THE MARY ROUSH THING??????

[KantianBurke]

Who the heck is Mary Rousch?? What are you talking about?

[rudy45]

John Lott allegedly used a pseudonym "Mary Rosh" to sign on to Amazon and give himself good reviews.

[need_a_screen_name]

John Lott allegedly used a pseudonym "Mary Rosh" to sign on to Amazon and give himself good reviews.

If this is true, how did he get busted?? Strange, indeed.

[m1911]

Lott has admitted to signing on to web chats to defend himself using the pseudonym "Mary Rosh". He also wrote himself a 5-star review on Amazon using that name. He was caught when someone noticed that e-mail from Lott had the same originating IP address as the messages from "Mary". Stupid. Vain.

[TheDon]

LOL! I thought that was standard operation for all authors! ;)

[coloradan]

It might be, but if you're anti-liberal, you'll be called to the carpet.

[beckett]

I know that Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, a staunch defender of the 2nd amendment and an initial supporter of John Lott, believes that after examining the facts Lott's credibility has been damaged to a degree, although not nearly as badly as Bellesiles', with whom he has been compared by some people. In other words, Lott did not engage in systematic fraud over the course of a huge project, as Bellesiles did, but he did exercise bad judgement in making certain claims, which makes it harder to cite him as an authority in the future.

[monkeyshine]

Dear John,

Next time, try this:

http://www.anonymizer.com/

[Atlas Sneezed]

Read Lott's own take on the issue:

---

The Crash That Killed My Data

Saturday, March 22, 2003; Page A15

Eight academics at eight different universities have informed me that they have written to your paper in response to two recent attacks on me and my research. But your paper has chosen not to publish the letters, not even one from an academic who wanted to correct a statement attributed to him that was the opposite of what he had written.

A Feb. 11 Federal Page article questioned the existence of a 1997 survey that was used to "support claims in [my] provocative book." My discussion of the survey actually involved only one number in one sentence, and even then I qualified my statement by beginning that sentence: "If a national survey that I conducted is correct." In any case, despite my past willingness to talk to your reporters, no one at your paper asked me about my survey. The bottom line is that I lost data for most of my various research projects, as well as the files for my book "More Guns, Less Crime," in a computer crash in July 1997. With the help of other scholars, primarily David Mustard at the University of Georgia, the massive data sets using county and state level crime data were reconstructed so the data could be given to academics who requested it. This enabled researchers at dozens of universities to re-estimate every single regression in my book. I redid the survey last year and obtained similar results. (Academics have confirmed my hard-disk crash as well as discussions that I had back in 1996 and 1997 regarding the survey, and there is also verification by a participant in the survey.)

This data set and all the other data used in my new book, "The Bias Against Guns," have also been made available to anyone who requests them at www.johnlott.org.

As to the claim, raised in a Feb. 1 Style article, that I used a fictitious identity in making posts in Internet chat rooms, I did indeed do that. I originally used my own name but switched after receiving threatening and obnoxious telephone calls from other Internet posters.

-- John R. Lott Jr.

The writer is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8021-2003Mar21.html