[choosetheright]

Those who are interested in this affair should read Lott's response, posted above, and also the report by Prof. James Lindgren. Keep in mind that Lindgren is among those who accomplished the discrediting of Bellesiles, so he certainly can't be accused of having any anti-gun bias. Frankly, his report is devastating to Lott's credibility. Lindgren concludes that:

"I remain hopeful that University of Chicago undergraduates will come forward with a credible story about hours of phone calling in January 1997. Everyone would be enormously relieved were that to occur. If no one does come forward, Lott has done his career a great disservice this January by changing his story in so many ways. Although most of these changes are small ones, the fact that he would make them at this worst possible time is profoundly disappointing to those of us who would like to think the best of him."

I won't paste the entire report here, because it's very long, but it's all available at...

http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/guns/lindgren.html

[sailor4321]

Seems to me Lindgren was rather late in the game when it came to discrediting Bellesiles, so the fact that he piled on doesn't convince me of a lack of bias (and, I am swayed by Lott's critique of Lindgren's work). Even Sarah Brady would criticise Bleeesiles as this point, but it would be foolish to say she isn't biased....

[LS]

As a history prof. who has published 15 (or more) books (I lose count), Lott's explanations are very credible to me. I use many student, undergrad assistants whom I pay out of my own pocket. If I don't write down the names then and there, I forget they ever worked for me. Students have prepared basic charts, graphs, or done other very basic work, and if I don't get their name on the chart, sometimes their contribution just disappears. (So far, none have complained).

So it is quite common to a) pay for surveys like this yourself and b) not remember many of the details IF your main computer goes down.

Second, the critic tries to make it appear that Lott took Kleck's statistic (which in fact is VALID and which the AUTHOR CANNOT DISPUTE) and tries to beat Lott over the head with it by claiming Lott tried to get the same number with his own survey. Again, there is nothing unusual about this. For ex., I know right now of a media bias study with tremendous implications for proving the media is more leftist than we know; but the study was done by an editor who doesn't agree with that conclusion (even though, IMHO, that is exactly what the data shows). Thus, he won't publish it. Solution? Find a way to replicate his study. That won't mean that whoever does so "stole" it from him, only that they replicated something that had not been published or was not going to be published.

But I keep going back to the fact that the Lott-Mustard study, which is the ORIGINAL study---long before "more guns, less crime"---has NOT been successfully challenged, and the Left has tried everything.

[Tribune7]

I'm still inclined to give Lott the benefit of doubt -- namely that he did a poor job of recording and organizing a survey performed 5 years ago. One interesting aspect his detractors could pursue would be to investigate whether there is corroboration of a computer crash.