I'll be travelling until Thursday. I'm speaking at an ALEC event in Austin, Texas, so don't expect to hear from me again right away...
Last week I watched – for the first time at legal drinking age – a classic gen X teen rebellion flick, Pump Up The Volume. Wow – for someone who (I must admit) sometimes flirts with the idea of joining generation Y, this movie reminds me why it’s good to be an Xer.
The protagonist is a kid named Mark Hunter, who hides in his parents’ basement an illegal microbroadcasting operation for his slanky alterego, “Hard Harry.” “Harry” combines crude adolescent sexual humor with a sharp wit and a winning ability to rip the baby boomers to shreds.
His former hippie parents have joined the dominant paradigm they once longed to subvert, his father a cautious administrator in the school district where Mark is unfortunate enough to be enrolled. Having cast aside their disapproval of authority, Mark’s parents are left to value the Left’s social trimmings, NPR and a strong disapproval of Mark’s refusal to join student groups. Teachers (save for one fellow gen Xer, the “young, with-it teacher” who is eventually fired) are predictably horrible, and the Evil Principal has an Evil Plot to expel kids with low SAT scores.
During the day, Mark slinks around school as the new kid with nothing to say. But at night "Harry" comes out with withering criticisms of folk music, hippies and joiners. We’re a generation without a cause, he says; the boomers have taken all the good themes and turned them into theme parks. The movie ends with a riotous car chase, as “Harry” runs from the FCC in the name of free speech and teen angst.
It was a bit of a shock noticing after the fact that Pump Up The Volume came out in 1990, making me the same age as the 16-year-old protagonist. Did we really dress like that? Fashion aside, between this movie, Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club, this much can be said for our iconoclastic generation: we really hated public education.
So what’s up with these Y-sters? How can so much change, culturally, in four or five years? David Brooks warns that this crowd is a bunch of conformist goody-goodies who seldom consider weighty questions and actually relate to the baby boomers. That may be overwrought. I have to admit that I loved Clueless, and didn’t even mind She’s All That too much, but … did high school recently become more fun? I’m confused.
I went shopping today, and am relieved to own a pair of jeans that do not make me look like a refugee from Buffy's first season...
It seems that last Saturday's anti-war protests here in DC went pretty well, by which I mean that very few people were hurt or arrested. I don’t recall hearing of serious disturbances in other cities that day either; a notable contrast to recent protests against globalization. Now I don’t doubt for a second that the antiglobo crowd was out to protest the war as well, but the shady, lawless elements that dominate that coalition apparently can’t dominate this one.
Many anti-globalization protestors are a separate breed from traditional petitioners. Too often they define success in terms of 1) significantly disrupting the actions of peaceful city residents and commuters in a manner contrary to just and reasonable law, and ideally 2) upsetting the rule of law itself by overwhelming the police. By their own rhetoric, non-disruptive communication is too often not the goal for most.
When I close my eyes and think of free speech, a large, peaceful demonstration in an open area comes to mind. If public access is likely to be blocked, appropriate authorities are informed in advance, and an appropriate sized patch of (preferably) grass within eyeshot of the offending institution is duly reserved for the protestors’ message. If a big crowd is expected, by all means the city should close off a section of a nearby street to ensure sufficient space for all who would petition for redress of grievance. This is pretty much what we saw last week.
But these more radical protestors often instead speak freely of “direct actions” designed to “shut down the city.” Many of these folks are nice, thoughtful people, but they’ve no confidence their message will develop currency without coercion. Most commuters are cattle, they assume: mindless, thoughtless adherents to the status quo who need to be awaked rudely from their slumber by being forced to sit in an all-day traffic jam trying to get to or from work. Their politics aren't radical enough. Accordingly, they should not be permitted equal access to public thoroughfares. They do not deserve this access. Of course, the protestors themselves demand this access – it is their right as thoughtful and concerned citizens to access the public byways, if only to make them forcibly unavailable to others.
And then, of course, there is the testing of the state itself. Testing, not as a by-product of expression, but as an end in itself. A demonstration, not a declaration, by the antiglobo crowd that they can topple the state. That they can - however temporarily - limit the power of the state to enforce the law. They succeeded in Seattle. I was downtown there all week, and the laws that went unenforced are those that typically protect the free movement of persons and property around the city on peaceful, productive errands.
Now, “a little revolution now and then” can indeed be a good thing, and I have to admit that there’s something reassuring about occasionally seeing the limits of the power of the state. But if someone comes to my city with the stated goal of preventing me from getting to my office, grocery store, or date, that person is coming to my city on an evil errand.
So…I suppose I should count my blessings. The antiwar crowd was pretty chill and for that I am grateful! With luck, the radicalized wing of the antiglobalization movement won't be able to highjack the war issue.
Recent discussions of this issue have apparently finally produced a direct witness to Dr. John Lott's 1997 survey on defensive gun use! Professor James Lindgren writes that he has completed a "long substantive interview" with a person who was apparently a respondent in the 1997 survey. Professor Lindgren found the respondent's account "credible," and plans to issue an updated report within days concluding that the 1997 survey likely occurred.
Professor Lindgren concludes, "The inquiry, though necessary painful, was basically successful--and better, I think, than the even messier alternative. Suspicions about whether Lott ever did the 1997 study have been hanging around for over 3 years. If we hadn't had this effort, the suspicions that he had entirely fabricated a study would still be hanging over him."
Supporters of gun rights - and supporters of free academic inquiry - should breathe a sigh of deep relief today. Dr. Lott has done some of the most important scholarly work on fireams-related issues, and we are truly grateful to him for looking hard at empirical questions about firearms and violence from which too many other academics have shrunk.
I'll link to Prof. Lingren's updated report when it becomes available. Julian has a few additional details.
UPDATE: Curiouser and curiouser. Dr. Lott has apparently conceded that he has been posting comments in defense of his work to websites and newsgroups for some time under an online pseudonym, Mary Rosh. "Mary Rosh" even reviewed Dr. Lott's own book on Amazon. Bloggers including myself have received recent personal emails from "Mary," who has at times claimed to be a former student of Lott's. Let's just hope the credible witness James Lindgren spoke to is on the up and up, and this story is about over.
UPDATE II: James Lingren's January 17th updates to his report are now available online, and are less "positive" than some - including myself - had anticipated. Rather than concluding that Dr. Lott did likely conduct the 1997 survey (as I predicted above), he chose to withold judgment and encourage further investigation of the matter. He also expressed ocncerns about Dr. Lott's changing stories with respect to their conversations. Here are a few of Professor Lindgren's newer remarks:
"I think it prudent to withhold judgment on the question whether the 1997 study was done until an email inquiry of University of Chicago students has been done and its results are known. I hope that John Lott and the University of Chicago Press will join in encouraging the administration of the University of Chicago to conduct or coordinate the appropriate email inquiry. Further, I think it advisable that Lott examine the University of Chicago undergraduate picture book for the classes of 1997 and 1998, if such a book exists. Perhaps a few names or faces might seem familiar and be worth contacting.
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. As it stands now, unless someone comes forward to verify working on the study--as I still hope occurs--we may never know with any certainty whether the 1997 study was done."
Of course, Professor Lingren authored this update several days before recent revelations regarding Dr. Lott's alternative net identity. I guess we'll sit tight and wait for further word from Lingren.
I too was left breathless by Will Wilkinson’s wrenchingly beautiful post last weekend on religion, meaning and memory. Read it if you haven’t. I’ve nothing directly to add, except that it caused me to get off the metro at the wrong stop yesterday remembering its passion and eloquence.
My snarky side recovered just a bit, though, upon reading the comments, wherein a fellow blogger averred that “an intellectual is one who would rather be right than happy.”
Those who know me would suggest that for me this is a false choice, since few things make me more blissfully happy than being right, but the assertion raises deeper questions. Can we choose our beliefs, such that it’s possible to elect the state of being “right” over the state of being “happy” and vice versa? And, if so, does “happy” mean something so narrow that one might “rather” be something else?
In the past I’ve taken the position that beliefs can’t be chosen – that a belief is analogous to the result of an algebraic equation. These inputs, you get that result. Anyone who claims to disbelieve their result is probably just pretending, for to disbelieve the result one would have to disbelieve the inputs (and thus the validity of one’s senses) or the reasoning process itself. Of course perceptions and lines of reasoning are sometimes flawed. But to lack confidence in either of these as a general matter would leave one completely helpless to act. Simply put, we’d have nothing to believe.
But I came to understand rather late in life that many people do not perceive reasoning as their best way of apprehending truth. Instead, they rely to a much greater extent on those inarticulate emotional responses to our environment that we call intuition. But though intuition can generate very general normative results like “he’s a wonderful guy,” it can’t possibly generate specific answers to complex factual questions like “How was the universe created? or “What do I need to know to pass Statistics?” I can understand having a “hunch for God” in the sense that one may have a strong intuition that the world has objective meaning or normative value of some sort. I vaguely remember a guy named Wittgenstein saying something persuasively like that. But how, other than reason, do people arrive at the details of their beliefs?
The group of people referred to in the aphorism above as “intellectuals” share a certain psychological bias: they tend to form their important beliefs based mostly on their own reasoning processes. They welcome additional information or a thorough critique of their process, but don’t generally accept as true the end result of someone else’s process, unless it is a relatively unimportant belief that it’s not efficient to double-check, or unless it rests on so much specialized information that it wouldn’t be efficient to learn it.
The dominant bias, by contrast, may well be to use one’s intuition to choose a person who appears well equipped in one way or another to do the detail-level reasoning for the whole group. The part of this scenario that may be counterintuitive to some so-called “intellectuals” is that this probably a perfectly rational behavior for many people. If one’s gift is great intuition, why not?
It’s the criteria on which the intuitive selection of an opinion leader is often based, I think, that may cause any slippage between reason and belief. To start with, let’s assume that a person selecting an opinion leader wishes to select one from the pool of folks he believes have better reasoning processes than he does. This may not be universally true, but if one’s gift is intuition, and one feels a need to select an opinion leader to fill in details that intuition is poorly suited to providing, then it would make sense.
Now, if one is selecting an opinion leader from a pool of folks whose reasoning processes are superior to one’s own, one might need to look to secondary evidence of the quality of the candidates’ processes, since one is presumably ill-placed to evaluate those processes directly. Persuasive impressions might include popularity, happiness of existing followers, financial success, apparent sincerity and passion for truth.
Is choosing an opinion leader – whether a minister, a teacher, a lawyer or a motivational speaker – with happy followers the same as choosing happiness over “rightness”? Not necessarily, since choosing an opinion leader based on secondary characteristics such as happiness might be the most rational way for a given person to pursue detailed correct beliefs. After all, all forms of this pursuit are imperfect, including ours.
So, I think the answer to the question “Can one choose one’s beliefs?” - or more specifically “Can one choose to be happy rather than right?” - is “No, not directly.” Most everyone is pursuing a rational strategy for finding truth, although approaches may differ. We’re just stuck with wrestling rightness to the ground directly because we’ve personally found that it’s our best survival strategy.
Note: I’ve posted this knowing full well that I’ll be begging for mercy very shortly, and probably drowning in Radley’s pool with the little fishies, or whatever. I ask only one small mercy from potential respondents. Please avoid jargon! I haven’t the educational background for it.
For those following the controversy surrounding allegations that Dr. John Lott may have claimed credit for having conducted a 1997 survey of defensive gun use that never occurred, a recent email indicates that Dr. Lott will be releasing the data gathered during his new, 2002 survey on the same issue to academics who request it.
Now, Dr. Lott says the data will show very similar results to those he claims to have obtained in a 1997 survey. If true, it would bolster his claim that a survey was indeed conducted in 1997. But let's keep our eye on the ball here; this controversy is about whether the 1997 survey was invented, not whether its results - real or imagined - happen to be correct.
UPDATE: See Dr. Lott Replies, below, for additional comments Dr. Lott has given me permission to post.
UPDATE II: And, see Lambert's comments on Lott's additional comments.
Gene Healy appears confused by my response to his statement that “all other things being equal, women are far more sexually interested in men with wealth and status.” My response was simply, “Gene, you goof. Since when are ‘all other things’ ever equal with respect to romantic prospects?”
In my experience romantic attraction is marvelously complex, a brew of what we are and what we’d like to be. It hinges on the delightful intangibles that help us find extra pieces of ourselves, be it careless irony, empathy, refinement or passion. Most of us – I think – want to be understood and challenged at the same time.
There are as many unique relationship possibilities out there as there are men, though granted most won’t be right for any one woman, and vice versa. But this variation inevitably makes us spoiled for choice – if not in numbers of suitors, at least in their variety.
Of course, women haven’t always had the luxury of actually choosing men this way. Gene rightly suggests that in most cultures throughout history, women have felt compelled to choose mates based in large part on wealth and social standing. This doesn’t, however, mean that these women were “sexually interested” in men based on their wealth. Many made a prudential decision to disregard their sexual or romantic interests in favor of financial security. I visited the Este Castle last month, where I read that one of the Dukes Este beheaded his son and his second wife on the same day. Apparently, she had married (and probably been forced to marry) for wealth and status rather than romantic preference.
While this is doubtless still almost universal in parts of the world, the twin blessings of industrialization and political equality for women have made romantic fulfillment a sometimes-elusive but real possibility for many women in modern liberal democracies. Liberty has allowed us to become so rich that we can afford love. Surely this must rank very, very high among America’s middle class attainments.
Most women with my demographic specs (college-educated, middle-income Americans) are trying to figure out whether they prefer charisma to empathy or brains to experience in a date. While “status” is a confusing concept, I don’t disagree in theory with Gene’s point that, all other things being equal, more money and status are preferable to less. But never have I encountered two men so closely matched in gifts and attitudes that it made sense to decide between them based on wealth or status, and I don’t think I’m unusual among women similarly situated.
Of course, most of these women do have baseline requirements, and don’t in any event meet a lot of homeless refugees in the ordinary course of their days. It is also true that many qualities we may find attractive – imagination, intellect, charm – can be used to make money if their owner so elects.
But I think an excessive masculine focus on the symptom of material success puts the cart (or the Lexus) before the horse, if you will. All good things (money, status, dates) tend to be available disproportionately to those who passionately and energetically develop their best selves – from the inside out.
Sure, some college-educated, middle-class American women still choose men primarily on the basis of money. So many do not, however, that any masculine energy devoted to contemplating this retrograde tendency would be better spent learning how to cook.
Dr. John Lott kindly sent several of us a personal email in response to our recent posts about the allegations surrounding his references to a 1997 survey (see Tangled Webs, below). I replied, asking permission to reprint some portions of the email here, but haven't heard back from Dr. Lott yet. However, Jim Henley has posted an edited version of the communique here. It goes without saying that anyone interested in this issue should read what Dr. Lott has to say.
Also, Julian has turned investigative reporter on us, making additional phone calls and sending emails to fill in some of the details.
UPDATE: Dr. Lott has given me permission to post the following comments, which I quote:
"Dear Everyone:
Here is a response to some of what has been going on over the web. I have
already sent much of this information to people who have already contacted
me in person. If Eugene would like to post this on his web site, I must ask
that all the e-mail addresses and telephone numbers be removed. If you all
don't trust the leg work done by Dan Polsby on this issue since Christmas,
you can nominate someone else to go and do it, but I don't think that it is
appropriate for everyone from Lambert on to go and harass these people.
Regnery (the publisher of my new book due the middle or end of March) wants
me not to release the results from the poll last year. They want me to keep
quite about the book until it comes out. As has been reported previously,
the survey was done with similar questions in a very similar way to what was
done earlier and the results were essentially the same. I will check with
the publisher about releasing this data early, but it is still two months
before the book is due to be published. In the interim, I am sure that I
could arrange it so that interested parties could question the person who
keep the survey results as they came in to confirm that we only got one
person who said that they had actually fired a gun and that the rest were
brandishings.
Here are some of the things that I have done to try to establish a record of
events. 1) My wife contacted the bank that we had in Chicago and tried to
get copies of bank statements and checks from the period of time.
Unfortunately, the bank does not keep copies of statements or checks longer
than five years. (If you would like to verify, we talked to Yvonne Macias
in the book keeping department at University National Bank.) Lindgren does
not accurately report my conversation with him about how I paid people (in
that I said that I possibly paid by check), but this information makes that
point irrelevant. 2) I asked Sam Peltzman last year about whether the
Alumni Association has the e-mail of past students. Sam, who seems to know
virtually everything that is going on at the University, told me that they
have the e-mail addresses for at most 10 percent of the former students. 3)
I had a former alumni and several time co-author, John Whitley, placed in an
ad in the Alumni magazine in the December issue to track down the students.
I don't know if the ad has appeared but thus far I have gotten no response.
I have given out massive amounts of data to people on the guns and other
issues, and I will be happy to do so on the new survey. Data has been given
to critics as well as people who have been unwilling to share their own data
on other projects. I have given out county, state, and city level crime
data to academics at dozens of universities, with data sets ranging from
36MB to over 300MB. I have given out data on multiple victim public
shootings as well as safe storage laws. These different data have often
been given out before the research is published and sometimes even before it
has been accepted for publications. We are not talking about recent events
or conversations and there is a question about what is a reasonable time
period for people to keep records. There is also a question as to why
people have waited so long to ask for this additional information when
people have known about the lost data for years.
As to the claims about 'apparently changing positions,' I disagree. I have
told people directly (including Otis Duncan) from the beginning that the
data were lost. Op-ed pieces and other public statements where I mention
these numbers briefly usually do not lend themselves to discussions of the
sources of numbers. The fact that David Mustard does not remember exactly
when we discussed the survey 6+ years ago does not surprise me given how
long ago this was.
Unfortunately, there are many problems with Lindgren's write up. He gives
essentially uncritical acceptance of Otis Duncan's discussion of events in
1999. Yet, while Lindgren writes that 'Otis Dudley Duncan raised questions
about the 98% figure . . . after exchanges between Lott and Duncan,'
Duncan's write-up in the Criminologist news letter failed to mention any
such possible discussions. In fact his newsletter piece leaves the opposite
impression as he endlessly speculates about what I may have meant about
certain statements. My response in the Criminologist also discussed other
incorrect claims by Duncan.
As to the attribution of sources, look at the complete context of the quote
Lindgren mentions:
Polls by the Los Angeles Times, Gallup and Peter Hart Research Associates
show that there are at least 760,000, and possibly as many as 3.6 million,
defensive uses of guns per year. In 98 percent of the cases, such polls
show, people simply brandish the weapon to stop an attack. -- August 6,
1998, Chicago Tribune and August 14, 1998, Washington Times
References by Lindgren to things like the Linnet Myers piece in the Chicago
Tribune to provide evidence that I didn't do a survey or that I have changed
my statements over time are simply bizarre. Attached below is an edited
down version of the letter that was published by me in the Tribune. Myers
used her article to refloat claims such as my Olin Funding, inaccurately
reported exactly what the concealed handgun research covered, and claimed
that 'others haven't confirmed (my) findings.' I no longer have the
original letter to the editor, but as I recall this is just a partial
listing of her inaccurate statements. The Tribune was not willing to run a
longer letter, though the letter that they ran was quite long.
As to so-called technical problems, I am have always acknowledged that theseare small samples, especially when one breaks down the composition of those who use guns defensively. Even the largest of the surveys have few
observations in this category. The attached e-mail that I sent to Glenn
Reynolds goes into this more in depth.
'No direct evidence of survey' discussing Lindgren's point-by-point
discussion of our conversation
1) 'No funding for the project'
I regularly have paid for research myself. Sometimes large amounts of
money have been spent, but it is not uncommon for me to spend several
thousand dollars. On the paper on multiple victim public shootings, I know
that one payment that I made to Kevin, a research assistant to Landes and
Posner, was $750. I paid for the special issue of the JLE in 1999 on
sentencing myself, and the special issue and part of the conference cost me
around $30,000. I have not applied for funds from outside sources over the
years.
2) 'No financial employee records'
This is not unrelated to the first point. Incidentally, I told Jim that
there were 'two' Chicago students. Those students had also gotten others
that they knew from other campuses from places such as I think the
University of Illinois at Chicago circle (but I am not sure that I remember
this accurately). What I told him was that I remembered that one of the two
University of Chicago students was a senior.
3) 'calling was done by the undergraduates from their own phones.'
most of this next statement is correct except the point about the 'possible'
use of checks. But as noted earlier this point is irrelevant in terms of
evidence.
4) 'does not remember names'
I have had 12 interns and RAs just since I arrived at AEI. This excludes
people whose only work was on the survey. I am horrible at names and I
couldn't even give you the names for all of these folks let alone people who
did something six years ago. All my names and addresses for everything were
on my computer when the hard disk crashed.
5) 'no discussions with any samplers'
I had lunch Tom Smith during the fall of 1996. However, while I asked him
many questions about surveys, I did not tell him what I was planning on
doing because Tom works very closely with gun control organizations.
6) weighting the sample
I did not weight the sample by household size but used the state level age,
race, and sex data that I had used in the rest of my book. There where 36
categories by state. Lindgren hypotheses why you can get such small weights
for some people and I think that this fine of a breakdown easily explains
it. I don¹t remember who answered what after all these years, but suppose
someone who fired a gun was a elderly black in Utah or Vermont.
7) 'commercially available CD-ROM with names on it. He does not remember
where he got it from.'
It is true that I don't have the original CD-ROM. I have a telephone number
CD from the end of 1997, but it is not the one that we used. I only picked
up the other one on the off chance that I was going to have the time and
resources to redo the lost data. The CD did have the features that the
earlier one had and was not very useable. I was so rapped up in trying to
replace my lost data on so many other projects that I had no thought of
going back to what I regarded as a minor project. I had revise and
resubmits at the JPE and other journals that had much greater importance and
the data for the book had to be replaced.
8) 'Lott does not remember how he drew his sample from the CD-ROM'
Not true. I told Jim that one of the students had a program to randomly
sample the telephone numbers by state. My guess is that it was part of the
CD, but on that point I can¹t be sure.
9) 'doesn't remember the wording of the questions.'
It is also not quite correct to say that 'doesn't remember the wording of
the questions.' I told Jim that I don't remember the 'exact wording' of the
questions, but I gave him the general outline of the questions.
10) more on weighting
See point 6 above.
11) 'A chapter he had not yet written'
This is not correct. What I had done is write up the section, but I only
had a computer file of it. When the hard disk crashed, I only had a hard
copy of the book and I had to spend considerable time scanning in the book
and correcting the new file. I was unable to replace the lost polling
section that I had recently added. I didn't think that it was worthwhile
relying solely on memory for different things and I had too much else to do
to concern myself with something that wasn't central to the book.
12) 'did not retain any of the tally sheets'
I have looked through some things but I haven't found anything. As Lindgren
correctly notes, I have moved three times in the last six years.
13) Sheets versus entry of data into computers
Lindgren has the 'impression' that the students entered the data on sheets.
I do not directly recall this part of our conversation, but I would have
said that both were done.
I sent Lindgren two e-mails on December 26th. Just so no one accuses me of
adding new things in now, one of my e-mails to Lindgren noted: 'I did not
take the time to correct or respond to all the issues raised, but I wanted
to mention a few points.' Recent e-mails to Lindgren have also already
responded to some of these points beyond the e-mail that he apparently
posted.
I have not participated in the firearms discussion group nor in the apparent
online newsgroup discussions, but what I have done is respond to e-mails.
(The one exception are those from Lambert whose e-mail address was placed on
my blocked list.) If you all have questions, I will be happy to discuss
them, but I am not going be involved in these online groups. My response to
Glenn below goes through some of the history of what I heard on this and
when I heard it. The bottom line is that you all should not assume that
everyone participates in these discussions."
Please Note: Dr. Lott's email also included a clipped letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune published on June 20, 1999, which should be accessible through public sources, and shortened version of another, slightly older and mostly duplicative email also reviewing his account of events and discussing his new 2002 study. I'd post it all, but this is a heck of a long blog entry. Go ahead and email me at marie@mariegryphon.com if you must have the balance. I'll supply a link if I find any additional comments elsewhere.
Defenders of gun rights were rightly unstinting in their criticism of Michael Bellesiles, the former Emory professor who was found to have fabricated evidence for his book, Arming America. Unfortunately, a time may also arrive when they are obligated by their high standards of academic honesty to censure one of their own. A controversy that has festered on academic email discussion lists for some time may finally be coming to a head.
Dr. John Lott, Jr., author of More Guns, Less Crime - a groundbreaking study of the relationship between concealed-carry laws and crime rates - has been accused in some detail of fabricating a survey in order to support his oft made claim that merely brandishing, rather than firing, a firearm will scare off an attacker 98% of the time.
Dr. Lott made this claim in the first edition of More Guns, Less Crime, published in 1998, citing only “national surveys.” He wrote at page 3, “If national surveys are correct, 98 percent of the time that people use guns defensively, they merely have to brandish a weapon to break off an attack.” According to critic Tim Lambert, Dr. Lott has made reference to the 98% statistic at least 48 different times.
During this same period, other commentators were also citing a 98% figure. They were apparently attempting to cite a study on defensive gun use published by Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck. However, they were forgetting that the 98% figure cited by Kleck included defensive gun uses involving warning shots and missed shots at an attacker as well as mere brandishing cases.
When confronted with a critique of the 98% figure, individuals including C.D. Tavares have explained their misinterpretation of Kleck’s work and apologized. Dr. Lott, though, began attributing the 98% figure to a national survey he now says he personally conducted in the year 1997. In the second edition of More Guns, Less Crime, he offers the following alteration on page 3: “If a national survey that I conducted is correct, 98 percent of the time that people use guns defensively, they merely have to brandish a weapon to break off an attack.” (emphasis added)
Dr. Lott’s accusers suggest that he was unwilling to admit that he had misinterpreted Kleck’s study, opting instead to credit a never-before-mentioned national survey of his own for the 98% figure. Wrong as it would have been, one can certainly imagine an author of a 321-page book convincing himself that a small sleight of hand on page 3 would never be questioned. If the naysayers are correct, though, Dr. Lott significantly worsened matters for himself in 2000, when he responded in The Criminologist to criticism from U.C. Santa Barbara’s Otis Duncan with a detailed description of the survey Lott supposedly conducted in 1997, and its findings. Dr. Lott apparently discussed the details of the survey over the telephone with Duncan as well.
Having reviewed credible-sounding critiques of Dr. Lott’s description of his survey by Lambert and Duncan, Northwestern University Professor James Lindgren undertook to investigate whether the survey actually took place. It is Lindgren’s report on his efforts, dated December 24, 2002, that is most concerning.
Dr. Lott claims that his telephone survey was conducted over three months in 1997, and garnered responses from “2,424 people from across the United States.” Because many called parties fail to answer calls or refuse to respond to survey questions, it is certain that thousands more calls would have been made in order to generate 2,424 responses.
But Lindgren reports that Dr. Lott had no funding for this survey, and says he covered the expenses out of his own pocket. Dr. Lott claims to have used student volunteers to help him place thousands of phone calls, but lacks any records listing student participants, and cannot remember the name of even a single volunteer. Dr. Lott says he had the students make these phone calls on their own home telephone lines, reimbursing their long distance charges from his personal account, but that he cannot prove this because he discards his cancelled checks after three years. Dr. Lott apparently told Lindgren that he did not recall discussing this survey project with any colleagues at the University of Chicago.
As for the data itself, Dr. Lott apparently told both Lindgren and Duncan that he cannot produce the data because it was lost in a computer crash in 1997. He apparently explained at least once that survey data was entered directly into students’ computers, and then electronically transferred to his computer during the survey process, but apparently no student retained copies of the data allowing him to reconstruct the survey following his computer crash. He has also apparently suggested that some handwritten data collection may have occurred, but that any handwritten survey results must have been inadvertently discarded when he moved out of his office at Yale University.
Dr. Lott is an exceptionally bright man who has conducted some of the most important research to date on criminological issues related to gun control. If he did indeed conduct the 1997 survey – as I hope he did – he should proactively work with others to find at least one of the graduate students who assisted him, obtain his old bank records and their old telephone records. In short, he should take the time right now to set this controversy at rest.
If Dr. Lott’s accusers are correct, immediate action is even more important. In very little time this issue will find its way into the mainstream media. If Dr. Lott has lied to his colleagues he must now tell the truth, difficult as that might be. The alternative will surely transform a journalistic footnote into a media circus.
UPDATE: Tim Lambert has given me permission to post the following clarifications of his report on this issue, which I quote:
***
"You wrote: 'During this same period, other commentators were also
citing a 98% figure.' Actually, all of those examples predate Lott's
use of the figure, so we know that they weren't repeating Lott's
figure.
You wrote: 'He has also apparently suggested that some handwritten data
collection may have occurred, but that any handwritten survey results
must have been inadvertently discarded when he moved out of his office
at Yale University.'
Lindgren just wrote to me [Lambert] and asked me to correct that part of his
report. It now reads 'He reported that he might have tossed out tally
sheets or other evidence of the 1997 study during one of his several
moves over the years.'"
***
Thanks, Tim.
UPDATE II: Wow, this story has now been picked up by Instapundit! Glenn Reynolds rounds up some links, including my original post on this issue, and promises future updates. I feel like I just shook hands with Tiger Woods or something...
UPDATE III: For important follow-up information regarding this story, including new evidence that Dr. Lott did indeed conduct the 1997 story, please see Lindgren Exonerates Lott!
I visited my first former communist nation last week – a lovely piece of the former Yugoslavia called Slovenia. Slovenia was surprisingly picturesque, being burdened with no more communist architecture than a typical American university.
Gaining international recognition for former Yugoslav republics is difficult, and Slovenia is negotiating hard for admission to the EU. Its troubles are nothing, though, compared with the Balkan territory known to the world as the FYROM, for “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.”
When the FYROM adopted its constitution, it named itself the Republic of Macedonia. Greece castigated the move, claiming that the FYROM’s chosen name was reflective of irredentist ambitions towards a northern Greek province of the same name. Greek pressure prevented UN recognition of the newly independent statelet by its chosen name, and the UN adopted the temporary compromise of calling it the FYROM.
In NATO peacekeeping circles, this issue is even stickier. Never on great terms with Greece, fellow NATO member Turkey will not silently suffer Greece’s complaints about the FYROM. So, NATO always attaches a footnote to the end of “FYROM*,” stating: “*Turkey recognizes the Republic of Macedonia by its constitutional name.”
An acronym with a footnote for a handle would rankle any aspiring nation, and NATO has found the name counterproductive to its peacekeeping mission there. It therefore has crafted an exception to its compromise: NATO refers to the FYROM as the FYROM*, except when addressing a largely Macedonian audience, in which case the FYROM must be referred to as “Macedonia.”
With rules like these, anyone could screw up, but none of the main actors can afford a sense of humor. Officials reportedly found it necessary to walk out of an official NATO ceremony in the FYROM after a NATO officer mistakenly referred to it as the FYROM in his remarks.
And I used to wonder why the Defense and State Department budgets are so large!
*Turkey recognizes the Republic of Macedonia by its constitutional name.
Every market liberal should be allowed one heterodoxy. Mine is telemarketers. I absolutely hate them. Telemarketers should be rounded up, denied their procedural due process rights, and shipped to Guantanamo Bay to room with Al-Qaeda.
While a solution truly commensurate with the gravity of their offense isn’t on the horizon just yet, the FTC recently announced plans for a national do-not-call list, to which hapless Americans can add their names with a single call to a toll free number. Subsequent calls to such escapees will be federal offenses, hopefully punishable under sentencing guidelines that mention thumbscrews and shock treatments.
At least one telemarketing company has already found religion. WAPO reported on Saturday that CyberRep has cancelled its last cold-calling contract, opting instead to take inbound calls from customers who actually want to speak to them. “It is our belief that the world of outbound telemarketing has a terminal illness and is dying,” a company executive explained.
Remaining perpetrators should convert fast. The national program – and federal penalties – will be online within months. A national “do not call” list is the latest unwarranted federal regulatory intrusion into essentially non-coercive market activity. And I can’t wait…
UPDATE: The agony of disappointment! I knew it was too good to be true. The Associated Press now reports that the House Energy and Commerce Committee is holding up funding authority for the FTC’s “do not call” registry under heavy lobbying from the Direct Marketing Association. Afraid to oppose the list, Committee members say they want to “study” the plan for the indefinite future.
This calls to mind a recent conversation – related here by Julian – about the power of large organizations to influence the political system in favor of personally beneficial policies, the costs of which are then disbursed among the rest of us. Standard public choice economics, to be sure. The twist? We almost convinced ourselves that widely held corporations may suffer from similar incentive problems. Efficient markets don’t require this type of FTC regulation, you say? Oh, don't argue with me just now. My inner fascist is squalling in dismay!
