Lott
Category archives for Lott
John Lott’s Mysteriously Changing Blog Post
Posted by Tim Lambert on March 25, 2011 John Lott is at it again. This time he accuses Chris Brown of misquoting him when in fact Lott’s post had been quietly corrected after Brown pointed out that is was wrong. This seems to be the same behaviour that got him into trouble over his mystery survey. Rather than concede that he had made…
Dubner falsely claims that ocean acidification is addressed in Superfreakonomics
Posted by Tim Lambert on October 29, 2009 Thingsbreak has been documenting the way Levitt and Dubner keeping digging the hole deeper, and Dubner has kept on digging with this whopper: we believe that anyone who reads our chapter without an agenda wouldn’t even find it particularly controversial. They will see that we routinely address the concerns that critics accuse us of ignoring…
Levitt and Dubner liken climate scientists to flat Earthers
Posted by Tim Lambert on October 29, 2009 Levitt and Dubner still haven’t engaged with their critics’ arguments and continue to respond with nothing more than name calling. Their latest piece in USA Today likens climate scientists to flat earthers: Devoted environmentalists, meanwhile, as well as some members of the tight-knit climate-science community, find this sort of idea repugnant. Using sulfur dioxide to…
Superfreakonomics: Levitt missing the point
Posted by Tim Lambert on October 29, 2009 Steve Levitt has followed in Dubner’s footsteps with a response to his critics that fails to respond to their arguments. Levitt first restates his argument and then asserts that their conclusions are different because: We are answering a different question than our critics. Our question, at noted above, is what is the cheapest, fastest way…
What Do Superfreakonomics And Senator Inhofe Have In Common?
Posted by Tim Lambert on October 23, 2009 Well, they are shown next to each other in Dave Weigel’s story Climate Change Skeptics Embrace ‘Freakonomics’ Sequel, but that’s not the answer I’m thinking of. Weigel writes: The final chapter deals with global warming, characterizing the beliefs of pessimistic environmentalists as “religious fervor,” and arguing that the climate change solutions proposed by Al Gore…
Why Everything in Superfreakonomics About Global Warming Is Wrong
Posted by Tim Lambert on October 16, 2009 I reviewed Freakonomics when it first came out and really liked it. So I was looking forward to the sequel Superfreakonomics. Unfortunately, Levitt and Dubner decided to write about global warming and have made a dreadful hash of it. The result is so wrong that it has even Joe Romm and William Connolley in agreement.…
Scholars cannot replicate Lott’s results
Posted by Tim Lambert on February 13, 2009 Despiting having no supporting data, Lott claimed over and over and over again that merely brandishing a gun was sufficient to scare off a criminal 98% of the time. In 2002, he conducted a survey that he claims gave a very similar number — 95%. But nobody can replicate this result. And by “replicate” I…
Lott loses appeal of dismissal of his lawsuit against Freakonomics
Posted by Tim Lambert on February 12, 2009 After Lott’s lawsuit against Freakonomics was thrown out of court, he tried for a doever by amending his complaint. The judge said no, so Lott appealed. And now he’s lost the appeal as well. More discussion at Volokh.
More Guns, Less Crime hypothesis: still dead
Posted by Tim Lambert on January 14, 2009 A few years ago, the National Research Council reviewed the evidence on firearms and crime and concluded: There is no credible evidence that “right-to-carry” laws, which allow qualified adults to carry concealed handguns, either decrease or increase violent crime. Paul Cassell says that he finds plausible a new paper by Moody and Marvell that reanalyzes…
650 international scientists? Err, not exactly.
Posted by Tim Lambert on December 11, 2008 Last year Inhofe released a list of 400 scientists who disputed mainstream climate science. But as Joe Romm and Andrew Dessler observed, the list was padded with TV weathermen, economists and so on and contained very few actual climate scientists. Now he’s back with more of the same in a new list that adds 250…