John Lott
Encyclopedia
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
, Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, the Wharton School
Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
The Wharton School is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Wharton was the world’s first collegiate business school and the first business school in the United States...
at the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
, and the University of Maryland, College Park
University of Maryland, College Park
The University of Maryland, College Park is a top-ranked public research university located in the city of College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C...
, and at the non-academic conservative American Enterprise Institute
American Enterprise Institute
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research is a conservative think tank founded in 1943. Its stated mission is "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism—limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and...
. He holds a Ph.D. in economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
from UCLA
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
, and his areas of research include econometrics
Econometrics
Econometrics has been defined as "the application of mathematics and statistical methods to economic data" and described as the branch of economics "that aims to give empirical content to economic relations." More precisely, it is "the quantitative analysis of actual economic phenomena based on...
, law and economics
Law and economics
The economic analysis of law is an analysis of law applying methods of economics. Economic concepts are used to explain the effects of laws, to assess which legal rules are economically efficient, and to predict which legal rules will be promulgated.-Relationship to other disciplines and...
, public choice theory
Public choice theory
In economics, public choice theory is the use of modern economic tools to study problems that traditionally are in the province of political science...
, industrial organization
Industrial organization
Industrial organization is the field of economics that builds on the theory of the firm in examining the structure of, and boundaries between, firms and markets....
, public finance
Public finance
Public finance is the revenue and expenditure of public authoritiesThe purview of public finance is considered to be threefold: governmental effects on efficient allocation of resources, distribution of income, and macroeconomic stabilization.-Overview:The proper role of government provides a...
, microeconomics
Microeconomics
Microeconomics is a branch of economics that studies the behavior of how the individual modern household and firms make decisions to allocate limited resources. Typically, it applies to markets where goods or services are being bought and sold...
, labor economics, and environmental regulation.
Lott is an author in both academia
Academia
Academia is the community of students and scholars engaged in higher education and research.-Etymology:The word comes from the akademeia in ancient Greece. Outside the city walls of Athens, the gymnasium was made famous by Plato as a center of learning...
and in popular culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
. A political conservative, he is a frequent writer of opinion editorials, has published over 90 articles in peer-reviewed academic journals related to his research areas, and has authored five books, including More Guns, Less Crime
More Guns, Less Crime
More Guns, Less Crime is a book by John Lott that says violent crime rates go down when states pass "shall issue" concealed carry laws. He presents the results of his statistical analysis of crime data for every county in the United States during 18 years from 1977 to 1994...
, The Bias Against Guns
The Bias Against Guns
The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You've Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong is a book by John Lott, following up on his controversial More Guns, Less Crime. It is intended to reach a broader audience than its highly technical predecessor...
, and Freedomnomics
Freedomnomics
Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don't is a book by John R. Lott, Jr., author of More Guns, Less Crime and The Bias Against Guns. Freedomnomics takes an economic look at the effects of the free market, and presents some arguments against those found in...
.
Outside of academia, Lott is best known for his participation in the gun rights debate, particularly his arguments against restrictions on owning and carrying guns.
Academic career
Lott studied economics at UCLA, receiving his B.A.Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in 1980, M.A.
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
in 1982, and Ph.D.
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
in 1984. Lott has held positions in law and economics at several institutions, including the Yale Law School
Yale Law School
Yale Law School, or YLS, is the law school of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Established in 1824, it offers the J.D., LL.M., J.S.D. and M.S.L. degrees in law. It also hosts visiting scholars, visiting researchers and a number of legal research centers...
, Stanford, UCLA, the Wharton Business School, Texas A&M University
Texas A&M University
Texas A&M University is a coeducational public research university located in College Station, Texas . It is the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System. The sixth-largest university in the United States, A&M's enrollment for Fall 2011 was over 50,000 for the first time in school...
, and Rice University
Rice University
William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University or Rice, is a private research university located on a heavily wooded campus in Houston, Texas, United States...
. Lott was the chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission
United States Sentencing Commission
The United States Sentencing Commission is an independent agency of the judicial branch of the federal government of the United States. It is responsible for articulating the sentencing guidelines for the United States federal courts...
(1988–1989). He spent five years as a visiting professor (1994–95) and as a fellow (1995–99) at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
. Lott was a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute
American Enterprise Institute
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research is a conservative think tank founded in 1943. Its stated mission is "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism—limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and...
(2001–2006). He left AEI for SUNY Binghamton
Binghamton University
Binghamton University, also formally called State University of New York at Binghamton, , is a public research university in the State of New York. The University is one of the four university centers in the State University of New York system...
. From July 2007 to 2010, Lott was a senior research scientist with the University of Maryland Foundation at the University of Maryland, College Park
University of Maryland, College Park
The University of Maryland, College Park is a top-ranked public research university located in the city of College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C...
.
Lott has published over ninety articles in academic journals, as well as five books for the general public. Opinion pieces by Lott have appeared in such places as the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
, USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
, and the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
. Since March 2008 he has been a weekly columnist for Fox News. He has also appeared frequently on television and radio shows.
In terms of total academic journal output from 1990 to 2000 adjusted for journal quality, John Lott ranks 26th worldwide among economists, and in terms of total academic journal output in journal pages published he was 4th. In terms of citations in the same period, he ranks 86th.
Among economics, law, and business researchers, Lott's research is the sixth most downloaded on the Social Science Research Network. Nobel laureate Milton Friedman said that "John Lott has few equals as a perceptive analyst of controversial public policy issues." Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
also referred to Lott as "The Gun Crowd's Guru."
Lott's work
Lott has produced research, authored opinions, and stirred up controversy in many areas with his economic analysis of certain issues.Concealed weapons and crime rate
In an article written with David B. Mustard and Lott's subsequent books More Guns, Less CrimeMore Guns, Less Crime
More Guns, Less Crime is a book by John Lott that says violent crime rates go down when states pass "shall issue" concealed carry laws. He presents the results of his statistical analysis of crime data for every county in the United States during 18 years from 1977 to 1994...
and The Bias Against Guns
The Bias Against Guns
The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You've Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong is a book by John Lott, following up on his controversial More Guns, Less Crime. It is intended to reach a broader audience than its highly technical predecessor...
, Lott presents a statistical argument for the claim that allowing adults to carry concealed weapons significantly reduces crime in America. He supports this position by an exhaustive tabulation of various social and economic data from census
Census
A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population. The term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common...
and other population surveys
Statistical survey
Survey methodology is the field that studies surveys, that is, the sample of individuals from a population with a view towards making statistical inferences about the population using the sample. Polls about public opinion, such as political beliefs, are reported in the news media in democracies....
of individual United States counties in different years, which he fits into a large multifactorial mathematical model of crime rate. His published results generally show a reduction in violent crime associated with the adoption by states of laws allowing the general adult population to freely carry concealed weapons.
The work was immediately controversial, drawing large amounts of support and opposition. Numerous academics praised Lott's methodology, including Florida State University
Florida State University
The Florida State University is a space-grant and sea-grant public university located in Tallahassee, Florida, United States. It is a comprehensive doctoral research university with medical programs and significant research activity as determined by the Carnegie Foundation...
economist Bruce Benson, Cardozo School of Law professor John O. McGinnis, and University of Mississippi
University of Mississippi
The University of Mississippi, also known as Ole Miss, is a public, coeducational research university located in Oxford, Mississippi. Founded in 1844, the school is composed of the main campus in Oxford, four branch campuses located in Booneville, Grenada, Tupelo, and Southaven as well as the...
professor William F. Shughart. The book also received favorable reviews from academics Gary Kleck
Gary Kleck
Gary Kleck is a criminologist at Florida State University.-Criminology:He has done numerous studies of the effects of guns on death and injury in crimes, on suicides, and gun accidents, the impact of gun control laws on rates of violence, the frequency and effectiveness of defensive gun use by...
, Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman was an American economist, statistician, academic, and author who taught at the University of Chicago for more than three decades...
, and Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell is an American economist, social theorist, political philosopher, and author. A National Humanities Medal winner, he advocates laissez-faire economics and writes from a libertarian perspective...
.
Other reviews claimed that there were problems with Lott's model. In the New England Journal of Medicine
New England Journal of Medicine
The New England Journal of Medicine is an English-language peer-reviewed medical journal published by the Massachusetts Medical Society. It describes itself as the oldest continuously published medical journal in the world.-History:...
, David Hemenway argued that Lott failed to account for several key variables, including drug consumption, and that therefore the model was flawed; however, Lott's book did account for other variables such as cocaine prices. Others agreed, and some researchers, including Ian Ayres
Ian Ayres
Ian Ayres is an American academic who is the William K. Townsend Professor at the Yale Law School and a Professor at the Yale School of Management.-Biography:...
and John J. Donohue
John J. Donohue III
John Donohue is a law professor and economist widely known for his writings on effect of legalized abortion on crime and criticism of the More Guns, Less Crime theory of John Lott.-Biography:John J. Donohue III was born on January 30, 1953...
, claimed that the model contained significant coding errors and systemic bias
Systemic bias
Systemic bias is the inherent tendency of a process to favor particular outcomes. The term is a neologism that generally refers to human systems; the analogous problem in non-human systems is often called systematic bias, and leads to systematic error in measurements or estimates.-Bias in...
. Gary Kleck considered it unlikely that such a large decrease in violent crime could be explained by a relatively modest increase in concealed carry, and others claimed that removing portions of the data set caused the results to still show statistically significant drops only in aggravated assaults and robbery when all counties with fewer than 100,000 people and Florida's counties were both simultaneously dropped from the sample.
In 2004, the National Academy of Sciences
United States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...
conducted a review of current research and data on firearms and violent crime, including Lott's work, and found "no credible evidence that the passage of right-to-carry laws decreases or increases violent crime." James Q. Wilson
James Q. Wilson
James Q. Wilson is an American academic political scientist and an authority on public administration. He is a professor and senior fellow at the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy at Boston College....
dissented from that opinion, and while accepting the committee's findings on violent crime in general, he noted that the committee's own findings in several tests showed "that shall-issue laws drive down the murder rate".
Referring to the research done on the topic, The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is a newspaper and website that presents news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty, staff members and administrators....
reported that while most researchers support Lott's findings that right-to-carry laws reduce violent crime, some researchers doubt that concealed carry laws have any impact on violent crime, saying however that "Mr. Lott's research has convinced his peers of at least one point: No scholars now claim that legalizing concealed weapons causes a major increase in crime." As Lott critics Ian Ayres and John J. Donohue III pointed out: "We conclude that Lott and Mustard have made an important scholarly contribution in establishing that these laws have not led to the massive bloodbath of death and injury that some of their opponents feared. On the other hand, we find that the statistical evidence that these laws have reduced crime is limited, sporadic, and extraordinarily fragile."
Women's suffrage and government growth
Using data from 1870 to 1940, Lott and Larry Kenny studied how state government expenditures and revenue changed in 48 state governments after women obtained the right to vote. Women were able to vote in 29 states prior to women's suffrage and the adoption of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. Lott found that the impact of granting of women's suffrage on per-capita state government expenditures and revenue was startling.His research indicates that women's suffrage had a bigger impact on government spending and taxes in states with a greater percentage of women. Even after accounting for variables such as industrialization, urbanization, education and income, per capita real state government spending, which had been flat or falling during the 10 years before women began voting, doubled during the next 11 years. The increase in government spending and revenue started immediately after women started voting in national elections and 19 additional state elections.
Media bias and defensive gun use
Lott argues in both More Guns, Less Crime and The Bias Against Guns that media coverage of defensive gun use is rare, noting that in general, only shootings ending in fatalities are discussed in news stories. In More Guns, Less Crime, Lott writes that "[s]ince in many defensive cases a handgun is simply brandished, and no one is harmed, many defensive uses are never even reported to the police".Attempting to quantify this phenomenon, in the first edition of the book, published in May 1998, Lott wrote that "national surveys" suggested that "98 percent of the time that people use guns defensively, they merely have to brandish a weapon to break off an attack." In that same paragraph he also wrote that "[s]ince in many defensive cases a handgun is simply brandished, and no one is harmed, many defensive uses are never even reported to the police." The higher the rate of defensive gun uses that do not end in the attacker being killed or wounded, the easier it is to explain why defensive gun uses are not covered by the media without reference to media bias. Lott argued that there is media bias, but, given that other estimates were available, the number that he was using was actually biased against the claim that he was making. Lott cited the figure frequently in the media, including publications like the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
.
In 2002, he repeated the study, and reported that brandishing a weapon was sufficient to stop an attack 95% of the time. Other researchers criticized his methodology, saying that his sample size of 1,015 respondents was too small for the study to be accurate and that the majority of similar studies suggest a value between 70 and 80 percent. Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz's 1994 estimate rises to 92 percent when brandishing and warning shots are added together. Lott explained the lower rates found by others was at least in part due to the different questions that were asked. The other surveys all asked people to recall events over the previous five years, while Lott had only asked people about events that had occurred during just the previous year. Lott used the higher estimate because it was biased against his claim of media bias. The survey questions have also been made available for years to anyone who would have liked to replicate the survey themselves.
Environmental regulations
Together with John Karpoff and Eric Wehrly at the University of Washington, Lott has worked to show the importance of government regulations through both legal and regulatory penalties and the weaknesses of reputational penalties in reducing pollutionPollution
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into a natural environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the ecosystem i.e. physical systems or living organisms. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light...
. Firms violating environmental laws suffer statistically significant losses in the market value of firm equity. The losses, however, are of similar magnitudes to the legal penalties imposed; and in the cross section, the market value loss is related to the size of the legal penalty.
Media bias
With Kevin Hassett at the American Enterprise Institute, Lott has investigated media bias. Their research looking at newspaper headlines after the release of government economic data on GDP, unemployment, number of jobs, durable good sales, and retail sales suggests that American newspapers tend to give more positive coverage to the equivalent economic news when Democrats are in the Presidency. They offered a solution to the problem of how to objectively measure what the actual news story was and then obtain an objective measure of how it was covered by newspapers. Their results showed a smaller though similar effect from Democrats controlling Congress.Affirmative action in police departments
Lott finds that when hiring standards are lowered in the process of recruiting more minority officers, the overall quality of all officers is reduced and crime rates are increased. The most adverse effects of these hiring policies have occurred in the most heavily black populated areas. There is no consistent evidence that crime rates rise when standards for hiring women are changed, and this raises questions about whether norming tests or altering their content to create equal pass rates is preferable. The paper examines how the changing composition of police departments affects such measures as the murder of and assaults against police officers.Abortion and crime
With John Whitley at the University of Adelaide, Lott has considered crime rates and the possible influence of laws which place abortion decisions with the pregnant person other than boards of physicians. They acknowledge the old 1960s argument that abortion may prevent the birth of "unwanted" children, who would have relatively small investments in human capital and a higher probability of crimeLegalized abortion and crime effect
The effect of legalized abortion on crime is the theory that legal abortion reduces crime. Proponents of the theory generally argue that since unwanted children are more likely to become criminals and that an inverse correlation is observed between the availability of abortion and subsequent crime...
. On the other hand, their research suggests that liberalizing abortion rules correlates with an increase in out-of-wedlock births and single parent families. In turn, they argue that this increase in single parent births implies the opposite impact on investments in human capital (i.e., average investment per child decreases under their argument). Using the correlation between children in poverty and in single parent homes with crime they build an argument that liberalization of abortion laws increased murder rates by around about 0.5 to 7 percent.
Fluorescent lighting
In June 2008 an opinion piece by Lott about compact fluorescent light bulbs was featured on the FOX News website. The article was written from the point of view that Congress was making a mistake by mandating the use of compact fluorescent bulbs. Lott points to the United States Environmental Protection Agency estimates of the health hazards associated with compact fluorescent lamps and that the costs of cleaning up broken bulbs far outweigh the benefits. His reasons include: that the costs of compact fluorescent bulbs largely balance off their increased life expectancy, but that the EPA claims that compact fluorescent bulbs are dangerous if broken, as they can cause mercury poisoningMercury poisoning
Mercury poisoning is a disease caused by exposure to mercury or its compounds. Mercury is a heavy metal occurring in several forms, all of which can produce toxic effects in high enough doses...
in those who breathe the air near a broken bulb, and that the bulbs are difficult to dispose of and transport. Lott blames the Democratic congress for the decision, saying:
"When one looks at the problems with these bulbs, it becomes very understandable why people aren’t rushing to own them. Possibly people are a little smarter than the Democrat controlled congress that passed these rules."
Other areas
Lott has done research supporting the conclusion that most of the large recent increases in campaign spending for state and federal offices can be explained by higher government spending. Lott has also done research supporting the conclusion that higher quality judges, measured by their output once they are on the court (e.g., number of citations to their opinions or number of published opinions), take longer to get confirmed.Lott has advocated government deregulation of various areas, and has also been published in the popular press taking positions in support of the U.S. Republican Party and President George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
on topics such as the validity of the 2000 Presidential Election
2000 presidential election
The 2000 presidential election may refer to:* Croatian presidential elections, 2000* Federal Republic of Yugoslavia presidential election, 2000* Fijian presidential election, 2000* Ghanaian presidential election, 2000* Polish presidential election, 2000...
results in Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
.
Defamation suit
On April 10, 2006, John Lott filed suit for defamation against Steven LevittSteven Levitt
Steven David "Steve" Levitt is an American economist known for his work in the field of crime, in particular on the link between legalized abortion and crime rates. Winner of the 2004 John Bates Clark Medal, he is currently the William B...
and HarperCollins Publishers over the book Freakonomics
Freakonomics
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything is a 2005 non-fiction book by University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner. The book has been described as melding pop culture with economics, but has also been described as...
and against Levitt over a series of emails to John McCall. In the book Freakonomics, Levitt and coauthor Stephen J. Dubner
Stephen J. Dubner
Stephen J. Dubner is an American journalist who has written four books and numerous articles. Dubner is best known as co-author of the pop-economics book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything and its 2009 sequel, SuperFreakonomics.-Background:His parents were...
claimed that the results of Lott's research in More Guns, Less Crime had not been replicated by other academics. In the emails to economist John McCall, who had pointed to a number of papers in different academic publications that had replicated Lott's work, Levitt wrote that the work by several authors supporting Lott in a special 2001 issue of the Journal of Law and Economics had not been peer reviewed, Lott had paid the University of Chicago Press to publish the papers, and that papers with results opposite of Lott's had been blocked from publication in that issue.
A federal judge found that Levitt's replication claim in Freakonomics was not defamation but found merit in Lott's complaint over the email claims.
Levitt settled the second defamation claim by admitting in a letter to John McCall that he himself was a peer reviewer in the 2001 issue of the Journal of Law and Economics, that Lott had not engaged in bribery (paying for extra costs of printing and postage for a conference issue is customary), and that he knew that "scholars with varying opinions" (including Levitt himself) had been invited to participate. The Chronicle of Higher Education wrote that Levitt's Correction Letter "offers a doozy of a concession."
The dismissal of the first half of Lott's suit was unanimously upheld by The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on February 11, 2009.
Anti-gun group posing as Lott on website and emails
An anti-gun organization set up a website pretending to be run by Lott. The website was run and emails sent out under Lott's name to claim that Lott opposed legislation designed to limit suits against gun makers and that Lott had reconsidered his position on how individuals could sell guns, positions that Lott had not taken. "E-mails from visitors questioning whether or not the site was actually run by Lott were responded to with messages signed by 'John Lott,' arguing that the site was, in fact, run by the academic well known for his research into the reductions in violent crime resulting from citizens carrying concealed handguns. But comments on the site and claims made in e-mails purportedly from Lott were inconsistent with his research and beliefs and some emails had Lott suggesting ways for people to evade gun control laws."Disputed survey
In the course of a dispute with Otis Dudley Duncan in 1999-2000, Lott claimed to have undertaken a national survey of 2,424 respondents in 1997, the results of which were the source for claims he had made beginning in 1997. However, in 2000 Lott was unable to produce the data, or any records showing that the survey had been undertaken. He said the 1997 hard drive crash that had affected several projects with co-authors had destroyed his survey data set, the original tally sheets had been abandoned with other personal property in his move from Chicago to Yale, and he could not recall the names of any of the students who he said had worked on it. Following extensive publicity, James Hamilton, a retired detective in Tennessee, came forward saying that he had taken the survey. David Gross, a former city prosecutor and former NRA board member came forward to say that he had been interviewed for a gun survey, and he thought that he was interviewed in the spring of 1997, probably by people working for Lott. Critics alleged that the survey had never taken place, but Lott defends the survey's existence and accuracy, quoting on his website colleagues who lost data in the hard drive crash.Use of Econometrics as proof of causation
Rutgers UniversityRutgers University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...
sociology professor Ted Goertzel considered use of econometrics to establish causal relationships by Lott (and by Lott's critics Levitt, Ayres and Donohue) to be "fundamentally flawed" junk science. The National Academy of Sciences panel that reported on several gun control issues in 2004 looked at Right-To-Carry laws in Chapter 6 and endorsed neither the Lott & Mustard (1997) level and trend models as definite proof nor the Ayres & Donohue (2003) hybrid model as definite refutation of Lott's thesis: the majority of panel concluded that econometrics could not decide the issue, suggesting instead alternate research, such as a survey of felons to determine if RTC changed their behavior. The criminologist on the NAS panel, James Q. Wilson
James Q. Wilson
James Q. Wilson is an American academic political scientist and an authority on public administration. He is a professor and senior fellow at the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy at Boston College....
, wrote a dissent from the econometricians' conclusion. Wilson noted in the report that all their estimates on murder rates supported Lott's conclusion on the effect of RTC on murder. The Committee responded that "[w]hile it is true that most of the reported estimates [of the policy on murder rates] are negative, several are positive and many are statistically insignificant." They further noted that the full committee, including Wilson, agreed that there was not convincing evidence that RTC policies had an impact on other kinds of violent crime.
Mary Rosh persona
As part of the dispute surrounding the missing survey, Lott created and used "Mary Rosh" as a fake persona to defend his own works on UsenetUsenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
and elsewhere. After investigative work by blogger Julian Sanchez
Julian Sanchez
Julian Sanchez is an American libertarian writer living in Washington, D.C.. Currently a research fellow at the Cato Institute, he previously covered technology and privacy issues as the Washington Editor for Ars Technica...
, Lott admitted to use of the Rosh persona. Sanchez also pointed out that Lott, posing as Rosh, not only praised his own academic writing, but also called himself "the best professor I ever had".
Some commentators accused Lott of transgressing normal practice, noting that he praised himself while posing as one of his former students, and that "Rosh" was used to post a favorable review of More Guns, Less Crime on Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
. Lott has claimed that the "Rosh" review was written by his son and wife.
"I probably shouldn't have done it—I know I shouldn't have done it—but it's hard to think of any big advantage I got except to be able to comment fictitiously," Lott told the Washington Post in 2003.
Lott's websites
- John Lott's blog
- John Lott's data, available for downloading
- Blog For John Lott's 2007 Book, Freedomnomics
- Lott's Fox News columns