Mark Kleiman has a excellent summary of the recent developments. Mark ends with a plea to gun-rights folks ---they should consider cutting Lott loose. (I would add, either that, or defend him---right now, Lott's side is losing the argument by default.)
Archpundit has reply from Lott to his earlier critique of Lott's methodology. ArchPundit makes some excellent points when he compares Lott's survey to Kleck's. Just one small point: I analysed Kleck's data and found that the percent firing in the 1 year recall frame was almost identical to that in the 5 year frame.
Ted Barlow gives a nice simple explanation of what is wrong with the Lott's 98% figure.
A reader sends in the following comment about yesterday's post:
I think "question 3" from your last update---significantly, the one he dodges---is the key, because many of Lott's defenders seem to think you've shifted to a "different issue" now, when in fact it's very much the same issue. Glenn et. al. seem to believe that the only question about Lott's honesty is whether he told the truth about conducting a survey, when for a trained statistician, doing a slipshod survey with a meaningless sample size, then reporting the result without mentioning that any expert would consider the number sheer garbage, is dishonest. I mean, if he were citing some other survey, at least people could have checked the primary source and raised questions about how well it supported his claim. Here he was using the fact that his survey (which we'll assume for now really happened) was lost to hide the fact that it didn't back his statements---something that would have been obvious to everyone with stats training if the data had been preserved.Reynolds wants to claim that this is now merely about the accuracy of Lott's claims, and no longer about his honesty. But the kind of deceptive use of numbers we're talking about is clearly fraudulent for someone who knows better---which an economist would. This, I think is a point you may want to stress, because it's clear from the non-controversial data we already have. Force 'em to explain why this kind of behavior doesn't count as academic fraud.
I wish I could have put it that well.