Keneth Miles describes Lott and Lehrer's claims that crime increased in Washington DC after the gun ban as an excellent example of cherry picking.
Earlier, I observed that the only justification Lott offered for another claim he made about DC crime, that Baghdad had fewer murders was "presumably Rumsfeld knows whether the number of murders is greater or less than 200 a month". Wyeth has found that the Baghdad city morgue handled 470 gunshot deaths in July. For comparison, metropolitan Washington has a similar population to Baghdad and about 20 gunshot murders each month. It would seem that all the AK47s floating around Baghdad haven't reduced crime that much.
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Lott responds on his blog to Wyeth's accusation that he had no evidence for his claim about Baghdad murders. (My earlier comments are here.)
Notice that Lott responds on a minor point, once again ducking the question of the coding errors. And while he links to Wyeth and responds to…
Last time I commented on Lott's claims about the Baghdad murder rate, I noted his pathological refusal to admit that he was wrong about the rate. Even though dozens of newspapers have reported that there are hundreds of murders each month in Baghdad (see the table with some of…
This is an annotated list of John Lott's on line reviews at Amazon
and at Barnes and Noble.
Most of his reviews were posted anonymously or under a false name, and he used this anonymity to post many five-star reviews of his own books and to pan rival books.
When you post a review at…
Chris Lawrence defends Lott against the charge Wyeth made yesterday. James Joyner also comments.
Lawrence is correct when he points out that Lott's claims about Baghdad murders are not lies unless Lott knows them to be false, and, in the absence of reliable data we don't know…