Levitt
tlambert | October 29, 2009Thingsbreak 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 (the problem of ocean acidification, e.g., and the "excuse to pollute" that geoengineering solutions might afford), and that we neither "misrepresent" climate scientists nor flub the facts.
Here is everything they say in chapter 5 about ocean…
tlambert | October 29, 2009Levitt 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 solve an environmental problem? It just doesn't feel right to them. Of course, the idea that the Earth revolves around the sun didn't initially feel right either. Nor did the assertion that the Earth might in fact be round and…
tlambert | October 29, 2009Steve 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 to quickly cool the Earth. Like every question we tackle in Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics, we approach the question like economists, using data and logic to conclude that the answer to that question is geo-engineering. ...
But that is not the question…
tlambert | October 23, 2009Well, 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 and many Democrats are ineffective and unworkable. It repeats claims that environmental journalists have debated or debunked for years. As a result, the authors are getting some early support from climate change skeptics who feel…
tlambert | October 16, 2009I 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.
So what went wrong? One possibility is that Freakonomics was superficially plausible but also rubbish, and it was only when they wrote about an area where I was knowledgeable that I noticed. But I don't think this is the correct explanation. I've read the journal papers on…
tlambert | February 12, 2009After 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.
tlambert | October 24, 2008William Ford reports on the oral arguments in Lott's appeal of the dismissal of his lawsuit against Levitt:
Evans and Sykes asked all the questions. Ripple remained silent. I have only glanced at the briefs, but based on the questions and comments during the oral argument, Lott's chances do not look very good. ... An mp3 of the oral argument is now available here.
I listened to the mp3, and I was rather struck by an "up is down" argument offered by Jeffrey Parker, who was arguing for Lott.
Here's the relevant bit of the district court's ruling:
By claiming that other scholars have tried to "…
tlambert | April 25, 2008Ted Frank has the latest on Lott's appeal of the dismissal of his case:
Lott is now claiming that the case should have been decided under the allegedly more friendly Virginia libel law than the Illinois law under which his claim fails, but that is generally an argument for (at best) a claim of legal malpractice, rather than for a do-over for an expressly waived argument in federal court. Lott has posted the briefs; David Glenn blogs about the 2-year mark in the case. Not that I think Lott has a valid legal malpractice claim, either, unless his attorneys told him he had a good shot at winning…
tlambert | November 12, 2007Back in August I wrote how Lott tried to amend his complaint against Levitt. Unfortunately for Lott, the judge rejected his proposed amendments as "futile and unduly delayed". So now Lott is appealing the decision. William Ford has the update.
tlambert | August 1, 2007When we last visited Lott's lawsuit against Levitt, Lott was asking the judge to reconsider the dismissal of his case against Freakonomics.
Well, the judge denied this, so now Lott wants to amend his complaint. The new complaint adds is now about another sentence in Freakonomics as well:
Then there was the troubling allegation that Lott actually invented
some of the survey data that supports his more-guns/less-crime theory.
Regardless of whether the data were faked, Lott's admittedly
intriguing hypothesis doesn't seem to be true. When other scholars
have tried to replicate his results, they…
tlambert | July 27, 2007David Glenn, in the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the Lott-Levitt lawsuit has been provisionally settled:
The letter of clarification, which was included in today's filing, offers a doozy of a concession. In his 2005 message, Mr. Levitt told Mr. McCall that "it was not a peer-refereed edition of the Journal." But in his letter of clarification, Mr. Levitt writes: "I acknowledge that the articles that were published in the conference issue were reviewed by referees engaged by the editors of the JLE. In fact, I was one of the peer referees."
Mr. Levitt's letter also concedes that…
tlambert | June 15, 2007In the Chronicle of Higher Education David Glenn reports:
A federal judge has rejected John R. Lott Jr.'s request that a gag order be placed on any and all information that emerges in the pretrial discovery process in Mr. Lott's defamation suit against Steven D. Levitt, the best-selling University of Chicago economist.
The judge invited both parties on Thursday to propose a different protective order that would be less restrictive than the one Mr. Lott had requested.
tlambert | June 6, 2007David Glenn in the Chronicle of Higher Education:
In a motion filed last week in federal court, Mr. Lott's lawyers asked the judge to place a gag order on any information that might turn up in depositions or private documents as the lawyers on both sides prepare for the trial.
The motion asserts that "publication or dissemination of information that is obtained during discovery, particularly if provided without context or explanation, could be extremely damaging to sales" of Mr. Lott's new book, Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don't. The book, which was…
tlambert | May 3, 2007David Glenn reports:
The economist Steven D. Levitt's colleagues at the University of Chicago might be tempted to cancel their classes and wander down to Chicago's federal courthouse on October 1. That's the date that has been set for the trial in John R. Lott Jr.'s defamation suit against Mr. Levitt. At a status hearing on Wednesday, a federal judge penciled in the trial date and ordered the parties to complete their discovery process by the end of July.
You'd think that Lott would have given up since all has left is the claim that he was libeled in a private email, but I guess not.
In…
tlambert | March 28, 2007Q: What do you do when your lawsuit against Freakonomics gets thrown out?
A: Write a copy cat book.
tlambert | January 11, 2007The judge for Lott's lawsuit against Levitt has thrown out Lott's claim that he was defamed by Freakonomics. (Decision is here.)
Some quotes from the decision:
The Court will grant a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) only if "no relief could be granted under any set of facts that could be proved consistent with the allegations" ... When considering a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), this Court views all facts alleged in the complaint, as well as any inferences reasonably drawn from those facts, in the light most favorable to the plaintiff.
By claiming that other scholars have tried…
tlambert | August 21, 2006Michael Shermer's September column in Scientific American is on Lott's lawsuit. He got some comments from both Lott and Levitt:
I asked Levitt what he meant by "replicate." He replied: "I used the term in the same way that most scientists do--substantiate results." Substantiate, not duplicate. Did he mean to imply that Lott falsified his results? "No, I did not." In fact, others have accused Lott of falsifying his data, so I asked Lott why he is suing Levitt. "Having some virtually unheard-of people making allegations on the Internet is one thing," Lott declared. "Having claims made in a…
tlambert | August 12, 2006Via Eli Rabett I find a long article by James L. Meriner in Chicago magazine on the Lott-Levitt lawsuit. There's some new information on the history of Lott and Levitt such as this:
Just when and how the Lott-Levitt feud started is not clear -- neither man would directly comment on the lawsuit for this article. Levitt's friend Austan Goolsbee, also an economics professor at the U. of C., remembers when Levitt, then a junior fellow at Harvard, visited Chicago in 1994 to present a paper. Lott had just been named a visiting professor. "Even before Steve was on the [academic] job market, John…
tlambert | July 25, 2006William Ford has Levitt's reply to Lott. I think this part sums it up:
Plaintiff's construction is so strained and based on faulty assumptions that it is inconceivable that his construction is the exclusive, reasonable interpretation of the Excerpt. The Excerpt is not about Plaintiff's methodology, as he alleges, but his "results." Not only is the Excerpt silent about Plaintiff's protocols and methodology, but Defendants know of no natural and obvious meaning of the word "results" that is tantamount to "methodology". Instead, the term "results" means just that -- a finding or conclusion.…
tlambert | July 11, 2006Lott has filed a response to Levitt's motion to dismiss.
He doesn't have a good argument on the question of the meaning of "replicate", basically just asserting that it means "analyse the same data in exactly the same way" and ignoring the other usages it has.