Need help on /. discussion re: John Lott discredited?

Lott claims that he cannot add to, delete or change in any way the Wiki article on him. Other people have also tried to add comments but they are immediately deleted. On political issues Wiki is not to be trusted.

That said, Lott shot himself in the foot a couple of times, stupid stuff, and it is a lot harder for me to trust anything he says now.

As for his research being accepted or not by other social scientists, I have never heard of any other individual or group trying to replicate his work. So no one else can from a scientific standpoint say his conclusions do not hold up. Mainly, his opponenets argue that he used one set of statistical tools, and they think he should have used others.

But the same arguments can and have been used against social scientists who come to opposite conclusions.

Yes he discredited himself over some minor incidences. Though his work has not been officaly discredited, many people find him to be less than creditable. Thus his work is subject to being critized by his peers.

I personally would not cite John Lott's work as unbiased or academically sound.

Of course I object to the very idea that a researcher could blame/credit crime rates (in their respective directions) to the drop in the bucket that is concealed carry.

If you want to prove that guns aren't bad I think you have a much easier time and a much more sound arguement to cite statistics from state licensing groups showing how safe ccw'ers are.

me elsewhere tonight said:

In Florida there have been 1.1 million concealed carry licenses issued since 1987, and 157 (0.01%) revoked due to firearm crimes by licensees. http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/administration/crime_records/chl/ConvictionRatesReport2004.pdf If you'd like to browse the conviction rates of texas permit holders there that data is for 2004. I sure don't see anything to make me think they're hot heads snapping all over the place. Heck lets even look at wikipedia and see what some other states are like that I don't feel like looking up data on:

North Carolina reports 0.2% of their 263,102 holders had their license revoked in the 10 years since they have adopted the law — a lower proportion than the crime rate among North Carolina police officers. Revocation of license is for any criminal conviction, and need not involve an illegal firearm usage. Revocations typically arise from DUI.
Of the 14,000 licenses issued in Oregon, only 4 individuals (0.03%) were convicted of criminal (though not necessarily violent) use or possession of a firearm.

Click to expand...

CDC and NAS have both reviewed gun control studies pro and con their conclusion was the same ALL of the gun control studies were worthless. All the the studies showing gun control decreased crime were worthless, all of the studies showing gun control increased crime were worthless.
The NAS report did have a dissenting opinoin on Lott i.e that his study was not worthless but that was only one opinoin.

I strongly wish that Lott thesis was proven. But so far no go, given the reality of statistics in this subject I doubt if it ever will.

When you add to the above some of Lott's shenanigans, "Mary Roush (SP?), his disappearing survey from his first book, the many many stories of his disappearing survery etc.... makes him a source I do not want to use.

You might also want to consider reading

http://crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/econojunk.doc

Not to mention that debating on whether or not CCW increases or decreases crime is not realy relevant. The following is stolen from Ross in Range

http://www.john-ross.net/ross_in_range.htm

THEY SAY: “If we pass this License-To-Carry law, it will be like the Wild West, with shootouts all the time for fender-benders, in bars, etc. We need to keep guns off the streets. If doing so saves just one life, it will be worth it.”



WE SAY: “Studies have shown blah blah blah” (FLAW: You have implied that if studies showed License-To-Carry laws equaled more heat-of-passion shootings, Right-To-Carry should be illegal.)



WE SHOULD SAY: “Although no state has experienced what you are describing, that’s not important. What is important is our freedom. If saving lives is more important than the Constitution, why don’t we throw out the Fifth Amendment? We have the technology to administer an annual truth serum session to the entire population. We’d catch the criminals and mistaken arrest would be a thing of the past. How does that sound?”



NukemJim

Besides wich

This is what Logicians call the "ad-hominum" fallacy.

Example:

"gcerbone's research shows that dogs have four legs"

"Oh yeah, well gcerbone doesn't know what he is talking about. He is just a partisan political hack."

See how it works.

That's right.

The fact that Lott, or anyone else says something, neither proves nor disproves it.

Facts and arguments stand or fall on their own merit, or the arguer is trying to evade the debate.

There are some interesting essays on the subject here:

http://www.paulgraham.com/labels.html
http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html