John Lott website fraud

[MicroBalrog]

The Mary Rosh thing along with "the dog ate my homework" thing really make him look silly.

Look silly - perhaps. Proved/disproved anything - no.

 

[dustind]

I have heard that hard disk recovery costs easily go into the five digit range, depending on what happened. I guess that is for reconstructing data on a damaged disk, and the $425 is just if the drive burns out and stops spinning, but is undamaged. I am not positive though.

 

[Sergeant Bob]

Microbalrog , not disputing Lott's findings or research

Concur!

 

[Geech]

The Mary Rosh thing along with "the dog ate my homework" thing really make him look silly.

You have to remember how Lott went into this thing, though. He wasn't a pro-gunner trying to prove something, he thought this would be a good subject for study. At the time, he probably simply had not thought about the kind of attention this would bring him. It was a simple study, why would it be so important to have that many backups of the available data?

As for the Mary Rosh, thing, if the story about the harassment and threats are true -- and I think it's pretty believable -- it probably seemed like an easy solution to a difficult problem. He probably didn't think about how someone might find out that Rosh wasn't real, or the consequences of what would happen if they did. He just didn't want to be a target anymore.

 

[HBK]

Why doesn't he just redo the study or have others redo their version using his methods? It would prove him true and show the people that have been threatening to be cowards and idiots.

 

[MicroBalrog]

Why doesn't he just redo the study or have others redo their version using his methods?

Check his site. It was already done. Several times IIRC.

 

[Geech]

Donahue did try to use his own data and reach a different conclusion, but his study was really questionable.

 

[HBK]

Thanks Micro. What does IIRC mean?

 

[HBK]

Donahue...there's an unbiased source.

 

[MicroBalrog]

IIRC = If I Recall Correctly

 

[HBK]

Ha, and I thought it was some technical term, like a copyright.

 

[chas_martel]

askjohnlott.org

Domain ID98296683-LROR
Domain Name:ASKJOHNLOTT.ORG
Created On:27-Jun-2003 22:10:30 UTC
Last Updated On:27-Jun-2003 22:16:48 UTC
Expiration Date:27-Jun-2004 22:10:30 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:R91-LROR
Status:TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Registrant ID:GODA-03418410
Registrant Name:Mary Rosh
Registrant Organization:Center for Truth
Registrant Street1:380 Main Street
Registrant City:Washington DC
Registrant State/Province:New York
Registrant Postal Code:10012
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.9179132591
Registrant Email:[email protected]
Admin ID:GODA-23418410
Admin Name:Mary Rosh
Admin Organization:Center for Truth
Admin Street1:380 Main Street
Admin City:Washington DC
Admin State/Province:New York
Admin Postal Code:10012
Admin Country:US
Admin Phone:+1.9179132591
Admin Email:[email protected]
Billing ID:GODA-33418410
Billing Name:Mary Rosh
Billing Organization:Center for Truth
Billing Street1:380 Main Street
Billing City:Washington DC
Billing State/Province:New York
Billing Postal Code:10012
Billing Country:US
Billing Phone:+1.9179132591
Billing Email:[email protected]
Tech ID:GODA-13418410
Tech Name:Mary Rosh
Tech Organization:Center for Truth
Tech Street1:380 Main Street
Tech City:Washington DC
Tech State/Province:New York
Tech Postal Code:10012
Tech Country:US
Tech Phone:+1.9179132591
Tech Email:[email protected]
Name Server:GW.DATAGRAM.COM
Name Server:NS.CONTAGIOUSMEDIA.ORG

 

[gun-fucious]

380 Main Street
NY, NY
is a van down by the river

http://maps.yahoo.com/py/maps.py?Py...eTHk1BrzKLCq7JYWTznOEnZ&csz=Ny+NY+&country=us

Theres a huge thread in L&P

 

[Kestryll]

IN!!!

 

[Alan Smithiee]

hard drive recovery starts at about $450.00, 5 figures is not at all uncommon, and sometimes it's just not possible depending on what happened (when you have a controler fry it can overwrite data on the drive for example) and you would by amazed at how often I get called out for a HD recovery and the last backup is weeks or months old. when was the last time YOU backed up your data?

and John was also forthcoming about the missing data, he laid it out, didn't try to hide it like some others I could mention. he WAS able to come up with students who took part in the survey and corroberated that it had happened.

 

[NukemJim]

he WAS able to come up with students who took part in the survey and corroberated that it had happened.

That would be excellent news . Can you give me a reference please ? Last time I checked ( It's been a while ) that info was not available.

Why doesn't he just redo the study or have others redo their version using his methods? It would prove him true and show the people that have been threatening to be cowards and idiots.

Not in the academic world. It isnot only the answer but how you got the answer, if you get the right answer but did so doing the wrong way it is considered wrong. As mentioned previosly the studies have been repeated and essentially confirmed on several occasions ( as well as common sense would tell you )

NukemJim

 

[NickEllis]

Backups...

When working on his doctoral dissertation six years ago, my Dad had a harddrive crash with all his research and notes on it, more than six years of work. Even though he had a backup drive, there were invaluable sources and citations on the drive that were new and had not been backed up. The cause of the failure was a power surge. We were in Brazil at the time, and my dad hauled around that hard drive for three years, trying to find someone who could restore the disk. When we finally got back to the US, he found out that to attempt to restore the data would be well into the high six figure range, and even then all bets were off, even from the computer guys. They told him the best thing would to be just to redue all his sources, which he eventually did for the completion of his doctoral work.

So no, in my experience, there is no guarantee for quick, cheap data retrieval, and if physical damage has occured to the disk it may well be dang near impossible.

Gaiudo

 

[dksck]

Edited by moderator. dksck, you have PM.

 

[jimpeel]

Thought this would have been posted here by now.

Am I the only one to go to the fraudulent page and scroll to the bottom? Here is what it says:

©Copyright 2003 Rifle Publishing, Inc.

This site is not run by John Lott, he has no affiliation with it.
It is run by Mary Rosh. John Lott used Mary Rosh to support his books in internet forums, and put false claims in her mouth. Now Mary Rosh has created this site, to show John Lott that parody is a two-way street.
You can find out more about her at WhoIsMaryRosh.com .

 

[publius]

Here's a good article about the Lott research controversy.

excerpt:

The most disturbing charge, first raised by retired University of California, Santa Barbara professor Otis Dudley Duncan and pursued by Australian computer programmer Tim Lambert, is that Lott fabricated a study claiming that 98 percent of defensive gun uses involved mere brandishing, as opposed to shooting.

When Lott cited the statistic peripherally on page three of his book, he attributed it to "national surveys." In the second edition, he changed the citation to "a national survey that I conducted." He has also incorrectly attributed the figure to newspaper polls and Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck.

Last fall, Northwestern University law professor James Lindgren volunteered to investigate the claimed existence of Lott's 1997 telephone survey of 2,424 people. "I thought it would be exceedingly simple to establish" that the research had been done, Lindgren wrote in his report (posted online at http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/guns/lindgren.html).

It was not simple. Lott claims to have lost all of his data due to a computer crash. He financed the survey himself and kept no financial records. He has forgotten the names of the students who allegedly helped with the survey and who supposedly dialed thousands of survey respondents long-distance from their own dorm rooms using survey software Lott can't identify or produce.

Assuming the survey data was lost in a computer crash, it is still remarkable that Lott could not produce a single, contemporaneous scrap of paper proving the survey's existence, such as the research protocol or survey instrument.

If there are now students who corroborate the research study, it's news to me as well, and welcome news. I'd also like to see sources on that.

As to this:
Lott fabricated a study claiming that 98 percent of defensive gun uses involved mere brandishing, as opposed to shooting.

That 98% figure may sound good to some folks, but it doesn't to me. Let's put it this way: if you provoke me into "merely brandishing" my gun, you're going to be looking straight down it, you're going to stand a better-than-2% chance of being shot, and it might just happen before the next time you blink. My point is, if you pull a gun, it should be because you really need to use it, right now. Lott's study, if it occurred, suggests to me that the vast majority of gun owners are pulling out guns in situations where they really don't need to do so. I hope he made it up.

 

[Geech]

That's just speculation, publius. It could also mean that most criminals surrender when facing armed resistance.

 

[MicroBalrog]

On the news in Israel

A soldier here was attacked by several angry Palestinians two or three days ago. Knowing that they were probably trying to kidnap him and then kill him, he put his hand on the bolt of his rifle and cocked it. That was it. Those guys fled.

I suspect this is the kind of stuff to which Lott is referring.

 

[publius]

That's just speculation, publius. It could also mean that most criminals surrender when facing armed resistance.

Could be. Interesting speculation there. Or maybe they run away instead of surrendering. Want to hear more speculation?

How about this: gun owners hear about Lott's study and decide it's a good idea to brandish a gun, even if you really have no intention of shooting it, because hey, 98% of the time, you won't need to shoot it. Whoever is bothering you will run away. It's the expected result, after all.

That's a dangerous expectation, if you ask me. I never liked it, even before the credibility of Lott and his study (or the newspapers' or Mr. Kleck's, or whoever's) was called into question.

Don't get me wrong, I can see working the action on my 12 gauge to make the "wrong house" noise and scare a creep away. I just can't see expecting it to work virtually every time.

 

[TimLambert]

Lott has still not located any students who worked on the survey. Nor has duplicated the survey. He did another survey last year that he claimed came up with a 95% number, but he made a mistake in his arithmetic. All surveys conducted by other people such as Gary Kleck, give much lower numbers. More details are here.

Lott's claim to have used "Mary Rosh" because he was threatened and harassed is like his claim to have conducted a survey in 1997 -- there is no evidence that it is true and plenty that it is false. You can review the discussions he was in as "John Lott" on Google Groups -- everyone was polite towards him.

 

[MicroBalrog]

TimLambert - are you the real Tim Lambert, if I may ask?
And why did you decide to post here?
And how does the Mary Rosh story relate to anything?