This is hilarious. This thread has been going on for days, and I have yet to see a single refutation of Lott’s methods or data. But this is what happens when your political opponents come up with conclusions that are not easy to refute - can’t attack the ideas? The science seems correct? Okay, attack the man. He’s a nut. He works in a basement. He can’t get tenure. So SOMETHING must be wrong, right? Too bad we can’t find it. So let’s dismiss it all and put it in the ‘crank’ file. (BTW, the reason Lott can’t get hired into a tenure track is because American Universities are far too politically-correct for him. That’s also why many of his academic supporters voice ‘concerns’ about some of his conclusions, while refusing to rebut his methods (and indeed most people praise his methods but claim his conclusions are wrong anyway).
For the record, I have a fairly good statistical background, and I find Lott’s methodology impeccable, and the scope of his research to be astounding. His study is the only gun control study I’ve seen that actually attempted to account for all the variables and set up proper controls.
Read the damned book, and draw your own conclusions.
One of the reasons Lott gets vilified is because he’s a purist - he goes where the data takes him, even if the result is contrarian position in a highly charged political issue. Take the ‘child lock’ comment he made - his comment about them being dangerous comes right out of the data:
If you own a gun, there is a small chance that someone will hurt themselves with it by accident. However, the statistics show that guns are used five times more often to prevent a violent crime. Safety locks reduce the gun’s ability to prevent crime. They also tend to make the owner more careless in storage. The net result is that overall, the existance of gun locks may result in more injured or dead people at the end of a year.
This conclusion is only startling because it involves guns. But stuff like this happens all the time when you study economic issues. Put airbags in cars, and more pedestrians are killed (people drive faster when they feel safer). All kinds of weird effects and counter-effects result from societal choices.
Lott isn’t saying that ALL child locks are dangerous, for all individuals. He’s speaking generally, which is all an economist can ever do. Just like when the government releases a study saying that certain types of cars are more dangerous than others. That may not be true for YOU, because of your personal driving habits, or your location. It’s a statistical conclusion, and not a value judgement
