Deltoid

Via Jim Henley comes a test to see how nerdy you are. Like my previous quiz pages, you can post your score here and a link to your blog here.

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Lott has published an op-ed in the New York Post on the NAS panel. Lott once again claims that the panel was stacked:

The panel was set up during the Clinton administration, and all but one of its members (whose views on guns were publicly known before their appointments) favored gun control.

In his op-ed he doesn’t tell us who the members are who were publicly known to be “entirely pro-gun control”, but in his book The Bias Against Guns he gives three names:

Richard Rosenfeld,

who wrote an editorial in JAMA saying “current knowledge does not warrant relaxing or abandoning any of the Brady Act-type restrictions on handgun purchases.” OK, that seems to be supporting gun control.

Peter Reuter,

who studied the 1996 gun laws in Australia and wrote: Australia: A Massive Buyback of Low-Risk Guns. As you might guess from the title, Reuter seems to think that the buyback was misdirected. I don’t see how this counts as supporting gun control.

Steve Levitt

The only evidence that Lott offers that Levitt favours gun control is an NRO article by Dave Kopel and Glenn Reynolds who say that Levitt has been described as “rabidly antigun”. However, Reynolds and Kopel have no evidence to support this claim other than the word of a “scholar” whose identity they refuse to reveal. The anonymous scholar is probably none other than Lott. The whole story is here.

Even if we are extra generous to Lott and let him count both Rosenfeld and Reuter, that is only two out of eighteen panel members who support gun control. Notice the way he made it sound like almost all of them supported it.

Of course, it may be that all the others are secret supporters of gun control—the real test of whether the panel was biased is whether their report was biased. Lott claims that it is; that it ignores the evidence that shows that gun control is harmful.

It’s bad enough that the panel backed away from its own survey and empirical work; worse yet is that it didn’t really look objectively at all the evidence. If it had, it would have found not just that gun control doesn’t help solve the problems of crime, suicide and gun accidents, but that it may actually be counterproductive.

The panel simply ignored many studies showing just that. For example, the research on gun locks that the panel considered examined only whether accidental gun deaths and suicides were prevented. There was no mention of research that shows that locking up guns prevents people from using them defensively.

The research that Lott claims they did not mention was conducted by Lott and Whitley on child access prevention (CAP) laws that make owners liable if a child uses an unlocked firearm. But here is what is on page 218:

Two papers evaluate the effects of CAP laws on accidents, suicide, and crime. Lott and Whitley (2002), using the same basic data and methods as in the Lott and Mustard (1997) analysis of right-to-carry laws (see Chapter 6), conclude that CAP laws have no discernible effect on juvenile accidents or suicide, but they do result in a substantial increase in violent and property crime. In sharp contrast, Cummings et al. (1997) find that CAP laws reduce accidents and may reduce suicides and homicide among youth as well, although these are imprecisely measured.

The report goes on to discuss Lott’s and Cummings’ research for another page or so. Note that Lott must have read this passage, since he states that the panel examined the research on gun locks and accidents and suicides. It is difficult to understand why Lott claimed that the panel did not mention the Lott and Whitley research.

Lott also claims:

The panel also ignored most of the studies that find a benefit in crime reduction from right-to-carry laws. It did pay attention to some non-peer reviewed papers on the right-to-carry issue, and it also noted one part of a right-to-carry study that indicated little or no benefit from such laws. What the panel didn’t point out, however, is that the authors of that particular study had concluded that data in their work did much more to show there were benefits than to debunk it.

Ignored? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

The report has a whole chapter and three appendices on right-to-carry laws. If you compare the report’s references on carry laws with Lott’s own list of studies that Lott claims show a benefit from carry laws, you will see that most of Lott’s list appears in the panel’s references. And most of the discrepancy is because Lott padded his list with studies that were not about carry laws. As for the fact that they did not point out that the authors of “that particular study” (who were Plassman and Tideman) felt that their data was supportive of Lott’s thesis, what of it? The panel did its own analysis of Plassman and Tiseman’s data and concluded that it was not supportive of Lott’s thesis. And what Lott doesn’t point out was that the panel also did its own analysis of Lott’s data and concluded that there was “no credible evidence” that carry laws either increase or decrease violent crime.

Lott next misrepresents James Q Wilson’s dissent:

James Q. Wilson, professor of management and public policy at UCLA, was the one dissenting panelist and the only member whose views were known in advance to not be entirely pro-gun control. His dissent focused on the right-to-carry issue, and the fact that emphasizing results that could not withstand peer-reviewed studies called into question the panel’s contention that right-to-carry laws had not for sure had a positive effect.

Lott doesn’t have any answer to Ayres and Donohue’s research, so all he ever does is point out that it was published in the Stanford Law Review, which like all law reviews is not peer-reviewed and imply that there must be something wrong with it. It looks like he messed up his argument this time though—there aren’t any peer-reviewed studies that contradict Ayres and Donohue. In any case, this bears no relation whatsoever to anything Wilson says in his dissent. And don’t you like the way he turns the panel’s conclusion that there was “no credible evidence” that carry laws had a positive effect into “not for sure had a positive effect”?

Lott misrepresents Wilson some more:

Wilson also said that that conclusion was inaccurate given that “virtually every reanalysis done by the committee” confirmed right-to-carry laws reduced crime. He found the committee’s only results that didn’t confirm the drop in crime “quite puzzling.” They accounted for “no control variables” — nothing on any of the social, demographic, and public policies that might affect crime — and he didn’t understand how evidence that wouldn’t get published in a peer-reviewed journal would be given such weight.

But Wilson didn’t say that Lott’s reductions in crime survived virtually every reanalysis by the committee. He said that the reductions in murder did. Contrary to the impression Lott tries to create, Wilson did not dispute the committee’s finding that Lott’s results for violent crimes other than murder were fragile. As for the results on murder, the committee’s response to Wilson’s dissent, deals with this most adequately.

If you want to know what the panel found it is probably just best to completely ignore Lott’s misrepresentations of their report and read the report or the press release or the panel’s opening statement.

Update: Lott also claims that the panel presented “a survey that covered 80 different gun-control measures”. This is not true. The survey covered 80 different firearms education programs and found:

There is almost no evidence that violence-prevention programs intended to steer children away from guns have had any effects on their behavior, knowledge, or attitudes regarding firearms. More than 80 such programs exist.

Tim Blair posted this accusation that the UN was lying about the tsunami relief effort:

Via Diplomad, some comments from the UN’s Jan Egeland:

In Aceh, today 50 trucks of relief supplies are arriving. <…> Tomorrow, we will have eight full airplanes arriving. I discussed today with Washington whether we can draw on some assets on their side, after consultations with the Indonesian Government, to set up what we call an “air-freight handling centre” in Aceh.

Tomorrow, we will have to set up a camp for relief workers - 90 of them - which is fully self-contained, with kitchen, food, lodging, everything, because they have nowhere to stay and we don’t want them to be an additional burden on the people there.

Diplomad’s response:

I provided this to some USAID colleagues working in Indonesia and their heads nearly exploded. The first paragraph is quite simply a lie. The UN is taking credit for things that hard-working, street savvy USAID folks have done. It was USAID working with their amazing network of local contacts who scrounged up trucks, drivers, and fuel; organized the convoy and sent it off to deliver critical supplies. A UN “air-freight handling centre”? In Aceh? Bull! It’s the Aussies and the Yanks who are running the air ops into Aceh. We have people working and sleeping on the tarmac in Aceh, surrounded by bugs, mud, stench and death, who every day bring in the US and Aussie C-130s and the US choppers; unload, load, send them off. We have no fancy aid workers’ retreat — notice the priorities of the UN? People are dying and what’s the first thing the UN wants to do? Set up “a camp for relief workers” one that would be “fully self-contained, with kitchen, food, lodging, everything.”

I posted two comments in response. This:

If you go and check the transcript of what Egeland actually said, you will discover that Diplomad has taken Egeland’s remarks out of context to make it appear that he is saying that the UN is running the air ops into Aceh when, in fact, Egeland did not say that the UN was running them. It is shame that Diplomad would exploit such a terrible tragedy to indulge in some UN bashing.

and this:

The word “we” in his answer could refer to the UN or to the relief effort. And no, it is not by the remotest stretch of the imagination “fair” to interpret it in a way to make his statement dishonest.

These two comments drew the following threat from Andrea Harris, the site administrator:

Tim Lambert and “Leverington,” starting arguments and insulting people can get your account suspended. Take your posturing and territorial pissings elsewhere.

I must say that I think it makes for a rather uninteresting comment section if dissenting opinions are not allowed, but to each his own. Dear readers, you are welcome to use my comments to argue with me and each other. (But no insulting people, please.)

Update: Just to be clear, I posted my comments on Tim Blair’s blog, not the Diplomad blog. Jim has a handy roundup of the spreading of Diplomad’s bogus story.

Update 2: Andrea Harris replied via email with the helpful information that I did not own Tim Blair’s blog and that she wasn’t going to allow my arguments to take over that blog. I offered to post her reply, but she refused permission.

Harris also threatened Leverington with a ban. Here is the only comment he ever posted:

Why is this all so predictable? The left has used this disaster to take cheap pot shots at the Australian and US governments, whereas the right has decided this is a great opportunity to exercise its anti-UN fetish. Still Tim, for all your sanctimonious drivel (which on occasions rivals even the worst offenders on the left) I reckon your site has done a great job during this period. Keep up the good work.

And this is his from his reply to Harris:

I’m actually one of those friendless people who occupy that lonely territory on the political spectrum called “nonaligned,” so I’m not really into territorial pissings. If you go back and read the post you might notice that I was attacking your enemies as well, not to mention congratulating Tim on the work his site has done in the aftermath of the tsunami tragedy, so at least I gave you something to feel happy about. I know you lot are a bunch of hive-minded ideological zealots who collectively chant the same commandment “Thou shall despise the United Nations,” but attacking this organisation in the aftermath of such a catastrophe and seemingly hoping they will fail in their response is just as tacky as the left’s celebration of every US failing in Iraq. The relief effort is in its early days and covers an enormous territory, so I’m buggered if I know how Tim along with his fellow tribesmen—even with their mass of like-minded contacts and celebrated Google-searching expertise—can seriously claim their information is “factually correct.”

Anyway, I’ve forwarded on your response to a number of my friends and we’ve all had a bit of a chuckle over it. A couple of them are conservatives who love Tim’s site but think you are an idiot for sending out such a dummy-spitting response. And don’t worry my friend, I promise not to invite myself back into your group-think sessions any more because I’m extremely sensitive and don’t like being called names.

John Lott and Michael Bellesiles are both mentioned in a new book, Historians in Trouble by Jon Wiener. Wiener argues that the reason why Lott still has his job but Bellesiles doesn’t is power:

The answer briefly is power—especially power wielded by groups outside the history profession. Historians targeted by powerful outside groups can face intense media scrutiny and severe sanctions for transgressions, while historians connected to powerful outside groups can be shielded from the media spotlight as well as from the consequences of malfeasance; in some cases, they have even been rewarded.

Now, while his summary of the Lott affair is accurate,

John Lott’s research on guns has played a key role in leading states and cities to pass laws permitting people to carry concealed firearms. Lott argued that “brandishing” guns without firing them was sufficient to deter criminals in almost all cases. But his claim to have done survey research on this issue was shown to be fraudulent. Nevertheless, Lott received virtually no media attention for this fraud and paid no penalties; his publisher, the University of Chicago Press, has kept the fraudulent claims in the new edition of the book, Lott continues to publish op-eds in leading venues, and the “brandishing” laws he helped pass remain in force.

I can’t agree with this description of the Bellesiles case:

The most obvious contrast is found in the media spectacle around Michael Bellesiles, the Emory historian who wrote about the origins of gun culture in America. He faced a vociferous campaign by gun rights groups, which prompted debate in scholarly journals and then an investigation by distinguished historians. In the end, he resigned a tenured position—even though the Emory review panel found evidence of fraud only on one table that was referred to only a few times in a 400-page book. Bellesiles made a strong case that he was guilty of error but not fraud.

If you look at the review panel’s report, you will see that there was much much more wrong than just one table. And in any case, no amount of fabricated research is acceptable.

For what it’s worth, I think the reason for the different outcomes for Lott and Bellesiles is the different natures of Emory and the American Enterprise Institute. If Emory had responded like the AEI and refused to countenance an investigation of Bellesiles, he would still have his job. For a university like Emory, fabricating research is unforgiveable since the purpose of the institution is finding out things about the world. For a propaganda mill like the American Enterprise Institute, fabricating research isn’t a big problem since the purpose of the institution is changing people’s opinions. As long as not too many people know that it is fraudulent, such research can still be used to persuade. Clearly, it is not in the AEI’s interest to conduct an investigation into whether there was fraud or not.

Also of interest: HNN’s summary of Wiener’s book, Ralph Luker’s review, and Jim Lindgren notes that Garry Wills has described Bellesiles as a con man.

Now I thought that Australians were being extremely generous with $110 million in private donations (that’s over $5 per capita) and $1 billion from the Australian government but over at Tech Central Station Jackson Kuhl and Nick Schulz have come up with a measure that they call Amazonian Compassion where Australia comes dead last. They calculate per capita donations via Amazon to each country’s Red Cross. By this measure, the US is the highest with $0.0475 per capita, way ahead of France with a mere $0.0005. They don’t list Australia, but on their measure Australia gets $0.0000.

Unfortunately, there a couple of problems with their measure.

1. Kuhl and Schultz may not be aware of this, but it is possible to access Amazon.com from outside the United States. Not all donations made at amazon.com have come from Americans. For example, Mike Power donated twice via Amazon.com, even though he lives in England.
2. Kuhl and Schultz may not be aware of this, but it is possible to donate to the Red Cross without going through Amazon. The Australian Red Cross (that’s a link where you can donate to them) has received $51.5 million in donations so far, or $US 1.95 per capita, much more that the $0.0475 “Amazonian Compassion” number for the US. Of course, this comparison is silly as well, because only about one third of the donations to the American Red Cross came through Amazon.

Basically, their measure is completely meaningless, and that should have been obvious to them. And naturally they repeat the bogus story about the UN accusing the US of being stingy.

Oh, and this:

International aid organizations:
UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund)
United Nations’ World Food Programme
Medecins Sans Frontieres / Doctors without Borders (donate!)
CARE International
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

UK/Europe:
Disasters Emergency Comittee (DEC) - comprises a raft of aid agencies, including the below and others
British Red Cross
Oxfam
Save the Children UK

North America:
American Red Cross
Canadian Red Cross
Save The Children
Oxfam America

Anders Jacobsen: Webloggers: Give to tsunami victims and I’ll give too!

William Connolley at RealClimate provides a useful summary of the scientific consensus on global warming. He notes

That the increase in atmospheric CO2 is anthropogenic is so obvious that few people question it

Of course, Louis Hissink is one of those few people, insisting that the evidence isn’t just wrong, but is fraudulent. (I’ve added the green and red lines to the graph he presents—I’ll explain what they are below.)

So far not one scintilla of evidence has been produced to counter the scientific evidence graphed in Figure 2 from Jaworowski’s submission to the US Senate in March 2004.

It basically refutes the lie that CO2 levels have been constant at a level of 270 ppmv for the last 10,000 years.

However, if you examine Jaworowski’s graph, it is clear that most of the CO₂ measurements shown on the graph are inaccurate. The measurements for 1865, for example, vary from 290 to 550 parts per million. It just isn’t possible for the CO₂ concentration to change by that much in one year—the difference corresponds to about 500 billion tons of carbon which is about the same amount of carbon in all plants in the entire world. The red line I added shows the measurements of CO₂ concentration taken at Mauna Loa since 1958. Notice how there are no huge year-to-year fluctuations.

So given that many of the measurements are wrong, it makes no sense to average them as Jaworowski suggests should be done. The correct procedure is discard the inaccurate measurements. Callendar discarded (Tellus X (1958 p 244):

(a) Period mean values 10% or more different from the general average of the time and region.

(b) Air samples taken in towns, because these often give 5 to 20% more CO₂ than uncontaminated air.

(c) Averages depending on only a few samples, or made within a short period, because real fluctuations may exceed 10% in such cases.

(d) Measurements intended for special purposes such as biological, soil air, atmospheric pollution, etc

Jaworowski claims that rather that selecting the most accurate values, Callendar made an arbitrary selection to produce the result (increasing CO₂) that he desired. Jaworowski has not a scrap of evidence for his claim and all other data supports Callendar. The green line shows measurements of CO₂ concentration from ice cores at Law Dome. Notice how it agrees with the values Callendar chose and the red line of the Mauna Loa measurements. Jaworowski has an answer to this. The ice core measurements are fraudulent, as are the Mauna Loa measurements. Multiple independent ice core measurements agree with those from the Law Dome, so presumably Jaworowski believes that these are the product of a huge conspiracy as well. It should come as no surprise that Jaworowski’s theories were not published in a scientific journal, but in 21st Century, a magazine published by Lyndon LaRouche, renowned for his belief in various conspiracy theories.

I’ve been nominated for a Koufax award best single issue blog over at Wampum. They have me listed under the issue “Australian politics”, which isn’t close to being correct. I want to correct them, but how would you describe the issue that this blog is mainly about? “Junk science” would sort of cover it if the term hadn’t been stolen by Steve Milloy. Any ideas?

Oh, and go over there, check out the fine blogs, and vote.

Welcome to the 2004 Deltoid awards. Today we are giving out the Golden Rake Award, named in honour of Sideshow Bob and the rakes in the Simpsons Cape Feare episode:

How many other series would waste valuable prime-time real estate by showing a man whacking himself in the face with a garden rake not once, not twice, but NINE TIMES?!? If ever there was a gag genius in its repetitive stupidity (progressing from funny to not so funny to the funniest thing ever), this is it—merely the sharpest cut in an entire episode that just plain kills.

The award goes to Michael Fumento for claiming over and over again that the Lancet study on excess deaths in Iraq included deaths in Falluja in their estimate, despite being repeatedly shown the clear language of the report, which states:

“We estimate that 98 000 more deaths than expected (8000-194 000) happened after the invasion outside of Falluja and far more if the outlier Falluja cluster is included.”

Notable was the way he would respond to the above quote from the report with a demand that he be shown where the paper gives an estimate that excludes Falluja.

While Sideshow Mike makes his way to the stage to accept his award, read some extracts from his Hate Mail, Volume 33. Sterling Vinson wrote this letter to the Arizona Daily Star

Michael Fumento criticizes a study carried out by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and published in the British medical journal The Lancet (”Numbers on Iraqi deaths questionable,” Nov. 6).

Fumento incorrectly states, “The Lancet (claims) the United States has killed 100,000 Iraqi civilians since the invasion.”

The article makes no such claim. The summary says, “We think that about 100,000 excess deaths or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

“Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths, and airstrikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths.”

Note the use of the word “most.” That leaves plenty of room for other causes of death and other killers.

The methodology of the Johns Hopkins study was used in Kosovo and is generally regarded as sound. Moreover, the authors of the Lancet article are careful to qualify their results and to recalculate the number of deaths after excluding those in Fallujah, where the worst fighting is taking place.

Please correct Fumento’s misstatements.

Fumento’s reply:

I reply to a letter sent to The Star concerning an opinion by Michael Fumento published in the paper on 6 November 2004. Dr. Vinson criticizes a study carried out by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and published in the British medical journal, The Lancet.

Actually, Vinson is criticizing Fumento, not the study.

I have read the study, which he just as easily could have since it appeared free and full-text online, but he did not. The term “most” applied only to causes of death other than airstrikes, not causes of death other than coalition actions.

Vinson’s quote comes directly from the study and is completely accurate. Fumento is claiming that the study attributed all the excess deaths to coalition actions, which is not what the study claimed at all. It would seem that Vinson read the study while Fumento did not.

Notice from Dr. Vinson’s own words compared to mine that I actually understated what the Lancet propagandists claimed in that I left out there (sic) modifier “or more.” If anything, perhaps I am guilty of understating just what shoddy work they did.

One of the features of Fumento’s replies is the way he inserts a “(sic)” after any spelling mistakes he finds in the text he quotes. I think that is a kind of petty thing to do, but I thought I’d make an exception for Fumento.

Regarding Kosovo, Dr. Vinson has no idea what methodology was used there. He’s simply repeating what he heard, like an old parrot.

Fumento can’t offer any reason why Vinson was wrong about Kosovo, so he insults him instead.

In any case, I explicitly said that the methodology could be correct but only if it were used in a completely unbiased manner, then went on to show how truly biased the researchers and the journal itself are. I also showed in other ways how the 100,000 figure couldn’t possibly be correct, but Mr. Vinson seems to have neglected that.

Uh oh, is that a rake in front of Sideshow Mike?

Moreover, the authors of the Lancet article CLAIMED to have re-calculated the number of deaths after excluding those in Fallujah, except that strangely enough they never bothered to say what those numbers were.

Thwack! Fumento steps on the rake yet again.

Again, had Dr. Vinson looked at the report itself instead of a 300-word summary published by the AP or some other intermediate media he would know that. Instead he simply establishes what I already written (sic), that people are simply accepting this study because they find it convenient not because they find it convincing.

Actually, Vinson, like everybody else who read the study, including all the other critics, managed to find where the study stated what the number of deaths excluding Falluja were.

Please correct Dr. Vinson’s misstatements and forgive him for his support of Hussein’s henchmen.

“support of Hussein’s henchmen.” I wonder if the Arizona Daily Star approves of one of its columnists abusing its readers?

It’s too long to reproduce here but Fumento also has exchange about the Lancet with A. Michlmayr, where Fumento responds to Michlmayr’s attempt to educate Fumento about confidence intervals and age-adjusted death rates with:

I suggest that if you’re as serious about all this as you seem to be, get on a plane to Syria or Iran and volunteer your services to the terrorists. They might saw your head off on camera, or they might accept you into their ranks.

This exchange is short enough to reproduce in full. No comments from me are necessary. Jonathan Dursi wrote:

I’ve read with some interest your analysis of the recent Roberts et al. in Lancet. As a scientist, I believe science journalism to be a very important connection between the research community and society, and I think science journalists have an important role in informing public debate. Speaking as someone who has actually published scientific papers, your written articles and comments on blogs have been really, really weak and intellectually lazy. If you are as concerned about reporting truth as your protestations about this Lancet article claim, I see no evidence of it in your own writing.

[150 words omitted.]

I’m glad you don’t seem to write about astrophysics. If I were to someday write a paper on something you disagreed with, I imagine you would write just as spiteful articles based on just as weak (or absent) arguments about my own papers. It’s a shame; the world needs good science journalism.

Fumento’s reply:

Dear Mr. Dursi:

Fear not, I don’t write about astrophysics because I don’t know anything about the field. Would that you had such humility. But I do know this definition: “There is a vague notion that astrophysics is more rigorous or quantitative than astronomy; all this means in practice is if you’re an astronomer and you’re out to impress you call yourself an astrophysicist, whereas if you want to avoid freaking out people out you say you’re an astronomer.” Well, I’m impressed neither by your field nor your sad attempt at presenting cogent commentary. It’s okay to have your head in space but your brain should remain earthbound. I’ve answered your criticisms on the very blogs you’ve mentioned, yet you ignore them. So guess what? I’m going to do like the rest of the world and ignore you.

Update: Sideshow Mike’s acceptance speech:

As I’ve indicated before, you are a “hit” slut. You will do anything to increase traffic to your worthless site, including what you are trying to do now — bait a person who actually DOES have a readership. As has been the case with your life in general, you have failed.

Watch out for those rakes on the way back to your seat, Mike.

Update 2: John Fleck has found a picture of the Golden Rake Award.

According to my logs, about half of the visitors here are using Internet Explorer. There is a critical security hole in Internet Explorer that allows a web site you visit to take over your computer. Secunia has the details and a test to see if you are vulnerable. If you are, the best solution is to switch to another browser. I recommend Firefox. It’s free, has many more useful features than Internet Explorer, and you can have it installed and running in a few minutes. (Via Slashdot. PC World has more details.)

It’s now two years since I started this web log. Here is my first post. Originally it was just a page for me to join the discussion about Lott’s fabricated survey, but the focus seems to have expanded beyond that.

To get an idea how much blog traffic has increaased, my first post got linked by Glenn Reynolds and several others commenting on the Lott affair. As a result I had almost 1000 visits after three days. Now I get almost that much traffic every day.

Lott has some more comments on the NAS panel report on firearms research. (Also posted at the Volokh Conspiracy.)

Lott adds to his earlier claims that the panel was biased with this:

In fact, the panel apparently originated with the desire from some to respond to the debate on that issue and to respond specifically to my research that concludes that allowing law abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons reduces crime. I originally overheard Phil Cook and Dan Nagin discussing the need for a panel to “deal with” me in the same way that an earlier panel had “dealt with Isaac” Ehrlich’s work showing that the death penalty deterred murder. They agreed and Nagin said that he would talk to Al Blumstein about setting up such a panel. Needless to say, that is what ended up happening.

This story seems somewhat implausible. I mean, if you were conspiring to “deal with” Lott, would you do it where he could listen to you? And while Lott attacked the panel when it was first set up, his complaint was that it had been designed to ignore his research, not that it had been set up to “deal with” him. So I asked Dan Nagin about this conversation. He replied:

I assure you that I had no such conversation with Phil or Al. I played absolutely no role is setting up this panel or defining its agenda. As a member of the Committee on Law and Justice I was aware of its formation but played no active role its organization.

According to Lott, Jim Lindgren is also part of the anti-Lott conspiracy. Lott writes:

I think that Lindgren is a biased observer. He was upset after a critical piece that I published on a paper of his work in 2003 and his attacks started shortly after that. Further his attacks are untrue.

However, if you look at Lindgren’s report you will notice that Lott chose Lindgren to conduct the investigation and that the original version of the report was written in 2002. Which is before 2003. It seems that Lott’s critical article was payback for Lindgren’s report, rather than the other way around.

Today is a day of mourning in Australia for tsunami victims and John Quiggin is donating $1 to Australian Red Cross tsunami appeal for each comment left at this post on his blog. I know we have some redoubtable commenters here—go and do your stuff!

Not only are arguments not allowed in the comments on Tim Blair’s blog, it is one of the most uncivil places in Australian blogspace. The rest of this post is below the fold because it contains quotes from his comment section. Please do not read if you are offended by obscenities.

(more…)

After Fumento promised me:

Now I am going to do the worst possible thing you can do to somebody who measures his life by “hits.” I’m not going to write to you again,

what do I find in my inbox from Michael Fumento?

Goodness! Even on the Web you’re a pitiful pissant!

I just went to www.alexa.com and ranked your site. Not even in the top million! I don’t even have a blog and I’m under 300,000. You have GOT to start training some monkeys to click on your site all day long. That or simply reconcile yourself to reality and save yourself some IP fees by simply writing in a paper diary.

I’m a bit concerned that some of my readers have got Alexa’s spyware on their system. If you do, here are instructions on how to remove it.

David Tiley has an has an interesting summary of a BBC program on Global Dimming. It seems that, over the past 40 years, while the amount of sunlight reaching the top of the atmosphere has not changed, the amount of sunlight reaching the surface has declined. Despite this, the earth has warmed over the same time span. The BBC program raises the alarming prospect that burning fossil fuels is making aerosols that produce the dimming and global cooling that is partially masking the warming produced by increased greenhouse gasses. That suggests that the greenhouse gasses are much more potent than previously estimated and the program suggests that catastrophic warming of 10°C this century may occur.

Now the Tech Central Station crew like to use the pejorative term “alarmist” to describe the mainstream scientists that believe that anthropogenic warming is occurring, but the BBC program really is alarmist. Climate Scientist Gavin Schmidt hoses down the speculation:

The suggested ‘doubling’ of the rate of warming in the future compared to even the most extreme scenario developed by IPCC is thus highly exaggerated. Supposed consequences such as the drying up of the Amazon Basin, melting of Greenland, and a North African climate regime coming to the UK, are simply extrapolations built upon these exaggerations.

Now let me show you the bizarre world where the anti-Kyoto bloggers live. According to Spear Shaker the BBC program shows that

the Kyoto Protocol, fully implemented, would lead to a dramatic increase in the Earth’s temperature.

and John Ray thinks this is the death knell for global warming:

Is this the ultimate kick in the pants for the global warming fanatics—that what they advocate will PRODUCE the problem, not solve it?

To be fair, they had an assist from this atrocious Reuters story by Matt Falloon, where Falloon managed to completely misunderstand what the scientists were saying. He wrote:

The researchers say cutting down on the burning of coal and oil, one of the main goals of international environmental agreements, will drastically heat rather than cool climate.

No, the researchers did not say that. What they said was:

Take away fossil fuel by-products like sulfur dioxide without tackling greenhouse gas emissions, and the extra heat will speed warming, irreversibly melting ice sheets and rendering rain forests unsustainable within decades, Dr Cox said.

If you stop burning fossil fuels you reduce sulfur dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions. Apparently Falloon is unaware that burning fossil fuels releases greenhouse gasses. Cox is referring to technology like sulfur dioxide scrubbers that remove the sulfur dioxide from burning coal but do not remove the carbon dioxide. Cox is absolutely not saying that reducing the burning of fossil fuels will cause global warming. I imagine we’ll soon see a Tech Central Station article about how Kyoto will cause global warming.

Falloon disgraces himself further with this statement:

Scientists differ as to whether global warming is caused by man-made emissions of carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse” gases, by natural climate cycles or if it exists at all.

Yes, and scientists differ over whether evolution explains the origin of species. Chris Mooney has the goods on how this sort of “balance” misinforms readers. At least you can rate Falloon’s story at Yahoo. I gave it a “1″.

The target of one of Tim Blair’s five-minute hates on Wednesday was fellow journalist Peter FitzSimons. FitzSimons’ crime? He said there had been an estimated 100,000 civilian deaths in Iraq. Now you could quibble that the Lancet study measured all excess deaths rather than just civilian ones though since the vast majority were civilian deaths, this isn’t that big a deal. Blair, however, calls FitzSimon’s “stupid” and links to Andrew Bolt’s train-wreck of a critique. I suppose that Bolt’s isn’t the worst of the critiques out there, but with Fumento around the competition is very very stiff.

Blair writes:

FitzSimons is famously sensitive to criticism, which may be why his non-sport columns aren’t linkable.

There may be a similar explanation for the fact that critical comments are banned from Blair’s blog.

Blair continues:

And paint, to cover Fitzy’s house with charming peace messages.

If I had some paint, I’d write this formula on Blair’s house:

s/√ n

That’s the formula for the standard deviation of a mean. Notice the divided by √ n part? That means that as n, the sample size, gets bigger, the standard deviation and the sampling error gets smaller. Unfortunately Bolt just doesn’t understand this because he writes:

But the survey techniques they used to give clearly wrong figures in Fallujah are the same ones they used in the other 32 clusters of households that they interviewed elsewhere in Iraq.

Don’t worry kids! If you fail maths at high school, you can always get a job writing for the Herald-Sun or the Bulletin.

Chris Mooney has a well-written review of Michael Crichton’s State of Fear. I picked up a copy at the book store and read a couple of pages from the middle. It was like a Tech Central Station column, except that it was a speech by one of the characters, with occasional lame objections by another character. Oh, and it had footnotes. I don’t know if you were supposed to imagine Crichton’s character speaking the footnotes or what. I didn’t buy the speech or the book.

John Quiggin also has a book review. His is of Lomberg’s new book.

Over at RealClimate Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt take on some of the shoddy climate papers that have slipped through peer review.

And what roundup would be complete without a leavening of Louis Hissink? His latest post asserts that scientists don’t how to compute average temperature correctly. He is, of course, wrong and I explained how they do it, with links to the relevant papers in the comments to this post. Computing a weighted average is high school maths, but despite having no evidence at all to support his opinion and plenty to contradict it, Hissink remains convinced that the scientists don’t know how to work out a weighted average.

I emailed “Henry Thornton” (who runs the website where Hissink’s posts appear in the cough Science section) asking why he had someone so manifestly unsuited for the job writing about science. “Thornton” replied:

Louis is colorful, committed and interesting.

So is the Weekly World News.

Google has come up with a solution for comment spam. From now on, if a link contains the “nofollow” attribute (rel=”nofollow”), Google will not count it for page rank. All you have to do is configure your blog so that this attribute gets added to links in comments left on your blog and comment spammers get no benefit. Of course, this won’t solve the problem immediately, since spammers won’t bother checking that you use the attribute, but as more and more people update their software, there will be less and less incentive to leave comment spam. Well done, Google!

I thought at first that this didn’t affect me, since I haven’t had any comment spam since I changed my comment system to confuse spambots. (That’s why my post button says “P0ST” with a zero instead of a letter “O”.) But I realise that I can now release my code so anyone can use it. Before, it would have just made it worthwhile for spammers to program their bots to bypass my meagre defences.

What I really like about “nofollow” is I can now link to sites like Tech Central Station without increasing their page rank. Of course, this feature can be abused. Someone could use this attribute for any link to someone they disagree with. I don’t think that is right—”nofollow” should be reserved for places like Tech Central Station and Junkscience.com. Even worse, someone could use “nofollow” on all external links and hoard all their page rank for internal links. I think someone who does this should be shunned—nobody should link to such a person.

All right, not right now, but as soon as I make it add the nofollow attribute.

Update: Of course, the next day a spambot hits every post that is open for comments. Well, it did the spammer no good because of nofollow. Hah! And I’ve modified the comment code so that technique won’t work any more.

Following the tsunami, the folks at Junk Tech Fumento Central Science Station (JTFCSS) have been calling for DDT spraying. Here’s Michael Fumento:

The best answer would be spraying with DDT. Unfortunately, environmentalists have demonized DDT based essentially on unfounded accusations in a 1962 book, Silent Spring. … DDT should be sprayed on water pools, tents, and on people themselves—as indeed was once common in Sri Lanka and throughout most of the world.

And Tech Central Station:

Imagine that every year the world suffered from six or more tsunamis producing the horrific death toll recently experienced. That’s how many people die every year from malaria alone, and the tsunami may contribute to even higher rates this year. That disaster has created new habitat suitable for the proliferation of malaria and other disease-carrying mosquitoes.

Public health officials can take steps to reduce the impact, one of which involves using the controversial pesticide DDT. Since the 1960s green activists pushed bans of the substance around the world based largely on false claims about its health affects. The result was a public health disaster—contributing to skyrocketing malaria rates.

Junkscience has a death clock, attributing almost 90 million deaths to the EPA’s ban on DDT in 1972. Michael Crichton is a little more conservative, only blaming the ban for 50 million deaths:

“Since the ban, two million people a year have died unnecessarily from malaria, mostly children. The ban has caused more than fifty million needless deaths. Banning DDT killed more people than Hitler.”

OK, first the Junkscience death counter. On this page I have a corrected version that shows that the EPA’s ban on DDT has caused deaths. You see, by 1972 malaria had been eradicated from the US, so there was no need for DDT spraying for malaria control. There have been some small outbreaks since 1972, but these have been eradicated by other insecticides. (From reading JTFCSS you would think that DDT was the only insecticide in existence.) The Junkscience death counter is particularly dishonest, since as the author concedes in a footnote hidden at the bottom of the page, the number it gives is more than the total number of malaria deaths in the entire world since 1972.

What about the ban on using DDT to fight malaria? There is no such ban. DDT is banned from agricultural use (and rightly so because of environmental damage) but can still be used for disease prevention. JTFCSS pretends that there is a ban so they can hang malaria deaths around the neck of environmentalists.

So we should be spraying DDT in Sri Lanka to prevent malaria? Well, no. The World Health Organization’s plan for malaria prevention in the wake of the tsunami reports:

Sri Lanka

Endemic sporadic malaria close to the affected areas transmitted by An.culicifacies, which has been considered DDT-resistant for many years, but is still sensitive to organophosphates, such as malathion, and pyrethroids.

Yes, the mosquitoes in Sri Lanka have evolved resistance to DDT. It doesn’t work any more. In fact, that is the reason why they stopped using DDT in Sri Lanka. It wasn’t because of any ban—it was because it stopped being effective. Steve Milloy, Mr Junkscience, has only a half-hearted belief in evolution. This may explain why he and other right-wing authors have trouble grasping the idea that mosquitoes evolve resistance to DDT. Fortunately, the World Health Organization is not taking advice from JTFCSS and sending DDT to Sri Lanka. They are sending malathion, which will actually be able to kill the mosquitoes there.
Correction: Malathion is not a good idea either, since mosquitoes in Sri Lanka have developed resistance to that as well.

For more information see the WHO Roll Back Malaria Department, Jim Norton on the DDT Ban Myth and John Quiggin giving the facts on DDT.

Update: Check out Africa Fighting Malaria, which pretends to be an organization devoted to fighting malaria, but posts this article which as well as arguing for the use of DDT in Sri Lanka where the mosquitoes are resistant to DDT, (remarkably ill-informed for a supposed anti-malaria organization, don’t you think?) claims that environmentalists are opposed to DDT because they want malaria to kill more people. Sure enough, it’s yet another astroturf operation. Sourcewatch has the details.

One of the disagreements between Lott and the NAS panel is on the question of whether the models fit the data. Joel Horowitz explains the problem in Appendix D of the report. For people who don’t like equations, I’ll try to explain the issue with some pictures. The graphs below show straight lines (these are the models in our example) fitted to two different data sets. While the line is roughly the same distance from the data points in both cases, the one on the left is bad fit, while the one on the right is a good fit. The points on the left lie on a curve and not a straight line, so it is obvious that the line does not fit the data, but it is not so clear why a line fits the points on the right.

The bottom pair of graphs show the residuals—the difference between the straight line and the data points. The one on the right shows no pattern—the residuals are completely random. The one on the left shows an obvious pattern and is not random. You can use a statistical test to see if the residuals are not random. Such a test is called a specification test.

The points lie on a curve–the model is misspecified	The points are roughly on the line
The residuals show a definite pattern	The residuals look like random noise

In Appendix D of the NAS Panel report, Joel Horowitz examines the models used by Lott and finds (my emphasis):

None of the models examined by the committee passes a simple specification test called RESET (Ramsey, 1969). That is, none of the models fits the data. This raises the question whether a model that fits the data can be found. For example, by estimating and testing a large number of models, it might be possible to find one that passes the RESET test. This is called a specification search. However, a specification search cannot circumvent the curse of dimensionality. If the search is carried out informally (that is, without a statistically valid search procedure and stopping rule), as is usually the case in applications, then it invalidates the statistical theory on which estimation and inference are based. The results of the search may be misleading, but because the relevant statistical theory no longer applies, it is not possible to test for a misleading result. Alternatively, one can carry out a statistically valid search that is guaranteed to find the correct model in a sufficiently large sample. However, this is a form of nonparametric regression, and therefore it suffers the lack of precision that is an unavoidable consequence of the curse of dimensionality. Therefore, there is little likelihood of identifying a well-fitting model with existing data and statistical methods.7 In summary, the problems posed by high-dimensional estimation, misspecified models, and lack of knowledge of the correct set of explanatory variables seem insurmountable with observational data.

Lott’s response to this was:

Professor Horowitz’s discussion of the reset tests seem too strong since I provided the panel with the reset tests done for a wide range of estimates. Even accepting that the Reset test is appropriate (and no one else on the panel also uses this test in their work), there are many estimates where the results pass this test and he should thus conclude that those indicate a drop in violent crime.

This seems to miss the point of Horowitz’s discussion above. Lott does not seem to be at all familiar with RESET, since he does not capitalize the name correctly (RESET is an acronym for “regression error specification test”). I asked Horowitz to comment and he replied:

I am not aware of any RESET results from Lott. He did not know what RESET is the only time I discussed it with him. All the models of Lott and his critics to which I applied RESET failed. That is, the hypothesis of correct specification was rejected. Of course, one can always make passing RESET or any other specification test a model selection criterion, thereby guaranteeing a “correctly specified” model. This would be a serious misuse of RESET or the other test, and the results would be meaningless.

As I explain in the signed appendix of the NRC report, the curse of dimensionality and lack of knowledge of the correct explanatory variables make it impossible to use Lott’s or similar data draw conclusions about the effects of right-to-carry laws on crime. Although the models I tested fail RESET, it would be easy to make lots of models that pass the test and imply contradictory conclusions about the effects of right-to-carry laws. The fact that Lott may have found some models that pass RESET is neither surprising nor significant.

There are have also been previous findings that Lott’s carry-law models fail specification tests and hence do not fit the data. Black and Nagin’s 1998 Journal of Legal Studies paper found that Lott’s original model also failed a specification test. In Lott’s response to Black and Nagin he just ignored the problem.

The NAS has responded to Lott’s attack on their panel on firearms research. I’m posting their whole letter:

A Lott of misinformation

The recent column by John Lott about the National Research Council’s project and report on improving scientific information and data on firearms [”Mountain of evidence shows gun control doesn’t work,” commentary, Jan. 8] contained significant errors. The NRC is the operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. In composing the committee, the NRC ensured that all areas of relevant scientific expertise for the task were represented. In addition, committee members reported a wide diversity of experiences with guns. The draft membership was posted on the Web for public comment, and it was made final only after a careful review of public comments and an internal process to vet any potential conflicts of interest.

The committee’s report underwent an extensive review and evaluation by 11 nationally recognized experts whose names were not known to the committee until the report was published. Because of the rigor of our process, the Research Council has achieved a reputation for objectivity and integrity.

Lott’s column gave the clear impression that the study was about gun control. It was not. The study was about the quality of the data and research on firearms injury and violence. These data and studies are frequently used by both sides in the debate on gun control. It was the committee’s task to make judgments about the quality of this scientific knowledge. The committee was not asked and does not offer any conclusions or comments on gun control policy.

The column states that the panel ignored most of the studies that find a benefit in crime reduction from right-to-carry laws. The report contains an entire chapter and three appendixes that address the rather large literature on these laws. The report cites both studies that do find positive effects and studies that do not find positive effects. On the basis of the very mixed evidence, the panel concluded that there was no basis for a conclusion that the passage of right-to-carry laws either increases or decreases crime.

Firearms violence is a serious problem in the United States. The committee’s call for better data and research reflects that thoroughly documented fact.

E. William Colglazier, executive officer,
National Academy of Sciences and National Research Council,
Washington, D.C.

My comments on Lott’s column are here.

The latest crime figures in the UK are out and show that crime has continued to fall, reaching a record low:

The risk of being a victim of crime, at 25 per cent, is the lowest recorded by the BCS since it began in 1981.

The BCS recorded an 11% drop in overall crime, a 10% drop in burglaries, a 14% drop in car thefts and a 9% drop in violent crime.

Police recorded crime figures show a 6% drop in crime, a 2% drop in murder, a 23% drop in burglaries, a 17% drop in car thefts and a 7% increase in violent crime. The increase in recorded violent crime is likely due to improved recording rather than an increase in crime.

As for firearms crime, overall firearms crime have been stable, with an increase of less than 1%. Handgun crimes continued to fall, decreasing by 7%. The reason that firearms crimes did not also decrease was because there was an increase in crimes committed with imitation weapons. Firearms homicides fell 16% to 68, and firearms robberies fell by 14%.

Pretty good news you would think. So what’s the BBC’s headline? Violent Crime increases by 6%. And what does Glenn Reynolds post?

ALPHECCA REPORTS that gun crime is up in gun-free Britain.

My Tech Central Station column is up.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an excellent article on the Lancet study and the way it was ignored in the American news media.

Daniel Davies notes that the blogs have just as bad:

Other than that, the response in the world of weblogs has been exactly the same as the rest of the media; in the immediate aftermath of the report, half-assed attempts to rubbish the survey, or links to same. Then, when this didn’t work, just pretend that it’s all been dealt with and move on. Maybe say “I’ll get back to you on that” and never do. After a few months of this concerted inattention, many pro-war voices have even decided it was safe to use the old slogan “well Iraq is certainly a better place because we got rid of Saddam”, when this claim is quite obviously highly debatable (just like “of course the world is a safer place because we got rid of Saddam” …)

It’s an absolute intellectual disgrace.

Yes, it’s an absolute disgrace. One other method that bloggers have used to avoid dealing with the consequences of a war that they supported is to attack the messenger. For example, Currency Lad in this thread:

Glad you’ve found some studies to laughably juggle into a conclusiveness that suits your prejudices Tim. Why not just have the courage to say it? Release Saddam from prison immediately. For the children.

or Tim Blair in the same thread:

You should quit this ranting about the Lancet study. People might think you’re obsessed.

And those are two of the nicer ones. I was also banned from Blair’s site for defending the Lancet study.

I think this episode can be seen as a test of character for warbloggers. A test that they have largely failed.

Update: Just when you thought you had seen all the bogus arguments against the Lancet study. According to sagenz the study “says Iraqi men had a life expectancy of 698 years”. Well yes, it does say this … provided you believe that Iraq is a magical land where no-one ever gets older. Sagenz then posted a triumphant comment at Crooked Timber, which is kind of like sauntering into the lion’s den after marinading yourself with meat tenderizer and catnip.

And commenter Factcheck finds us Mary Madigan, guest blogging at Michael Totten who goes for the old “La la la I can’t hear you” (down in the comments):

FactCheck - thanks for your input, but do you really expect people to waste hours googling and assimilating data too prove to you that an already discredited study has been discredited? You use links to biased sites like Crooked Timber to prove that your information is not biased. Who do you think you’re fooling?

Mary follows up with an argument from authority combined with ad hominem

FactCheck - I’m not accusing the guy who owns the “I hate the JunkScience site cuz it’s run by a right-winger” of dishonesty, I’m just noting that his authority as a news source isn’t comparable to Slate. Neither is “Crooked Timber”. You can link to them if you want, you can link to Carrot Top’s site to prove a point, but that doesn’t make it a reputable or comparable source.

Gee, how does the authority of the Lancet on scientific questions compare to that of Slate? (And she has remarkably poor reading skills if she somehow concluded that I hate the Junkscience site because its run by a right winger.)

What Max Sawicky says.

Update: Reynold’s response? He doesn’t link or rebut or even give his readers a clue that he is responding to a particular post, no he just likens Sawicky to a monkey. Real mature.

Update 2: John Holbo has a longer response.