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Tuesday, February 04, 2003
Hair splitting
Instapundit Glenn Reynolds takes up the Lott case again only to swing and miss (as George Will might put it).
From Mr. Reynolds:
I think it's fair to say that the serious charges against Lott -- falsely claiming to have done an unpublished survey in 1997 -- are unproven, while the proven charges against Lott -- using a pseudonym on the Internet -- are embarrassing and reflect badly on him, but are not terribly serious.
But even if the serious charge were true, something that is so far a matter of conjecture rather than actual evidence, I think it would be an exaggeration to equate that to Michael Bellesiles' misconduct, though it's easy to understand why some people would like to do so.
Bellesiles, after all, was found to have fabricated research that was crucial to the thesis of a published academic work. Lott is accused of claiming to have done a study that was never published at all. If proven, that would be serious misconduct, but it's possible for misconduct to be serious and still not rise to the level of the Bellesiles affair, which is probably the most serious case of academic fraud in the past decade. And, again, I can see why some people would like to blur that distinction (as Noah does by simply posing the question), but it's a distinction nonetheless.
I want to emphasize the parts from above that I underlined:
-But even if the serious charge were true, something that is so far a matter of conjecture rather than actual evidence, I think it would be an exaggeration to equate that to Michael Bellesiles' misconduct, though it's easy to understand why some people would like to do so
and
-Bellesiles, after all, was found to have fabricated research that was crucial to the thesis of a published academic work. Lott is accused of claiming to have done a study that was never published at all. If proven, that would be serious misconduct, but it's possible for misconduct to be serious and still not rise to the level of the Bellesiles affair, which is probably the most serious case of academic fraud in the past decade
While casting some doubt on the charges against Lott, Reynolds goes on to state that "if proven" it would not rise to the level of the l'affaire Bellesiles.
For arguments sake, let's say that the charges against Bellesiles and Lott are both true. Bellesiles' thesis is that gun manufacturers have exaggerated the importance of guns in colonial times as a basis for "intent" in reference to the Second Amendment. To back up his argument he used documentation that did not exist.
Lott's thesis is that an increase in guns is actually an inhibitor of crime, hence the tile; More Guns, Less Crime. To back this up he cites a poll that indicates that specific crimes did not occur because of the brandishing of a weapon by the victim in question. The cited poll is Lott's own, yet he has no hard copy nor does he have even anecdotal evidence from participants of the poll, those polled or those who did the legwork for Lott. So we might safely say that the poll never existed.
Reynolds then introduces a strawman into the argument, Joseph Ellis.
A better analogy might be to historian Joseph Ellis, who falsely claimed to have seen combat in Vietnam -- a claim that, if true, might have lent greater force to his scholarship and public statements, but that was not in fact part of his published scholarship
What this has to do with Bellesiles and Lott who both did publish their findings, is beyond me. But then I'm not a simple country lawyer.
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