More Guns, Less Fakery
Fast forward to John Lott, darling of the fanatical second amendment supporters, who authored More Guns, Less Crime and most recently The Bias Against Guns. Well, it appears that Mr. Lott may be guilty of the same overly creative research that Mr. Bellesiles committed. In fact, the same Northwestern University research professor, James Lindgren has chimed in to debunk Lott's research, suggesting that Lott is at the minimum, guilty of sloppy scholarship, and perhaps, more serious, outright fraud.
Like Bellesiles, Lott has responded to queries about his research with equivocations, excuses and denials. Even libertarian and conservative writers like Michelle Malkin have questioned Lott's integrity. He claims he's lost all the data due to computer crashes and can't remember any names of students who helped him with his survey.
But even more bizarre is that Lott lied about using a pseudonym ("Mary Rosh") to post "voluminous defenses of his work over the Internet". He gave himself a good review on amazon.com and attacked his critics under a byline bearing his false handle. Those acts don't sound like an author confident his research and sources can stand on their own merit.
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