Both Levitt and Lott have had their embarrassments. Levitt had to admit that his abortion study had a critical coding error that made the abortion/crime effect seem much larger. Lott once lost some data with a hard disc crash.
Levitt trashed Lott in his book and elsewhere, and now Levitt has had to retract some of what he said. Levitt put down a Lott article as not being peer-reviewed, when in fact it was and Levitt himself was one of the reviewers!
Update: Sailer has more info.
Update: Here is more on the abortion-crime dispute:
Further, in 2005, The Economist magazine reported that two economists with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston determined that the Levitt-Donohue study was filled with statistical errors. The magazine opined, "To be politically incorrect is one thing; to be simply incorrect, quite another."I think that it is a little strange that Levitt uses a spokesman to make a personal attack on Lott, instead of just defending his own research.
Levitt was traveling this week and deferred comment to Donohue.
In a written statement, Donohue did not comment on either study. He instead raised questions concerning Lott's research methods and said, "I am a social scientist, however, so Lott's behavior has in my mind, put him outside the bounds of scientific discourse."
7 comments:
Thanks for the note. I can't comment on the case, but I will say that all the data lost in the crash was replaced so that academics at well over a hundred universities. The survey was also redone and that data is available at www.johnlott.org.
by "spokesman" I assume you are referring to Donohue. Perhaps you should actually look into the information you are talking about before making comment. Donohue is a law professor from Yale University who co-wrote the articles on the abortion-crime issue with Levitt. So before you go trying to present a person negatively for have a spokesman speech for them, why didn't you check who that person is. I would so a co-author on the article would probably quite worthy of giving comments on it.
Yes, Donohue is a law professor and a co-author. I mention the "Levitt-Donohue study". Are you saying that Donohue's personal attacks are acceptable because he is a co-author? Or because he is a law professor?
I'm saying that it in incorrect to label his coauthor as a mere spokesman. Also, did you consider that this what not all that he said, but perhaps the most interesting thing he said in the opinion of the journalist?
Donohue is a law professor, and I am sure that he has plenty to say. In this case, he chose to make an ad hominem attack instead of addressing the merits. Since he is a law professor, I assume that he just tried to say the nastiest thing he could say, without getting sued for libel.
The concept and theories of economics present in the post are great. I have never come across such theories but i feel that by applying it practically, it would work.
Interesting article, added his blog to Favorites
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