A PLEA TO THE NEW YORK TIMES….I note that the New York Times has published a piece by John Lott today and I just have to ask: what is Lott doing writing op-eds for them? The man is a fraud and the Times demeans itself by allowing him space on their pages.
This is not a matter of Lott being a conservative I disagree with. Plenty of conservatives write op-ed I disagree with. Nor does this have anything to do with complicated arguments over statistical models that require an advanced degree to understand. It’s also not about the fact that he appears to have lied about conducting a survey that he doesn’t seem to have actually conducted. Neither is it about his infamous career as “Mary Rosh” defending his own work under a pseudonym on the internet.
It’s about the fact that he has posted, retracted, and then reposted fraudulent data and then covered it up. Details are here, and no mathematical background is needed to understand it.
If anyone from the New York Times editorial page is reading this ? or anyone from any other editorial page, for that matter ? do your credibility a favor. Stop publishing this guy. In a decent world, he would have been blackballed from polite editorial society long ago.
