Pile on Instapundit. I hadn’t looked at Tim Lambert’s page for a couple weeks–you know the war or something. Anyway, Tim continues a fantastic job on covering Lott’s work.
Tim summarizes what appears to be Reynolds contributing to Lott’s efforts to argue the politics and not the merits of his work. It certainly seems that Lott was an anonymous source that identified Steven Levitt as a ‘rabidly anti-gun’. Even better, Lott cites media sources that suggest such Levitt is ‘rabidly anti-gun’ in his new book. So Lott is likely a source for a claim and then uses it as evidence to support the claim. Uh-huh.
The only thing missing is any evidence that Levitt is actually anti-gun. Even if Lott isn’t the source no real evidence of bias has been presented against Levitt.
But don’t get lost in the amongst the trees in the forest, this is another example of Lott moving the discussion to the politics of the argument over the substance of his argument. By avoiding the actual substance of his work he is able to make a butt-load of money by crying victim and producing results that people want to hear.
Taking part in this little game demonstrates how little of a committment Reynolds has to scholarly research.