Third student, Demetrius Hewlin, dies after shooting rampage at Chardon High School

[brentspeak]

41. John Lott, eh?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lott#Anti-gun_group_posing_as_Lott_on_website_and_emails

Disputed survey

In the course of a dispute with Otis Dudley Duncan in 1999-2000,[53] Lott claimed to have undertaken a national survey of 2,424 respondents in 1997, the results of which were the source for claims he had made beginning in 1997.[54] However, in 2000 Lott was unable to produce the data, or any records showing that the survey had been undertaken. He said the 1997 hard drive crash that had affected several projects with co-authors had destroyed his survey data set,[55] the original tally sheets had been abandoned with other personal property in his move from Chicago to Yale, and he could not recall the names of any of the students who he said had worked on it. Following extensive publicity, James Hamilton, a retired detective in Tennessee, came forward saying that he had taken the survey. David Gross, a former city prosecutor and former NRA board member came forward to say that he had been interviewed for a gun survey, and he thought that he was interviewed in the spring of 1997, probably by people working for Lott.[56] Critics alleged that the survey had never taken place,[57] but Lott defends the survey's existence and accuracy, quoting on his website colleagues who lost data in the hard drive crash.[58]

Mary Rosh persona

As part of the dispute surrounding the missing survey, Lott created and used "Mary Rosh" as a fake persona to defend his own works on Usenet and elsewhere. After investigative work by blogger Julian Sanchez, Lott admitted to use of the Rosh persona.[57] Sanchez also pointed out that Lott, posing as Rosh, not only praised his own academic writing, but also called himself "the best professor I ever had".

Some commentators accused Lott of transgressing normal practice, noting that he praised himself while posing as one of his former students,[64][65] and that "Rosh" was used to post a favorable review of More Guns, Less Crime on Amazon.com. Lott has claimed that the "Rosh" review was written by his son and wife.[65]
"I probably shouldn't have done it—I know I shouldn't have done it—but it's hard to think of any big advantage I got except to be able to comment fictitiously," Lott told the Washington Post in 2003.[65]