"Well , it was n't just a footnote that Lott supposedly lost . It was all his raw data to support his claim that 98 % of defensive gun uses do n't involve the firing of the weapon . And Lott did lie because changed his story about who conducted the story . '' When Lott cited the statistic peripherally on page three of his book , he attributed it to 'national surveys . ' In the second edition , he changed the citation to ' a national survey that I conducted . ' He has also incorrectly attributed the figure to newspaper polls and Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck. `` http : //www.townhall.com/columnists/m ... 20030205.shtml So was it a newspaper poll ? Did Kleck conduct it ? Now Lott claims he did it . If true , he must have been lying when he said that others conducted the study . '' He has forgotten the names of the students who allegedly helped with the survey and who supposedly dialed thousands of survey respondents long-distance from their own dorm rooms using survey software Lott ca n't identify or produce. `` Interesting how he ca n't remember anyone who helped him ."
"Yet , tehre seem to be people who remember taking the poll . Regardless , in his report it was a minor point . From a realistic standpoint , it took nothing away from the report when he removed it . Lott was investigated for this , just like Bellisiles . He was not found guilty of any academic misconduct ( unlike Bellesiles ) . When you consider the thousands fo data sets that he compiled to put that report together , the folks investigating him did n't think it was at all unbelieveable that he scoudn ; t remeber the details of where that number came from . Again , though , he ended up removing that number from his report ( the single place that it appeared ) and apologised for using it since he could not provide the raw data or a good cite for it . Here is how he responded to the article you link to : http : //johnrlott.tripod.com/malkinsoped.html It is rather interesting , and well documented . It addresses a couple of inacuracies in the article , such as the misconseption that he had attributed the disputed numner to Kleck ."
"And Lott did lie because changed his story about who conducted the story ."
"He was not found guilty of any academic misconduct"