Deltoid

Oh, and in amusing side note, Julian Sanchez uncovered evidence that determined Lott defender Mary Rosh is actually John Lott, and Lott actually confessed. Atrios, Roger Ailes, Kevin Drum and Tom Spencer also seem amused. I’ve had some discussions with “Mary” on Usenet. Her argument style is that if the facts disagree with Lott, then so much the worse for the facts. You can see an example here. You can read her Amazon review of More Guns, Less Crime here. And check this posting out, where “Mary” defends John from a criticism of his 98% brandishing number and rips into Bellesiles for repeatedly changing his story.

Kevin Drum suggests that the large scale of the Lott/Rosh deception suggests that Lott maybe could have carried off a conspiracy with this witness. Sorry, but I still don’t buy it. Lott’s a liar, but he’s a clumsy one. He could have saved himself most of the embarrassment of this Mary Rosh affair, if he had lied and had “Mary” admit to being Lott’s wife. Kevin also comments on Lott’s fishy statistics.

Tom Spencer also doesn’t think Lott is off the hook and seems rather unimpressed by the silence of Clayton Cramer and Glenn Reynolds. Over in the comment section at Hit and Run Glenn explains why: he doesn’t think that Julian’s revelations are “actual news”.

And people are still enjoying themselves with Mary Rosh: At Electrolite, soundbitten, Roger Ailes, Eschaton (twice), PostPolitics, The Liquid List and godofthemachine.

Yesterday I described the Mary Rosh escapade as a side-note, but on reflection I realize it isn’t. Posting under a pseudonym is perfectly OK. Inventing a few personal details to explain why Mary was so familiar with Lott’s work I also consider fair game in maintaining the pseudonym. The fact that “Mary” would follow me round on Usenet, follow-up to my postings and accuse me of dishonesty has had me rolling around on the floor, laughing. But, and here is the important point: when Lott wrote

“I have not participated in the firearms discussion group nor in the apparent online newsgroup discussions”,

he was lying. And not about something major. It was really a minor point in his response. He could have left it out if wanted to be truthful. Instead, he lied because he thought he wouldn’t get caught. He lied for some trivial advantage because he thought he would get away with it.

Bloggers just can’t get enough of Mary Rosh. We have Andrew Conway, Tim Dunlop and Jane Finch. G. Beato even has a picture of Mary.

Tom Spencer comments on Glenn Reynolds curious reluctance to mention Mary Rosh, apparently because it is not “actual news”. Well, actual people have changed their minds about Lott because of his Mary Rosh deception and the associated lying. One of them is John Quiggin. Yesterday I said that Julian’s revelations had caused him to change his mind. Actually it was just the Mary Rosh thing. My error.

And, from the surely-it-can’t-get-any-weirder department: After John Lott made people promise not to reveal the questions in his new survey, Mary Rosh posted the questions from the new survey to Usenet. I’m imagining it went something like this:

Lott:

Nasty tricksy bloggers. We hates them, we hates them all.

Rosh:

No, some bloggers are nice. It’s Lindgren we hates. He hurts us with his cruel report.

Lott:

I’ll show them with my Precious survey questions. Keep them secret, we can escape, even from Lambert, eh? Grow strong, eat fish every day.

Rosh:

No, we should post survey questions. Bloggers see we be good, good as fish.

Lott:

But He will see, He will know, must keep Precious secret!

Rosh:

[posts survey questions]

Lott:

Nooo! My Precious!!

Meanwhile, over in talk.politics.guns some folks are in denial about Mary Rosh. “The confession must be a forgery!” they said, prompting this exchange:

Clayton Cramer:

I asked Dr. Lott about it the other night, and he confirmed it. He also realizes now that using a pseudonym was probably not very wise.

Morton Davis:

Clayton, clarify please: Was Mary Rosh really John Lott?

gzuckier:

In tonight’s episode of Star Trek, the evil gungrabbers from planet Liberal Democrat face the coldly brilliant intellect of the merciless Mortbot; at the last second, their captain saves them when he presents the Mortbot with a fact which it cannot encompass in its database and its circuits get fried.

‘I asked Dr. Lott about it the other night, and he confirmed it. He also realizes now that using a pseudonym was probably not very wise.’

How much clearer does he need to be?

‘Does not compute….does not compute….. does not compute…. fzzt fzzt poof’

A couple of interesting things about the Mary Rosh postings. First, in her book review Mary Rosh refers to “Professor Lott”. At that time he was a John M. Olin Fellow at Chicago and certainly not a professor. In another post she claims that he was a chaired professor at Wharton. You can check Lott’s resume and see that he was an assistant professor at Wharton and did not hold a chair.

skippy also has a few comments.

The Washington Post has a story about Mary Rosh. Lott now claims that this review of More Guns, Less Crime was written by his 13 year-old son with some help from his wife.

“They told me they had done it. They showed it to me. I wasn’t going to tell them not to do it. Should I have?”

One of Mary Rosh’s reviews (the one of Caesar 3) reads like it was written by a child, the review of More Guns, Less Crime does not. It also seems unlikely that a 13 year-old would have loaned out his copy dozens of times.

Now, compare Rosh’s review:

This is by far the largest most comprehensive study on crime, let alone on gun control. Professor Lott examines crime rates as well as accidental gun deaths and suicides for all 3,056 counties in the United States by year for 18 years. By comparison, the previous largest study on gun control examined 170 cities within one single year 1980.

with Lott on “Uncommon Knowledge”:

The book is the largest study by far that’s ever been done on crime, let alone on guns. The largest previous study looked at 170 cities within one year, 1980. My research looks at all 3000 plus counties in the United States for crime rates, accidental gun deaths, and suicides by year for eighteen years.

It is possible that Lott’s son created the review by plagiarizing from Lott’s writings and posting it with Lott’s approval, but even if this is true, I don’t think that it differs in any meaningful way from Lott writing the review.

Mark Kleiman is disgusted by Lott’s attempts to blame his 13 year-old son for the Rosh review of More Guns, Less Crime. Kieran Healy is disgusted too, and has a nice example of an honest review of a parent’s book. Tom Spencer and Roger Ailes are also disgusted. Greg Beato, meanwhile, is merely sarcastic. skippy also comments.

Meanwhile, Glenn Reynolds notes that this was “Another story broken by a blogger”. What Reynolds does not note is that he decided not to mention this story on his blog because it wasn’t “actual news”. And he still hasn’t linked to the post where Julian Sanchez unmasked Mary. Meanwhile, Julian mentions that there will be a story about this in the February 10 issue of US News and World Report.

Atrios mentions the Washington Post article on Mary Rosh. Meanwhile, Calpundit reports that Lott has backed out of doing an interview. I guess Lott is never going to answer these questions. Julian Sanchez has an update where he observes that over in talk.politics.guns some folks, having seen Lott’s confession, three posts from Clayton Cramer and the Washington Post article have formed the only possible conclusion: there is a massive forgery campaign underway. Julian also points us to the US News article on Lott and Rosh.

Arthur Silber summarizes Lott’s appearance on the Larry Elder. They don’t seem to have gotten much past the use of the pseudonym (which in itself is perfectly OK). The problem was what he posted under the pseudonym. And be sure to scroll down to the comment section for some more good comments from Julian.

Atrios, Tom Spencer and Roger Ailes comment on the Rosh-Huntress files. Tapped and John Quiggin also have comments.

Amazon has removed Mary Rosh’s reviews. Good thing I saved a copy.

A couple of alert readers have pointed out that while all the reviews have been removed from Mary Rosh’s page you can still read her review here.

Mary Rosh got a brief mention on CNN Crossfire.

Mary Rosh’s famous review has made it onto the Fallacy Files.

Lott’s wife has posted (I have confirmed via email that it was really her) to the comment section of this Electrolite post:

When the screen name is used, it always, automatically registers as MaRyRoSh, NOT as MaryRosh or Mary_Rosh, which I am sure must have suggested to some that this was some amalgam and not a Mary who happened to have the highly unusual name of Rosh.

The screen name was originally used by the boys for messages within the scout troup, for ordering old coins on the internet, and for posting some book and game reviews.

At some point later, each son got his own screen name and MaRyRoSh was rarely used by them anymore. As there would occasionally be some e-mail coming in and it did not cost anything to keep the screen name, I never bothered to delete it.

So when my husband later ended up using MaRyRoSh (which I was not even aware of, as I did not check that mailbox), he did not have to use much imagination to take up the fictional character of Mary who is a student of his (which of course our sons are). So much for the tranvestite or other pop-psycological spin in the media.

Of course, she’s mistaken about the name used being MaRyRoSh. The Amazon review was by maryrosh and the AOL email was MaryRosh@aol.com. As for the psychological side of it, Mary’s talk of being raped and wearing heels, were, at least to some extent, a ploy to win an argument, but who can tell if there weren’t psychological overtones as well?

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article (subscribers only) on Lott, Rosh and the 98%. If you have been following the affair, the only new piece of information is Lott’s explanation for this Rosh post where Rosh attempts to find out who reviewed one of Lott’s papers:

Mr. Lott says that those questions were “purely rhetorical” and that he was simply trying to taunt “Alpha Male” into confessing that he is not an academic and had never actually reviewed any of Mr. Lott’s papers.

And Rosh’s review seems to be completely gone from Amazon.com now.

Lott’s wife, Gertrud Fremling, has responded to a question I put to her about the similarity between Rosh’s Amazon review and Lott’s writings.

Obviously ” …this is the review:” is a false statement by you. You should have said that “… this is part of the review:” Am I supposed to believe that this was a mere error? And I notice that you have selectively quoted from my website, too, without indicating that these were selected parts. If this is how you choose to deal with me, then I have no reason to continue any debate.

I will answer the general query about the book review once and for all: Especially seeing the left-out part makes it very clear that it is not my husband who wrote it. I even notice the errors of not making a space after the period a couple of times - obviously not an experienced typist wrote this material. As to the part that supposedly is so similar, I do not think that it really is. These are very basic facts he mentions. You must also realize that when writing the book review, my son must have looked at some written material from the book and elsewhere. After all, you don’t just pull the figure 3,056 right out of your head. Plus, he must have overheard his dad on the phone a huge number of times when being interviewed by the media.

By using the phrase “selectively quoted” she seem to be implying that yesterday I somehow took her comments out of context. I did not. I left out the part that contained information (about the derivation of the name Mary Rosh) that should already have been familiar to someone following the affair. Nor is it normal practice when quoting from a document to indicate that you have not quoted the entire thing. I also included a link to her comments so any interested person could read the whole thing.

She suggests that the similarity between Rosh’s review and Lott’s writing might be because both are expressing the same facts. However, the Rosh review expresses them using the same phrases that Lott uses. It is not just the facts, but the wording. And if Lott’s son copied the sentences from something Lott wrote, then we have a review at least partly written by Lott and posted with his approval. This does not differ from a review written by Lott in any important way.

Atrios points us to a Mary Rosh posting at freerepublic.com where she urges folks to rig the download counters at the Social Science Research Network by downloading a Lott paper as frequently as possible.

Mike Magnum writes a funny article about Mary Rosh.

Patti Thorn investigates how many other fake reviews there are at Amazon.com.

Mac Diva comments on Lott’s claims in his Washington Post letter. Mac doesn’t believe Lott’s story about the threatening phone calls that forced Lott into the Mary Rosh deception.

I’ve done some more investigation in Lott’s latest explanation for his Mary Rosh postings:

I originally used my own name but switched after receiving threatening and obnoxious telephone calls from other Internet posters.

The first group of Lott postings were made between 3 June 1998 and 14 July 1998. All the responses were polite. In one of his postings Lott complains about getting threatening phone calls, but not about phone calls from other Internet posters.

You ought to see what happens to my telephone calls when someone like a Charles Schumer or Josh Sugarmann or Sara Brady makes this charge. I get lots of threatening telephone calls and letters. These calls don’t bother me, though they do greatly upset my wife.

I asked David Friedman, who introduced Lott to Usenet, if Lott had ever mentioned something as highly unusual as getting threatening phone calls as a result. David could not recall Lott ever mentioning such a thing.

After 1998, there was the Mary Rosh review of More Guns, Less Crime in 1999. The next Mary Rosh posting was this one, on 2 June 2000 in freerepublic.com:

If you want to read the research paper upon which this research is based, go to:

http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?ABSTRACT_ID=228534

The papers that get downloaded the most get noticed the most by other academics. It is very important that people download this paper has frequently as possible.

Mary Rosh joined freerepublic.com that same day. It seems that Lott was reading freerepublic.com and came across a posting of one his articles and decided to try to boost his download numbers at SSRN. Obviously he was in no danger of getting threatening phone calls from freerepublic members. The reason that he posted under a pseudonym is that trying to rig the download counters as Lott did is against the rules at SSRN and Lott did not want to be caught doing it. Mary Rosh posted several more times to freerepublic, usually trying to get people to download papers from SSRN.

In July 2001, Mary Rosh made similar postings to Usenet, once again suggesting people download Lott’s papers from SSRN. However, unlike freerepublic.com, on Usenet there are posters who disagree with Lott, so her postings drew comments that were critical of Lott, Mary leapt to Lott’s defence, and Mary’s Usenet career was launched.

Far from being concerned about threatening phone calls, Lott also posted to Usenet under his own name while Mary was posting. He also posted a few days after Rosh was unmasked, and even posted yesterday.

Lott has a long message at his website where he discusses Mary Rosh and argues that when he claimed that he had “not participated in the firearms discussion group nor in the apparent online newsgroup discussions”, he was not lying:

Another misunderstanding in the media is that I was lying as to whether I had ever participated in internet chat rooms. I have never made any general statement that I do not participate in such groups. And, obviously, I did participate under my own name for a substantial period of time. There are however two separate statements, one in an email to Glenn Reynolds on 1/13 and one in an email the following day (1/14) to Eugene Volokh that ­ taken out of context - can be made to look like I am making such a nonsensical statement. At issue here was a posting that Glenn Reynolds had made on his web site (1/12), expressing concern that I was not responding to certain questions regarding my surveys. I only learned indirectly that my surveys had been discussed extensively at the Discussion List for Firearms Regulation Scholars. Reynolds’ posting was the first time that I had ever heard of the other blog sites. So my denial of participation was only with reference to why I was not aware of the current debate of my survey work, in particular as to how it had been conducted at the main forum, Discussion List for Firearms Regulation Scholars FIREARMSREGPROF, a list serve site that I was not subscribing to. The statement to Volokh that I had not participated in "the firearms discussion group nor in the apparent online newsgroup discussions" was again specifically for the Discussion List for Firearms Regulation Scholars to let those participating in the discussions there know that I hadn’t been following their debate. (For anybody doubting this, Eugene Volokh can verify that neither Mary Rosh nor I participated in any discussions on this topic in FIREARMSREGPROF prior to 1/14. The same holds true for any other forum debating the merits of my surveys.)

And yet in his confession Lott stated

However, I never subscribed to the firearmsregprof posting hosted by Volokh.

thereby conceding that the part of his statement about participating in the “apparent online discussion groups” was untrue.

At the time that he wrote that message he was an active participant on Usenet, with a posting as recent as Jan 4. Now he is trying to pretend that all he was saying was that he did not participate in online discussion of his survey. This doesn’t make sense. The whole point of the passage was an attempt to explain why he had not responded by claiming that he was not aware of the discussion. In fact, Lott closely followed discussions of Lott on Usenet. It is true that he did not post to online discussion groups about the survey before Jan 14, but that was because he persistently ducked discussion of the survey. For an example, see this posting where I raised the matter of Lott’s survey with him. He responded by asking me what I thought of Bellesiles.

If all Lott was saying was that he hadn’t responded in online discussions to questions about the survey, well that is hardly an explanation for why he hadn’t responded to questions about the survey.

Furthermore, in his Jan 14 email Lott wrote “I am not going be involved in these online groups”. On Jan 15 Mary Rosh posted to a Usenet discussion about Lott’s survey, and joined into discussions in other online groups over the next few days.

A gun control group has set up a “fan” site for Mary Rosh.

Julian Sanchez has an article in the May issue of Reason on the role blogs played in the investigation of the Lott affair.

Lott was on MSNBC’s Buchanan & Press on May 26. From the transcript:

PRESS:

After that book came out, there was a person who showed up on the Internet by the name of Mary Rosh, who said you were the best professor she ever had in college. She praised the book in her review on the Internet. She said any critics of your book should slink away into a hole and hide. And it turns out this Mary Rosh is a total invention of yours.

Now, why should I believe anything you say in this book if you are lying to people on the Internet?

LOTT:

Well, first of all, not all of those were from me.

PRESS:

She doesn`t exist, does she?

LOTT:

I used a pseudonym in Internet discussions, in chat room discussions.

PRESS:

Doesn’t that just destroy your credibility?

LOTT:

Well, nothing there was false, in the sense that everything I said about guns was correct. And even the other stuff was all based upon some type of truth. I originally used my own name in Internet discussions. But I would get phone calls from people who would be threatening and other types of things.

And, look, we all make silly mistakes from time to time. I admit that I did that.

So when “Mary Rosh” promoted Lott to a chaired professor:

“I had him for a class at the Wharton Business School where he was a chaired professor”,

it wasn’t a lie, but “based upon some type of truth”. And when she wrote:

“There were a group of us students who would try to take any class that he taught. Lott finally had to tell us that it was best for us to try and take classes from other professors more to be exposed to other ways of teaching graduate material”,

that was “based on some kind of truth” as well. And I’d really like to know the kind of “truth” that this:

I am 114 lbs. and 5′6″.

and this:

Even if I am not wearing heels, I don’t think that there are many men that I could outrun

were based on.

And some of Rosh’s statements about guns were incontrovertibly false. For example,

These are not surveys for self defense as you claimed, but surveys involving any type of carrying guns for any reason (e.g., hunting, moving residences, etc.).

And the story about the threatening phone calls doesn’t hold water, as I explained before.

Kevin Drum points out that a correction that Lott requested in response to this Washington Post item implies that Lott did not use “Mary Rosh” in emails when, in fact, Lott did. Drum thinks Lott is lying, which is certainly quite possible, but since there were hundreds of Rosh Usenet postings and only a few emails, it also possible that he just forgot about the emails. Colour me pedantic, but I wish Lott would quit referring to Usenet as an “Internet chat room”. Unlike Usenet, “chat rooms” have real-time discussions.

You might recall how Mary Rosh posted a glowing review of More Guns, Less Crime to Amazon.com. (Lott claims, rather unconvincingly, that his son and wife wrote the review.) Well, Lott has posted an Amazon.com customer review of Joyce Lee Malcolm’s Guns and Violence: The English Experience :

A sweeping history of the English crime rate, a must read, September 16, 2002
Reviewer: A reader from Swarthmore, PA USA
Joyce Lee Malcolm has put together an excellent, very readable study that should cause many to rethink the claims that Britain has a lower homicide rate because they have so many gun control regulations. What Malcolm shows is that British murder rates were declining for centuries before gun control was started and had reached very low rates by the turn of the last century. It is only once gun control was implemented that the crime rate began to slowly rise. Malcolm’s findings should be a warning to those who rely on simple cross-sectional comparisons, without taking into account that crime rates can vary for many different reasons. Any one interested in history generally or in the gun debate in particular will find this very interesting reading.
John R. Lott, Jr.

OK, nothing wrong with that, and no surprise that Lott likes Malcolm’s book, but here’s the thing: The attribution of the review is “A reader from Swarthmore, PA USA”. On the form you use to write an online review Lott must have selected “Keep me anonymous” and entered “Swarthmore, PA USA” as answer to the question “Where in the world are you?”. Amazon saves these settings, so unless he explicitly changed them, any other book reviews that Lott made from his Amazon account will have exactly the same attribution. I found five such reviews written in the last three years on Amazon.com. They were all on books that were of interest to Lott. They were all highly negative, giving only one or two stars. They were all anonymous. I’ve listed them all below, first the review and then my comments. Bear in mind that it is possible, though very unlikely, that one or more of these reviews might have been written by some other anonymous person who lives in Swarthmore and entered their location in exactly the same way and happened to have the same interests as Lott and a similar writing style to Lott.

Nine Crazy Ideas in Science: A Few Might Even Be True.

by Robert Ehrlich

Very low level of sophistication, October 23, 2002
Reviewer: A reader from Swarthmore, PA USA
The level of data analysis in this book is somewhat above op-ed writing, but not very much. Crime rates are analyzed without any other factors being accounted for. The analysis on energy is no more sophisticated. The guy should stick to his areas of expertise, but this is really poorly done.

This is the only one-star review of this book on Amazon. All the other reviwers gave it at least three stars. Why such a negative review? Well, one of the nine crazy ideas is Lott’s “More guns, Less crime” and Ehrlich doesn’t think much of that idea. (You can read an on-line debate between Ehrlich and Lott here.) It seems a little underhanded for Lott to anonymously trash Ehrlich’s book.

Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists Criminals & Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores

by Michelle Malkin

Not very carefully researched, filled with ascertions, May 6, 2003
Reviewer: A reader from Swarthmore, PA USA
As a conservative and someone concerned about immigration, this was a real disappointment. Some horror stories are sprinkled through the book, but there is no real solid analysis. No notion of the trade-offs or attempts to meassure the returns to expending money on different measures. Just a lot of ascertions.

Now why would a conservative give Malkin’s book such a negative review? It couldn’t possibly be payback for this column, written three months earlier, could it?

The New Financial Order: Risk in the 21st Century

by Robert J. Shiller

Overall not very convincing, July 12, 2003
Reviewer: A reader from Swarthmore, PA USA
Whether it is home value insurance or other improvements that Shiller offers to fix the market, the one question that Shiller never deals with is why those policies don’t already exist. He simply assumes that he is smarter than the market and that others have made mistakes in not offering these options. Might there be moral hazard problems in home value insurance? No discussion is offered. This approach of simply asserting an “optimal” arrangement without really asking why it doesn’t exist if it is so “optimal” is something that infects a lot of economics, but you would think that if a service is so valuable the first question would be “why doesn’t the market already provide this?” Instead Shiller’s presumption that he is so smart.

Hmmm, I wonder what Shiller did to annoy Lott? John Quiggin has written a rather more positive review of Shiller’s book.

Bubbleology: The New Science of Stock Market Winners and Losers

by Kevin Hassett

A “how to book” that is not very clear, August 3, 2002
Reviewer: A reader from Swarthmore, PA USA
Despite Mr. Hassett’s track record with his previous book “Dow 36,000,” I saw him appear on CNBC during the early morning show and thought that he did well enough that I should buy the book. He promised that you could use his book to figure out what stocks were overvalued and which ones weren’t. A pretty important topic given the current market environment. However, after reading this short book I have no idea of how to actually rank stocks on the 1 to 6 scale that he uses. He doesn’t actually provide concrete examples, only that he says that he put together this ranking and it worked really well. My other problem is that if this approach works so well how come he didn’t use it when his “Dow 36,000″ book came out when the stock market was at its peak. Some explanation would have been useful for why Hassett, who is marketing this book as a full proof approach to spotting bubbles, wasn’t able to use this approach himself over just the last couple of years to warn people and predict which stocks were going to crash, a period when he was supposedly writing this book. Claiming that you use a not clearly stated formula to identify overvalued stocks after they have already crashed seems like a scam to me. —This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title

I agree with this review—you’d have to be barking mad to take stock market advice from someone who has proven as wildly incorrect as Hasset, but why would Lott anonymously attack a fellow AEI scholar? It’s intriguing. Perhaps there was a fight over a parking space? Or maybe there is some internal AEI politics going on here?

Gun Violence : The Real Costs

by Philip J. Cook, Jens Ludwig

Very disappointing research, September 21, 2001
Reviewer: A reader from Swarthmore, PA USA
This book is obviously strongly on our side, but unfortunately it is not going to provide us with serious evidence. Suppose someone challenges me on how they got their $100 billion estimate of the costs of guns. Will I be taken seriously if I tell them that the book relies on one public survey question in one survey? If I do use this number, where does that leave me in arguing with gun nuts that cite these wacky surveys showing that guns are used defensively 2.5 million times a year? So they have 16 surveys. I don’t believe any of them, but what do I say when they say I only use a survey to measure the costs, why not also the benefits? What if the gun nut morons point out that the estimates of benefits from the surveys are greater than our estimated costs? The one paragraph that Cook and Ludwig have on defensive gun uses being silly could just as well be used against their reliance on a survey. I want to use the figures here, but could one of the people on our side write a review saying how I could respond to these concerns. Absent that this book risks making us look rather silly and hypocritical.

Now, some would argue that Lott is being dishonest here in pretending to be a supporter of gun control who is looking for good evidence to use against those “gun nut morons”, but I would like to suggest an alternative explanation: John Lott really is on the side of gun control and he really thinks that the pro-gun folks are “gun nut morons”. The whole “More Guns, Less Crime” thing with the fake survey and the cherry-picked models has been an elaborate plot to discredit the pro-gun side of the debate. So far it is working.

Mary Rosh cut her posting teeth hawking Lott’s research on Freerepublic.com in 2000, but she stopped posting there in 2001 and switched to Usenet. Fortunately, a poster called Washingtonian picked up the torch that Mary had dropped. From then on, Mary and Washingtonian lived parallel lives, Mary on Usenet and Washingtonian on Freerepublic.

	Mary Rosh	Washingtonian
Interests	John Lott John Lott John Lott Guns John Lott	John Lott John Lott John Lott Guns John Lott
Amazon review of More Guns, Less Crime	SAVE YOUR LIFE, READ THIS BOOK - GREAT BUY!!!! If you want to learn about what can stop crime or if you want to learn about many of the myths involving crime that endanger people?s lives, this is the book to get. It was very interesting reading and Lott writes very well. He explains things in an understandable commonsense way. I have loaned out my copy a dozen times and while it may have taken some effort to get people started on the book, once they read it no one was disappointed.If you want an emotional book, this is not the book for you. If you want a book with the facts, a book that tells you the benefits and risks from protecting yourself and your family from crime, a book that will explain the facts in a straightforward and clear way, this is the book to get.This is by far the largest most comprehensive study on crime, let alone on gun control. Professor Lott examines crime rates as well as accidental gun deaths and suicides for all 3,056 counties in the United States by year for 18 years. By comparison, the previous largest study on gun control examined 170 cities within one single year 1980. Lott examined 54,000 observations and the previous largest study looked at 170 observations. Lott used all the FBI data that was available from the first year that they released the county level data to the last year that they had put it out when he wrote his book. Unlike other studies, Lott used all the data that was available. He did not pick certain cities to include and others to exclude. No previous study had accounted for even a small fraction of the variables that he accounted for.	Important accurate info that Opponents constantly distort This is by far the most comprehensive study ever done on guns. It provides extensive evidence on waiting periods, the Brady Act, one-gun-a-month rules, concealed handgun laws. For some gun laws this is the only study available and it is important to note how many academics have tired to challenge his work on concealed handgun laws and failed and that no one has even bothered to try and challenge his work on one-gun-a-month laws and other gun control laws. I am constantly amused the lengths to which reviewers here will go to distort Lott’s research. Take the one by the Australian who claims that Lott doesn’t explain why he uses the polling data that he does on gun ownership rates. If he was honest, he would note that Lott talks about these being the largest surveys on gun ownership rates available and that it is necessary to have such a large survey to get detailed information at the state level. A survey of 1,000 or even 1,500 people nationally is not enough to allow you to make comparisons across individual states. These guys will do anything to keep people from reading Lott’s work.
Posts from:	Philadelphia	Swarthmore, PA USA (Swarthmore is a suburb of Philadelphia and is home to John Lott)
Also posts from:	aei.org	Washington, DC (the AEI is located in Washington, DC and is the workplace of John Lott)
Opinion of John Lott:	“he was the best professor that I ever had”	Five minutes after someone asked “Who are the best conservative academics?”, Washingtonian answered “John Lott at Yale University”
Opinion of Ayres and Donohue’s paper:	The Ayres and Donohue piece is a joke. I saw it a while ago. Their own county level data that did the year by year breakdown actually showed that Lott and Mustard were correct, but they weren’t smart enough to know it. A friend at the Harvard Law School said that Donohue gave the paper there and he was demolished on this and other points. I haven’t checked their paper again, but do they still have the county level breakdown by year or did they remove it because it was the most general test and it went the wrong way from their perspective?	This paper is garbage. Look at the most generally results that break down the impact of the law on a year-by-year basis. Graph out the coefficients and you clearly see that violent crime is falling immediately after the law. This is the most general specification, much more general than the “hybrid” model. It is also pretty clear what is happening with the intercept shift and straight line in the hybrid model. The data is nonlinear. Crime rates are falling at an increasing rate after the law is in effect. Fitting a straight line to that with an intercept shift overpredicts the crime rate in the early years. So much for their claim about a small initial increase. If you doubt me, draw a verticle line and then a quarter of a circle that starts at that line. Now fit a straight line through the middle of that curved line and you will see that it is above the curve line in the beginning. This is the same thing that is happening here.
Lott article on arming pilots	Posted at 11:29 am on 11 Oct 2001	Posted at 11:47 am on 11 Oct 2001
Lott article claiming bias against guns	Posted at 5:43 pm on 7 Feb 2002	Posted at 4:43 pm on 7 Feb 2002
Lott article on gun laws in Europe	Posted at 1:49 pm on 30 Apr 2002	Posted at 5:48 pm on 30 Apr 2002
On the mysterious survey:	“what about the fact that Lott’s 2002 survey apparently produces the same results?”	“Lott’s survey was repeated in 2002 and obtained similar results.” *

Mary Rosh would regale us with tales of wearing high heels and her days as Lott’s adoring student, but Washingtonian has been less forthcoming about his (or her?) personal life. We do find out from a review of Mac OS X 10.3 that:

We installed OS X 10.3 with a family pack on five computers that we have at home.

By an odd coincidence, Lott’s defence in the case of The File from the Future was that he’s innocent because he uses a Mac.

As well as More Guns, Less Crime, Washingtonian also reviewed Punishment and Democracy: 3 Strikes and You’re Out in California by Zimring, Hawkins and Kamin:

Disappointing This is an important topic, but the empirical work in this book is at the level of the average newspaper. The work doesn’t even take into account that all counties in California didn’t follow the rules. What about simultaneously trying to account for arrest rate and conviction rates or changes in any other factors that affect crime?

Oddly enough, Zimring and Hawkins wrote an article dismissing Lott’s “More Guns, Less Crime” thesis.

Mary Rosh’s career was cut tragically short in January when Julian Sanchez unmasked her as Lott’s sock puppet. Lott told the Washington Post:

“I should not have done it, there is no doubt.”

Fortunately, Washingtonian has soldiered on since Lott said that his use of a sock puppet was wrong, defending Lott, promoting Lott’s books, and posting Lott’s articles.

It would have been really cool if Mary Rosh and Washingtonian had met somewhere on the Internet and had a conversation, but I couldn’t find any examples of them meeting, so readers will have to imagine what topic they would discuss and what they would say about him.

PS: More, much more, tomorrow.

Links from Chris Mooney, Atrios and Buzzflash. Ted Barlow wonders what John Lott has to do to get fired from the AEI. “Sadly, No!” helpfully suggests that with two more personalities Lott can start a boy band. John Quiggin asks “why so few individual conservatives and libertarians have dumped Lott”. Kevin Drum says that Lott was stupid for continuing with the sock puppetry after he got caught once.

In fact, Lott didn’t even pause. On Jan 22 he confessed to using the Mary Rosh sock and wrote “I shouldn’t have used it”. On Jan 23 his other sock was back posting again.

And naturally in the comment threads of the posts above there are lots of fake postings from Mary Rosh, Washingtonian and Glenn Reynolds. Weirdly enough, those three have something else in common—they have all posted five-star reviews of More Guns, Less Crime to Amazon.com.

And thanks to all the folks that linked, I got about 9,000 visits yesterday.

I looked at some of Lott’s anonymous reviews of other people’s books on Amazon.com in this posting. Yesterday I found that Washingtonian had made a five-star review of More guns, Less Crime, just like Mary Rosh did. Today we are going to see just how many other five-star review.Lott gave his book.

To understand what follows you need to know three things:

1. Lott obsessively checks the reviews of his books.
2. Lott just has to reply to any criticism. Whenever anyone posted something critical on Usenet, Mary Rosh would leap to Lott’s defence. For pretty well every paper critical of Lott’s work, Lott has written a reply. Back in January when the Lott affair burst into blogspace, Lott (and Mary) would email bloggers who criticized him.
3. Amazon includes a few recent customer reviews on the page about each book. The most recent review is listed first. So if there is a critical review in first postion and someone posts a favourable review, it pushes the critical review to a less prominent position. A few more reviews and the critical review gets pushed off the front page and few people will be likely to see it.

Given that, if he saw a powerful negative review of his book you have to ask youself, WWLD? (What Would Lott Do?) Let’s roll the tape:

On October 29, 2001, I posted my review of the 2nd edition of More Guns, Less Crime:

Lott has not fixed the problems with the first edition
Reviewer: Tim Lambert (see more about me) from Maroubra, NSW Australia
The only significant difference between this edition and the first edition is the addition of chapter 9, where Lott updates some of his results and responds to the extensive criticism of the first edition.

I’ve already posted a review of the first edition, and mentioned two serious flaws, so to get a feel for how Lott does in his new chapter, we can look at how he addresses these two criticisms.

First, that Lott used two exit polls to estimate gun ownership even though dozens of other polls and guns sales statistics contradicted his results. Lott responds in section 9.9, but fails to give any reason why his polls should be regarded as better than all the other ones.

Second, Kleck’s critique that the change in the number of people carrying was too small to have produced the result Lott observed. Lott respond to this one twice, in section 9.7 and again in section 9.14 (misattributing the Kleck quote to me in that section). Even with two goes at it, Lott does not have a good response. In 9.7 he offers an “explanation” of Kleck’s position that completely misses the point. Things get worse in section 9.14. Lott asserts that the survey results (given in Kleck’s “Point Blank”) on gun carrying include mere transportation and not just carrying for protection. Lott’s assertion can easily be seen to be false by anyone who looks at Kleck’s book. Then Lott makes the bizarre assertion that it is misleading to look at current permit rates because more people might get permits in the future. However, Lott believes that the current low permit rate caused relatively large decreases in crime, so the future rates, whatever they might be are not relevant.

In summary, Lott has not fixed the problems with the first edition, so my rating has not changed.

A few days later, Washingtonian posted a review replying to mine and accusing me of dishonesty:

Important accurate info that Opponents constantly distort, November 8, 2001
Reviewer: washingtonian2 (see more about me) from Swarthmore, PA USA

This is by far the most comprehensive study ever done on guns. It provides extensive evidence on waiting periods, the Brady Act, one-gun-a-month rules, concealed handgun laws. For some gun laws this is the only study available and it is important to note how many academics have tired to challenge his work on concealed handgun laws and failed and that no one has even bothered to try and challenge his work on one-gun-a-month laws and other gun control laws.

I am constantly amused the lengths to which reviewers here will go to distort Lott’s research. Take the one by the Australian who claims that Lott doesn’t explain why he uses the polling data that he does on gun ownership rates. If he was honest, he would note that Lott talks about these being the largest surveys on gun ownership rates available and that it is necessary to have such a large survey to get detailed information at the state level. A survey of 1,000 or even 1,500 people nationally is not enough to allow you to make comparisons across individual states.

These guys will do anything to keep people from reading Lott’s work.

All right, we knew about that one already, but now we know the pattern.

Our next exhibit is this critical review:

Poor Research Cannot Be A Basis For Policy Changes, October 9, 2000
Reviewer: Mark Wylie (see more about me) from Spokane, WA United States
John Lott’s provocatively titled “More Guns: Less Crime” has attracted enormous media attention and has become a powerful rhetorical weapon in the hands of gun control opponents. However, his work is marred by poor statistical analysis and sloppy reasoning, and should not be a basis for public policy.

Lott argues that if most adult Americans were able to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon in public, violent crime would fall. His reasoning is that criminals are calculating people who sit down and work out the benefits and costs of a potential criminal act; therefore, if they know that potential victims are likely to be carrying guns, they will be deterred from committing crimes against persons, and will switch to committing property crimes where they are less likely to encounter an armed victim. Lott then presents some extensive statistical analysis purporting to show that when jurisdictions around the US pass “shall issue” laws that enable most adults to carry concealed weapons in public, violent crime falls in those jurisdictions.

There are errors both in Lott’s reasoning and in his statistical analysis. Even those lacking the technical training to evaluate the latter can see the error in the former. Lott looks at criminals from the perspective of the neoclassical economist, viewing people as always rational–they always act in their own self-interest, carefully weighing the costs and benefits of any possible action. But anyone familiar with violent crime knows that much of it is extremely impulsive. For example, nearly half of all murders take place as a result of arguments or brawls, situations where people are hardly taking rational account of costs and benefits of their actions.

Turning to Lott’s evidence, you see that he tries to calculate the effect of passing “shall-issue” type laws on crime by using data from every county in the US to conduct what is called a multivariate regression analysis–a technique used by social scientists to analyze complex sets of data. It is this regression analysis that is the basis for the “more guns, less crime” conclusion. Such conclusions, however, are valid only if the analysis they are based on is valid, and there are several problems with Lott’s analysis, three of which I want to outline.

1. The Robbery Problem. Lott is studying the effects of “shall-issue” laws, which affect the ability of people to carry guns in public, not to have them in their homes. Logically, the greatest impact of these laws should be on robbery, which of the four main categories of violent crimes (the others are murder, rape and assault) is the most likely to occur away from the home in a public place, and which is also the most likely to occur as a result of advance planning. In fact, Lott finds that the impact of shall-issue laws on robbery rates is far smaller than on other violent crimes. This result is inconsistent with the deterrence theory he is proposing and suggests that there is something seriously wrong with his statistical analysis.

2. The Adult/Juvenile Homicide Problem. Lott’s analysis makes no distinction between murders of adults and juveniles. His logic, however, suggests that the effect of shall-issue laws should be greater on adult homicides than on juvenile homicides. Since the laws allow adults only to carry concealed weapons, from the criminal’s viewpoint, any adult is potentially defended, but juveniles are protected only when in the company of adults. However, when Professor Jens Ludwig redid Lott’s analysis looking at adult and juvenile homicides separately, he found that shall-issue laws lead to an increase in adult homicides.

3. The Stranger Homicide Problem. A similar problem exists when homicides are broken down by the relation of offender and victim. Lott’s logic suggests that “shall issue” laws should have a greater effect on “stranger” homicides, than on homicides where offender and victim are related, because someone intending to kill a family member will likely know whether their victim is armed, while someone killing a perfect stranger will not. But Albert Alschuler has found that this is not the case; once again, the data contradict Lott’s logic.

It is true, as Lott’s defenders will protest, that he attempts to respond in his book to some of these criticisms as well as others that I did not have space to review. However, like his analysis, his counterarguments are unconvincing. For example, on the adult/juvenile issue, he merely argues that juveniles are protected by the presence of adults in public, ignoring the fact that, as I noted, juveniles are protected only when in the company of a (potentially armed) adult, while adults are protected all the time.

Readers may ask why, if Lott’s work is so badly flawed, have so many people accepted it. Part of the reason seems to me to be the psychological effect it has on gun control opponents. The strongest argument in favor of gun control is, clearly, that it would save countless lives. Lott’s book allows opponents of gun control to pose as the true “life-savers,” enabling them to feel better about themselves. This attitude can be detected in many of the favorable reviews of Lott’s book posted here.

Sure enough, a few days later a review replying to Mark Wylie’s appeared:

Second edition is even more powerful than the first edition, October 26, 2000
Reviewer: maximcl from Philadelphia
As an academic I can honestly say that I have never seen so much data assembled to study a topic. There is no doubt that Lott has done by far the most comprehensive study on crime ever conducted. Not only is it the largest number of counties and cities studied over the longest period of time, but he accounts for more factors than anyone else has even come close to accounting for. It is an impressive accomplishment, but just as amazingly Lott provides this information in a readable and interesting manner. Most academics are unable to explain what they have done in common sense easily understandable terms. Not Lott. He eliminates the useless jargon that fills academic discussions and discusses what he has done in readily accessible terms. If you understand percentages, you will understand this work.

I also have to comment on some of the critical comments made by other readers here. I can only conclude that they have not read the book. As someone who has seen and been involved in academic debates, this is a particularly strange discussion. People repeat claims that they must have heard others make, but they are not correct. Take the review below by Mark Wylie.

1) The Robbery Problem. “In fact, Lott finds that the impact of shall-issue laws on robbery rates is far smaller than on other violent crimes.” This is false. Here is just a fraction of the pages that argue that the effect on robbery is very large (indeed, the largest single effect): 78, 133, 137, 173, and 215-217.

2) The Adult/Juvenile Homicide Problem. Wyle writes: “Lott’s analysis makes no distinction between murders of adults and juveniles.” Again, this is completely false. Lott not only discusses this possibility early on but he goes through a discussion to explain how the results for these different age groups all fit together. See for example Lott’s discussion on pages 98 and 147-148.

3) The Stranger Homicide Problem. Lott explains that gun ownership can also stop attacks when the attacker knows the victim. For example, see his discussion on pages 148-150.

Possibly, these attacks will work as long as they keep people from reading this book, but once people read it they will be amazed about how much that they have heard is so completely false. It is amazing that those like Wylie, who make claims such as Lott “makes no distinction” about the impacts of the law by age, make attacks that are so easily disproved once someone reads the book. Either he did or did not make this distinction. Any reader will clearly see that he spends substantial time on this point.

This one is from Philadelphia, just like Mary Rosh’s review. Did you notice the name of the reviewer? maximcl would be Maxim C. Lott, John Lott’s son, the “Ma” in MaRy RoSh. The same son who Lott tried to blame for the Mary Rosh review. Now it is obvious from the writing style that John and not fourteen-year-old Maxim wrote it, but anyone who wants to argue that Maxim did write it has to face the fact that it begins “As an academic” and fourteen is too young to be an academic.

I also reviewed the first edition of More Guns, Less Crime:

Kleck’s book is better, June 10, 2000
Reviewer: Tim Lambert (see more about me) from Maroubra, NSW Australia
This book is a greatly expanded version of a paper published by Lott and Mustard in 1997. In that paper they claimed that laws allowing the concealed carry of handguns caused significant decreases in violent crime. The paper was Lott’s first publication on firearms policy and unfortunately Lott’s inexperience with this subject shows.

Contrast the treatment of the topic of gun ownership in Lott’s book with that in another book by a pro-gun scholar, Gary Kleck’s “Targeting Guns”. Lott looks at the results of two exit polls, conducted in 1988 and 1996 and concludes that the percentage of the population that owned guns increased by 50% in just eight years. Kleck looks at 86 different surveys, going back to 1959, as well as half a century of gun sales data, which show that the gun ownership percentage has not changed since 1959. Kleck’s conclusion is obviously the better supported one.

Lott does a better job in his statistical analysis which found the the introduction of concealed carry laws was associated with declines in violent crime rates. That is because this analysis is in his area of expertise, econometrics. Unfortunately, his unfamiliarity with firearms research betrays him when he interprets this result to mean that the laws caused the decrease in crime. Kleck’s book contains details of surveys of gun carrying that show that the number of people that get permits for concealed carry is much less than the number of people who carry illegally, that is, the laws did not make a significant difference to a criminal’s chance of encountering an armed victim. Kleck concludes that the crime decreases were probably caused by some factor other than the carry laws.

There are many more errors of fact and interpretation in Lott’s book, too many to list here.

So why does the pro-gun book by Kleck have a sales rank of 72,000 while the pro-gun book by Lott have a rank of 1264? I think the reason is that Lott goes well beyond what the data supports to claim that more guns cause less crime. Kleck sticks with a position that is supportable by the data - that the bad and good uses of guns mostly cancel out, leaving little net effect on crime. Pro-gun readers would rather hear Lott’s message, even if it’s wrong.

Readers looking for a pro-gun book should buy Kleck’s book, rather than Lott’s. Lott’s book is only useful for those readers who are interested in the details of Lott’s multivariate statistical analysis. –This text refers to the Hardcover edition

Just two days later this other review appeared, pushing my review down the page:

Well-written, important, powerful book, June 12, 2000
Reviewer: A reader from Philadelphia, PA
Here are just a few of the academics who have expressed admiration for Lott’s pathbreaking book. Few people have both the real world law enforcement experience and extenstive research background to take on this explosive issue of guns and crime. This is what the experts in the field think of Lott’s book. (The quotes are from the paperback version of the book.)

“John Lott has done the most extensive, thorough, and sophisticated study we have on the effects of loosening gun control laws.” — Gary Kleck, Professor, Florida State University

[Other quotes omitted]

The book has gotten similar positive comments from those working in law enforcement. This is a great book.

This isn’t as obvious a reply to my negative review as the other two, but the quote from Kleck is meant to rebut the mention of Kleck in my review. Lott used the same tactic in Usenet discussion when Kleck’s conclusions were brought up. This one is from Philadelphia, just like the one from maximcl. The writing style of the previous two is obviously Lott’s, but since this one is mainly quotes there isn’t enough text to judge. However, it is Lott’s style to post a review containing the blurbs, since that is what he did for the first edition. Here is the very first review of all:

Comments from the book’s reviewers:, March 10, 1998
Reviewer: john_lott@law.uchicago.edu from Madison, Wisconsin
“This sophisticated analysis yields a well established conclusion that supports the wisdom of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution rather than of those who would limit the right of law-abiding citizens to own and carry guns. The general reader may find of most interest chapter 7 which documents how far ‘politically correct’ vested interests are willing to go denigrate anyone who dares disagree with them. John Lott has done us all a service by his thorough, thoughtful scholarly approach to a highly controversial issue.”-Milton Friedman

[Other quotes omitted]

Note that for this review Lott did the right thing—he signed his own name to it and told Amazon that it was from the author and hence it does not include a star rating. Would that he had done that for all the others.

I am highly confident that all three of the five-star reviews above are by Lott since there is at least three pieces of evidence pointing towards him for each review—the style, the timing and the location of the reviewer. I found three more reviews that I think are likely also from Lott, though I am not sure. Judge these ones yourself. All three are written in Lott’s style and make the same points that Lott likes to make. The first is from Madison, Wisconsin, the same location as the very first Lott review above. The next two have the tell tale phrase “as an academic” that was used in the maximcl review:

Required reading for those interested in what causes crime!, August 8, 1998
Reviewer: A reader from Madison, Wisconsin
More Guns, Less Crime is a very readable and thorough examination of the relationship between gun ownership and its deterrent effect on criminal activity. Professor Lott explodes myths about crime that go unquestioned in the press everyday. Should people behave passively when confronted by a criminal? Are people that we know a threat to us? What are the real risks in having a gun in the home? Do guns save more lives than they endanger? This book answers these questions and many, many more. I will never listen to the news media reports on crime the same way again. –This text refers to the Hardcover edition

A MUST BUY! DEMOLISHES GUN CONTROL MYTHS THAT ENDANGER LIVES, July 30, 1999
Reviewer: A reader
Great book. As an academic, with all the garabage research that gets covered by the press, I can’t believe that this book hasn’t gotten more news coverage. If everyone actually read this book, we would have a lot fewer deaths. It is extremely well written and explains to people where the different claims that they hear come from. I have never seen such a careful indepth study of any issue. This guy really sets the standard for research! Despite what might be good intentions (though after reading chapter 7 I have real doubts about their intentions) gun control advocates are endangering people’s lives. The press really needs to think twice about the impact that their newscoverage has on people’s safety. I can understand why bad events get so much news coverage relative to good events, but this lopsided coverage creates some real misimpressions. –This text refers to the Hardcover edition

If you are interested in the facts, read this book, July 10, 2000
Reviewer: A reader from Miami, Florida

A couple of friends of mine have been nagging me to read this book for a couple of years. When the second edition came out I finally gave in and got it (for $9.60 I couldn’t argue that the price was too high). Anyway, I am only sorry that I didn’t read this book earlier. As an academic and a person who has been somewhat anti-gun, I had two reactions to the book.

1) I was amazed by how much research went into this book. I have never seen so many different data sets been used so comprehensively. State level, county level, and city level data is used, and not just from a few jurisdictions but for the entire country. Just the work that he has done on the impact of police on crime is amazing by itself.

2) The attacks on Lott disgust me. I confess that I have seen some of these claims in the press (about things like whether he accounts for certain factors or not), but one thing is obvious — the point of these attacks is to keep people from even reading the book. It is a high risk strategy because anyone who spends a half hour with this book will realize that those attacking Lott are lying constantly. How amazingly false these attacks surely made me wonder about other things that the media tries to push.

Finally, let me just say this is a book that shows you how research should be done. It is also written in a way that I wish other research was written. It is very clearly written and accessible to a very wide range of readers. To much of what academics write these days is filled with jargon. This book has changed my views when I didn’t think that they could be changed.

Summary: I believe that Lott reviewed his own book at least four times (Mary Rosh, Washingtonian, maximcl, and “a reader from Philadelphia”). It is probable that he reviewed it seven times. Each review gave it five stars.

There will be more tomorrow. If you can’t wait, I’ve given you the secret of finding Lott’s reviews. Think: What Would Lott Do?

Links from Sadly, No!, Kevin Drum and Mark Gisleson. Roger Ailes reads some of Washingtonians’s posts. Matthew Yglesias chastises the NRO for running an article by Lott on the Florida election. Brad DeLong comments on Lott’s anonymous trashing of Hassett’s book, writing:

But shouldn’t you at least criticize a guy’s book to his face, when the guy works in your office?