Did a search and couldn't find anything on these guys, so here tis. Will unpost if notified. - C
Wired's webpage published this article insinuating that the Berkley election study of FL had been debunked by this report [PDF] (or go with Google HTML).
I'm not going to jump up and say "They're Wrong!" because I opted not to go too far into advanced statistics in college. If anyone wants to read it and translate it to English, you win my adoration.
However, I thought the refutement of the Berkley report was a little weak, at least in words:
More below...
"What they did with their model is wrong, and their results are flawed," McCullough said. "They claim those results have some meaning, but I don't know how they can do that."
The analysis was not peer-reviewed, although Hout and the students said that seven professors examined their numbers. They would not speculate about what occurred with the voting machines, but voting activists on internet forums seized the study as proof of faulty voting machines or election fraud. Drexel University's McCullough, however, found fault with the study.
Yeah, damn those liberals and their dirty blogs and analysis...helping perpetuate lies...I heard of something similar from a different perspective...
[editor's note, by Clever] - for those of you who have heart conditions or irratible bowels, the above is a link to FoxNews. Just thought you would like a warning.
McCullough said they focused on one statistical model to conduct their analysis while ignoring other statistical models that would have produced opposite results.
"They either overlooked or did not bother to find a much better-fitting (statistical) regression model that showed that e-voting didn't account (for the voting anomalies)," McCullough said.
Indeed. Just those damn hippie liberals in Berkley right? They're just making this shit up...because they couldn't find a "better-fitting" model that didn't prove them right?!?
Did some Googling and found that one "debunker" is versed in challenging data that doesn't go a Republican way...
Florenz Plassmann, Economist, [ASSITANT PROFESSOR] Bighampton
Original post from MotherJones
Excerpt:
The Stanford Law Review critique, authored by Yale's [Ian] Ayres and Stanford's [John] Donohue, analyzed more recent crime statistics, extending Lott's original 1977-1992 crime dataset to include data through the late 1990s. As it turned out, after 1992, partly due to the end of the 1980s' crack cocaine-related crime wave, crime rates dropped dramatically in states with large urban centers, many of which had not passed right to carry laws. This fact proves highly inconvenient to the "More Guns, Less Crime" argument. After testing Lott and [co-author] Mustard's analysis with more years of data and different econometric tweakings, Donohue and Ayres conclude, "No longer can any plausible case be made on statistical grounds that shall-issue laws are likely to reduce crime for all or even most states"; their analysis even suggested such laws might increase violent crime.
This may seem like an ordinary scholarly dispute, but it quickly devolved into the sort of controversy that has followed much of Lott's recent work. Lott was invited to write a response to Ayres and Donohue, scheduled to run simultaneously in the Stanford Law Review. He accepted the invitation, but then suddenly withdrew his name from the response as the editorial process wound down. The cause, according to then Stanford Law Review president Benjamin Horwich, was a minor editing dispute involving literally one word; Lott, however, complains of an editorial "ultimatum" from the journal.
And so Lott's response was published under the name of two co-authors, economists Florenz Plassmann and John Whitley. They accused Donohue and Ayres of having "simply misread their own results" and, in a feat of statistical one-upmanship, claimed to extend the crime data even further -- through 2000 -- thereby rescuing the "More Guns, Less Crime" hypothesis in the process. But when Ayres and Donohue analyzed this new data, they say they found severe coding errors that, when corrected, thoroughly obliterated the attempt to confirm the "More Guns, Less Crime" thesis. Similar coding errors, wrote Donohue and Ayres, have cropped up elsewhere in Lott's work, including in his new book, "The Bias Against Guns".
Hmmm. Coding errors...guess that makes him an expert on "machine failures".
Bruce McCollough [link to Drexel Bio], Senior Economist at the FCC
No Google dirt here, but the way the FCC is leaning these days...never heard of him really, so if I'm wrong, if he is a good guy, I'll retract.
This is sorta weird tho...guessing not signigficant unless you want to start some tin-hatting. It's winter, so use multiple layers. ;P
If Wired is spraying it, there must be more out there...if you find updates, post them below and I'll edit this article.
Gotta work in the morning...damn jobs. Can't wait 'til Bush policy gets me laid off! Do people on welfare get the tax breaks too?