Groundblog's Day

Instapundit, J.D., N.A.C.A. has a new post on John-Marie Lott. It's essentially a rewrite, with elaboration, of his January 12 post, which I masterfully deconstructed here.

Reynolds does elaborate on two points. First, he repeats the argument that Lott's conduct is equivalent to Joseph Ellis's. But he then claims that Lott's alleged false statements, like Ellis's, were "not in fact part of his published scholarship." Not true. It was published in Lott's Book, More Guns, Less Crimes. Either Reynolds is completely ignorant about the substance of the controversy, or he is completely disingenuous.

Secondly, Reynolds weakly argues that "the serious charges against Lott" are "unproven" and "a matter of conjecture rather than actual evidence." As a law prof, Reynolds should know that the burden of proof often falls on the party which is best able to meet that burden. Here, all of the evidence of the existence of a survey (if it exists) would be in Lott's possession. Certainly if Lott wants to be taken seriously as a scholar, he should be able to back up his claims with hard evidence. In contrast, Lott's critics have met their burden, by proving that Lott cannot come up with any credible proof of his alleged survey.