Reply #59: Aren't you the one who's always citing the NAS study that found Lott's research on CCW not credible?

[DanTex]

Haven't you been pushing the "no connection" argument up until now? Maybe I have you confused with someone else. Or maybe you conveniently "forget" about your own sources when they say things that would contradict your other sources.

As far as your idea that analyzing data just requires the ability to "regurgitate statistical data and not get it wrong", that should tell anyone reading all they need to know about your familiarity with the practice of data analysis. Analyzing data properly requires both skill and honesty. In social sciences in particular, it is important to determine whether the sources of a study are biased or likely to be snooping through data to find the conclusions they are looking for. Which is exactly what John Lott does, and this is why his work on CCW has been thoroughly discredited, for example:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=343781

So yes, the fact that your research comes from a right-winger who has been discredited does indeed matter. Your source is now going on about how Sarah Palin is right about history, and the "liberal media" is wrong.