John and Mary and Jayson and Rick

Washington Post
By Al Kamen
Wednesday, May 28, 2003; Page A17

Just about everyone has jumped into the most unfortunate ruckus over New York Times reporter Jayson Blair's spectacular fiction writing and his ability to report from the road without ever having to fuss with airplanes and seedy hotels. Scores are being settled everywhere. Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Bragg, accused of overuse of stringers, said Monday he'll be quitting the Times.

Even American Enterprise Institute scholar John R. Lott Jr., author of the controversial book "More Guns, Less Crime," weighed in last week in Investors Business Daily, in a "viewpoint" piece headlined "Pattern of Deceit Is Deeper Than Times Wants To Admit."

Lott wrote that the Times "has suffered a major black eye with revelations that one of its reporters made up events, facts, or engaged in plagiarism some 50 times. Yet, the Times has won praise for owning up to this problem and in doing so may seem to have put the controversy behind it."

But "this pattern of reporting goes much deeper than the Times admits," Lott wrote, launching into a lengthy criticism of the Times and its series three years ago on "rampage killings" that took issue with some of his findings on guns.

Making up events and facts is clearly a no-no for a reporter. Lott's greatest fan and defender online, Mary Rosh, would certainly agree. Rosh, a former student of Lott's, has jousted online for three years against Lott's harshest critics, who have bitterly attacked his research and data, which he says show gun ownership deters crime.

Rosh said Lott taught her at the University of Pennsylvania in the early 1990s and was "the best professor that I ever had." She said she and other students "would try to take any class he taught," but "Lott finally had to tell us that it was best for us to try and take classes from other professors" to get a broader education. She posted an effusive review of his book on the Amazon.com Web site, giving it the highest five-star rating. It was signed "Maryrosh."

Imagine our amazement to find that Mary Rosh wasn't real. She's actually John R. Lott Jr. Lott told our colleague Richard Morin, who broke the story in the print press Feb. 1, that he wrote the e-mails under that name, though his wife helped their 13-year-old son write the Amazon review.

Of his inventing a fan, Lott told Morin he "shouldn't have done it."

Well, there you go.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46063-2003May27.html