Brad DeLong denounces John Lott as sleazy. Lott purportedly comments in a new book that Steven Levitt, an expert on crime at the University of Chicago, is "rabidly" anti-gun, based on an anonymous source. DeLong charges that the anonymous source is in fact Lott. DeLong's evidence for this charge: exactly none.

It is worth noting that when the initial claim about Levitt popped up last year, DeLong's response was to deny the charge and then change the subject by pointing out that Levitt is extremely smart. I have never met Levitt, but I have read enough of his articles to know that DeLong is correct: Levitt does economics like Yo-Yo Ma plays cello. But that has exactly nothing to do with whether Levitt is capable of being fair on the subject of guns (on which subject I know exactly nothing). Brad DeLong is awfully smart, and he is also aggressively partisan. Chomsky is more than extremely smart, and he is also utterly loopy. Ditto Einstein. Richard Posner's Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline is an utterly depressing litany of very smart intellectuals going weird in public debate.

UPDATE: I thought the extraordinary animus against Lott was payback for Bellesiles. Apparently not. Atrios (whom I rarely read, because it simpler to go straight to the DNC site and skip the middleman) declares it is payback for Lott's work on the Florida election. At least he does not bother trying to pretend it is about academic integrity (he does describe Lott's work as "bogus", but with Atrios, that simply means "upsetting Terry McAuliffe).

ONE MORE UPDATE: In a comment below, Brad DeLong defends Steve Levitt from what I gather DeLong thinks is my attack on Levitt. Let me repeat: I have exactly no quarrel with Levitt. I have read most of his crime papers, and they are remarkable. I have no evidence that Levitt is "rabidly antigun". I have already said that. My quarrel is not with Levitt, it is with DeLong. First, I think DeLong is arguing (I left out the link before; it is now there) that Levitt's fairness is demonstrated by the fact that he is really smart. I did not say that Levitt is a nut; I said it is a non sequitor for DeLong to say that Levitt is smart, and therefore he is not a nut. That was the point of my Chomsky reference. Second, DeLong is upset that Levitt was subjected to an accusation of being "rabidly antigun" based solely on an anonymous source, without even a description of how the source drew that conclusion. I agree with him. In which case, it is a bit rich for DeLong to turn around and accuse Lott of anonymously citing himself, when he has no evidence for it.

*Sigh*

Steve Levitt is the kind of guy who would write: "What's more dangerous: a swimming pool or a gun? When it comes to children, there is no comparison: A swimming pool is almost 100 times more deadly."

That's not the kind of thing someone who is "rabidly antigun" would write.

If you ask me--or anybody I know who has seen Steve Levitt talk about crime--whether he is "rabidly antigun," what you get back is laughter. There's no reason to believe that Levitt is "rabidly antigun." There never was any reason to believe that Levitt is "rabidly antigun."

And now we're supposed to believe that Levitt is "rabidly antigun" because Noam Chomsky is a nutboy? That's not a very good argument.

Wow! So in your parallel universe when a guy accuses a reputed economist of being "rabidly anti-gun" with no proof whatsoever, the onus is on those defending the economist to come up with evidence?

If there's "no reason to believe that Levitt is rabidly anti-gun" then maybe Reynolds should be a little more careful about throwing around the charge. I wouldn't even mind if he made the charge on his blog, which only reflects his own lack of integrity but this was done on NRO, which still retains some respectability.

I am astonished that you would repeatedly claim that Delong has "no evidence". DeLong linked to my page which presents the evidence that Lott was the anonymous accuser and observed that "Lambert has a very strong case." How did you manage to miss all this?

Yes, it is about Bellesisles as well. If the right claims to value academic integrity and hammers Bellesisles out of his job for a single instance where he could not substantiate his data, then they can't sit there and whine when someone calls Lott on the fact that he can't produce any raw data for this survey of his, and no one (save a single source that can hardly be considered impartial) remembers either doing it or taking it.

Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Lott had an obligation to the pro-gun movement to do his research with integrity and honesty; you all should be mad at him rather than those who pointed it out.