I will see you in hell, apparently
Here is one of Steve Sailer’s more amusing blog posts . He offers his typical, right-on-the-money assessment of me. And then he delivers some insightful social commentary. Some choice excerpts from it:
I was pleased to see that Levitt has been replaced as a New York Times columnist by economist-aesthete Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution.
Sorry, but believe it or not the NYT lets more than one economist write at a time. New York Times readers will continue to suffer with our Freakonomics column.
“Levitt is a poor prose stylist. When I debated him in Slate.com in 1999, I felt sorry for him because his response was so weakly written.”
Sailer is right on this one — me no good writer.
“Here’s the review of Freakonomics in The Guardian, which captures the clammy nature of the book’s love affair with itself better than anything else I’ve seen:
Allen Lane writes:”
Oops. Allen Lane did not write the review. Allen Lane is the name of our publisher! If you follow the link to The Guardian, you will see just how difficult it is to figure that small point out. And it is not a book review, it is regular parody feature in The Guardian.
“…Stephen J. Dubner in Levitt’s life has been bad for Levitt’s soul”
Perhaps after what Dubner has done to me I will be forced to spend eternity with Mr. Sailer.

theberle
Hahaha, you spelled "lets" "let's"!!!
Your a horrible writer and thats why NYT dumped you moreon!!!
[/sarcasm]
Just kidding, you rock. I wish I was popular enough to get dumbasses criticizing me.
Dr. Funk
I wouldn't engage the doofus. He's just an attention-seeking pseudo-intellectual trying to piggyback on your fame. Wait a minute, now that I think about it, I'm just an attention-seeking pseudo-intellectual. I should be trying to piggyback on your fame.
jglickman
At the risk of sounding extremely stupid, is there any merit to Sailer's argument that your abortion-crime drop theory is wrong?
minderbender
You know, a lot of schools think that they're Harvard's "big rival." In fact, Harvard students couldn't care less. Don't let Sailer become your "rival" - he's not worthy.
sdstull
Hehe. I know how to end this one, ask him how his book is doing:)
Ahh the pleasure of bestseller dropping...
GP
That's kinda funny, but I guess you shouldn't waste your time with this nonsense... It just makes me sick when people start to defame and file lawsuits against a guy just because his book hits the bestseller lists...
Brian Sticka
What a bunch of geniuses. In the words of Sylvester Stallone: "I'm astounded by people who take 18 years to write something. That's how long it took that guy to write Madame Bovary. And was that ever on a bestseller list? No. It was a lousy book and it made a lousy movie."
Jimeo722
When one responds to an argument without adressing its major points, one leaves the impression that the points are being conceded. Sailer's major points were not that you were replaced as a Times' columnist, nor the nature of the article in the Guardian, the name of its author, or the quality of your writing style.
You said nothing about the allegation that your abortion/crime thesis is fatally flawed, that you dishonestly refuse to reveal that the thesis, as originally propounded, discussed racial factors, that your former assistant's work was not statistically significant because of its small sample size, and that you were wrong to fail to disclose your relationship with him while plugging him in the pages of the New York Times.
Do you have anything to say about his major points?
Steven D. Levitt
JIMEO722,
I've already responded to Sailer's arguments about abortion-crime in the past:
http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/2005/05/15/abortion-and-crime-who-should-you-believe/
Steve Levitt
David Kane
But the problem is that this response leaves a lot to be desired. Consider just the first point:
This is highly misleading phrasing for anyone who works with state level data. You imply, by not telling us the state names, that these are 5 not-too-atypical states. But two of them (Hawaii and Alaska) are the most atypical states available. Not only is there a small N problem, but both states are different in many, many dimensions from the other 48 states. Indeed, it is very common in state level analysis to drop these two states as being too unlike the continental US to be included in a model is which states are, implicitly, modelled as exchangeable.
This is, obviously, a somewhat minor point, but it does semm emblematic of your approach to Sailer. Now, it's a free country and you can argue or not with Sailer as you see fit. But your response is not really a response. It is simply a rehashing your argument. A real response would directly confront Sailer's argument.
I have yet to see anyone provide a good explanation of the two graphs that Sailer uses so often and to such good effect. How can you, or anyone, be so sure that abortion decreased unwantedness when out-of-wedlock births continued to increase, at more or less than same rate before and after legalization? Is it your claim that, in the absence of legalization, out-of-wedlock births would have increased even faster than they in fact did? What evidence is there for this claim?
This doesn't mean that Sailer is write, of course, but many people might reasonably conclude that you have not responded to Sailer in a meaningful fashion.
sophistry
I'm no economist, but I don't understand why David Kane would trash state level data but then rely on national level graph for the out of wedlock births argument.
Developer
Dr. Funk,
Are the same Dr. Funk that teaches (or used to teach) at Saint Louis University?
If so, you were the best professor I had in college - thank you for teaching me everything I know about economics and keeping me interested in an 8 am class.
jakobscalpel
I loved Freakonomics and enjoy Sailer's writing too. Both Levitt and Sailer offer new ideas (to me, at least) in entertaining, albeit different, styles. I'd hate to see this running argument degenerate further. It's getting a little silly on both sides. Let's move on to other interesting research, the kind of stuff that got us all here in the first place.
David Nilsson
No, let's NOT move on to 'other interesting research' until Levitt puts up or shuts up, and stops dancing round the devastating criticisms of his abortion/crime non-sequiturs raised by Steve Sailer and others.
Come out and fight like a man, Levitt.
StCheryl
Has anyone else noticed that "I, Sailer" is an anagram of "Salieri"? The vision of an insane F. Murray Abraham will not leave my head when I see Sailer's name now...
Princess Leia
I would probably be burning in hell myself but for the fact that my mother picked the holiest woman in the Philippines to be my godmother. . . I will ask my ninang to pray for you both now as well!
Princess Leia
. . . or maybe for all three of you, coming to think of it. ;-)
theberle
Hahaha, you spelled "lets" "let's"!!!
Your a horrible writer and thats why NYT dumped you moreon!!!
[/sarcasm]
Just kidding, you rock. I wish I was popular enough to get dumbasses criticizing me.
Dr. Funk
I wouldn't engage the doofus. He's just an attention-seeking pseudo-intellectual trying to piggyback on your fame. Wait a minute, now that I think about it, I'm just an attention-seeking pseudo-intellectual. I should be trying to piggyback on your fame.
jglickman
At the risk of sounding extremely stupid, is there any merit to Sailer's argument that your abortion-crime drop theory is wrong?