Fake, mistake, replicate.

On April 10 economist John R. Lott, Jr., formerly of the American Enterprise Institute, filed a defamation lawsuit against economist Steven D. Levitt of the University of Chicago and HarperCollins, the publisher of Levitt's 2005 book, Freakonomics. At issue is what Levitt meant when he wrote that scholars could not "replicate" Lott's results, referring to Lott's 1998 book, More Guns, Less Crime. Lott employed a sophisticated statistical analysis on data from statelevel variation in "carry and conceal" laws, finding that states that passed laws permitting citizens to carry concealed weapons saw statistically significant declines in robbery, rape and homicide compared with states that did not pass such laws.