The 7th Circuit issued an opinion in a defamation suit that, in a sense, pitted abortion rights against gun rights. But, in a more realistic sense, the 7th Circuit merely affirmed the dismissal of an overly ambitious defamation suit.

Steven Levitt was sued for a paragraph in his book Freakonomics where Levitt is exploring the reasons for the decline in crime in the 1990s. He comes to the conclusion that legalized abortions in 70s were the reason. Fewer unwanted children in the 70s led to fewer violent young men in the 90s. In the course of this analysis, he considered and discarded some alternate theories. One of the alternate theories was advanced by John Lott who apparently suggests that more guns in the 90s led to less crime. Levitt mentioned that Lott’s position in advancing this politically charged theory made him a lightning rod for controversy, a condition he exacerbated by creating a pseudonym “Mary Rosh” which he used to defend his positions in online debates. But, where Lott really took issue with Levitt was his statement:

Then there was the troubling allegation that Lott actually invented some of the survey data that support his more guns/less crime theory. Regardless of whether the data were faked, Lott’s admittedly intriguing hypothesis doesn’t seem to be true. When other scholars have tried to replicate his results, they found that right-to-carry laws simply don’t bring down crime.

Lott’s defamation argument against Levitt apparently hung on the notion that, in academia, “replicate” has a very precise meaning distinct from the common use of the term, and that within the context of its academic meaning, Levitt’s language could only be read as accusing Lott of lying about his data. The court noted that, in the context of defamation suits, if the defendant’s writings has a reasonable, non-defamatory meaning, the defendant is basically off the hook. It also noted that Freakonomics was written for a general, not purely academic audience, and in that context, the replication language had non-defamatory interpretation. Levitt only said that Lott’s results couldn’t be reproduced. Leavitt said that Lott’s hypothesis was “sensible” and “intriguing” but wrong. The remedy for that, the court said, was a rebuttal paper by Lott, not damages in a lawsuit.