Some guy — who we'll refer to as "gun nut" – claimed that arming potential victims with gats causes violent crime to fall. A best-selling book, Freakonomics (2005), said gun nut may have faked his data and, even if he didn't, others who "tried to replicate" his work couldn't.
Obvious libel, right? Somebody find that man a lawyer!
Not so fast, quoth the Seventh Circuit. Illinois law does treat calling someone incompetent or dishonest as defamatory per se (and therefore actionable without proof of special damages), but it also withholds the per se label if the statement doesn't necessarily blacken reputation. Thus the court said:
A closer look at the paragraph where the contested sentence is found supports this innocent reading. The paragraph describes and critiques [gun nut's] "idea," "theory," and "hypothesis," but makes no mention of his methodology or what data set he used. In this context, it is natural to read Levitt's statement as a critique on this theory, rather than an accusation of falsifying data. In fact, instead of weighing in on the rumor that [gun nut] faked some of his results, Levitt distanced himself from it. Levitt mentioned the "troubling allegation," but noted that "[r]egardless of whether the data were faked, [gun nut's] admittedly intriguing hypothesis doesn't seem to be true." Far from assailing [gun nut's] competence, he acknowledge that [gun nut's] theory is "sensible" and "intriguing." To the extent that [gun nut] is complaining about an attack on his ideas, he is barking up the wrong tree. The remedy for this kind of academic dispute is the publication of a rebuttal, not an award of damages.
[Gun nut] v. Levitt, No. 07-3095, slip op. at 10 (7th Cir. Feb. 11, 2009).
The court, by the way, deemed one of gun nut's arguments "disingenuous" and an attempt at "gamesmanship". It also noted the "embarrassing" but "apparently true" charge that gun nut "exacerbated" his status as a "lightning rod for gun controversy" (a/k/a gun nut) "by creating a pseudonym, 'Mary Rosh,' which he used to defend his theory in debates over the Internet".
