Joe Olson conveys several comments from David Gross and David Mustard regarding statements I made in response to a rather uninformed attack on me and others by Ben Zycher, who by the way has not corrected any of his mistaken statements, as far as I know. http://www.instapundit.com/archives/011786.php#011786 I am sorry to reply in a piecemeal fashion, but my workload prevents my answering all the questions raised in one very long post, so I�ll confine myself in this one to the first one I read, the timing of the first Frank Zimring/David Mustard phone call, which in a note to Instapundit I said occurred in summer 2002. http://www.instapundit.com/archives/011786.php#011786
It is not as if, having kept silent for a half year about the slight changes in Gross�s and Mustard�s stories, I suddenly decided in October to attack their credibility. On the contrary, I did not bother to raise these issues before because I tend to think that both are trying to be truthful and the differences are rather slight.
But in my note to Instapundit, I felt the need to explain what I believed and why, when Zycher derisively asked about me: �Or does he simply not believe the written testimony of contemporaries who observed the survey process as it was conducted?� http://www.instapundit.com/archives/011786.php#011786
Accordingly, I carefully explained why I credited most of what Mustard and Gross said, but did not necessarily endorse the very few things that they became somewhat more certain of than they had been when they last talked with me.
When did the two Zimring/Mustard phone calls occur?
In a recent email, Joe Olson wrote:
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- This post is directed to David Mustard's recollections. I've been told that there isa disparity between Mustard's memory and that of Franklin Zimring regarding a telephone conversation - did it happen in 2001 or 2002? The implication is that if the date is off the substance must be too. The date shouldn't be a point of controversary. Both agree that conversation took place and both agree that Zimring telephoned Mustard both times. Zimring has the telephone records (or can get them). Whatever those records show is just that. I'm surprised that Zimring hasn't produced them already. He should do so now and one of the parties should refresh his recollection. There is no need to speculate. Call PacBell and get the records.
Olson is referring to this portion of Mustard�s recent post, which describes their second conversation:
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Frank called me back in the fall (I believe September) of 2002 [the SECOND call]. We agreed about the vast majority of our [FIRST] conversation . . .
However, we disagreed about two things.
- 1.
In early 2003 (probably roughly around January 31, 2003, based on my home phone records), David Mustard told me that the first Zimring/Mustard phone call occurred in early July 2002. Zimring had told me around January 24-25, 2003 that he thought it occurred in late summer or early fall 2002. I went with �summer 2002� in my note to Instapundit because it overlapped their two claims and Mustard was fairly certain about the date, while Zimring was not.
To my knowledge, Zimring never said that the first call occurred in �2001.� Not even Mustard claims this, saying instead that during the second of two Zimring/Mustard phone calls, Zimring said that the first one occurred �last fall.�
The source of Mustard�s error is that he mistakenly places the date of the second Zimring/Mustard phone call as having taken place �in the fall (I believe September) of 2002.� But that second call actually took place around January 26 or 27, 2003. So if Zimring referred to �last fall,� as Mustard remembers him saying, Zimring was referring to the fall of 2002, since their second call took place on about January 26-27, 2003.
How do I know this? Around January 24-25, 2003, Frank Zimring first told me of Mustard�s astonishing claim to know nothing about the 1997 Lott study. Rather than going public with the seeming discrepancies between what Mustard had just told me and what he had told Zimring in 2002, I (fortunately) suggested to Zimring that he call Mustard and resolve the seeming glaring discrepancy between Mustard�s public claim that Lott told him about the survey, and Zimring�s recollection that in their 2002 phone call, Mustard told him that he knew �nothing� about the study.
Around Jan. 26-27, 2003, Zimring called Mustard (their second phone call), and they did resolve their differences, as both Mustard and Zimring related to me when I debriefed them within days of that second phone call. I gave a very restrained and non-accusatory account of what both Mustard and Zimring resolved in my note to Instapundit (there was apparently a misunderstanding; Mustard apparently meant that he knew nothing specific about the study, such as how it was actually conducted).
I checked my private email records, which accord with my recollections. I suggested in an email to Zimring on January 25, 2003 that he call Mustard. Zimring replied, lacking Mustard�s phone number. In another Jan. 25 email, I then sent Zimring what I believed to be Mustard�s home phone number. In an email I sent someone else on January 27, I mentioned that Mustard had talked to Zimring within the prior day, which would place the date of the second Zimring phone call around January 26 or 27, 2003.
In the same January 27, 2003 email, I also indicated that I wanted to hear Mustard�s version of his first and second calls with Zimring myself. I reached Mustard from my home phone on January 31, 2003, but my main discussions with Mustard about this occurred on my office phone, almost certainly in the few days before or after February 1, 2003 (the records are not easily available).
In my conversations with Mustard in late January and early February, 2003, he repeatedly described his second phone call with Zimring as having taken place just a few days earlier, which means that any reference to �last fall� would refer to the fall of 2002, not 2001. Interestingly, Mustard also said that he said that he was fairly certain that the first call took place in early July, 2002, not a few months later as Zimring recalled. If in 2003 Mustard had understood Zimring as having referred to 2001, I think it highly likely that Mustard would have said this. On the contrary, as Mustard himself related the slight time discrepancy to me at the time, it was over which time in mid to late 2002 the first Zimring/Mustard phone call occurred.
Conclusion:
I hope that this puts to rest this rather trivial side issue. If Mustard is correct about the early July date of the first Zimring/Mustard call (which seems more likely than not), then Zimring was probably at least one month off in his claim to me that he thought that his first call to Mustard took place in late summer or early fall of 2002, and about three months off if he told Mustard that it took place �last fall,� that is, the fall of 2002.
On the other hand, Mustard is off by about three to four months in his belief that the second Zimring/Mustard call took place in September or the fall of 2002. I know this because I suggested that Zimring call Mustard to resolve their seemingly different stories about the first call (which they did), even sending Zimring Mustard�s number for that purpose on January 25, 2003. On January 26 or 27, 2003, Zimring described this second phone call to me, which had just occurred. I also know that the second Zimring/Mustard call took place in late January 2003 because Mustard himself told me this several times in the days around February 1, 2003. Thus, any reference to �last fall� in a Jan. 26-27, 2003 conversation would refer to 2002, not 2001.
Given the tediousness of having to respond to this, forgive me if it takes me a day (or few) to free up the time to spend another five hours clearing up another relatively trivial confusion or disagreement, which does not go directly to anyone�s honesty.
James Lindgren
Northwestern University
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