Lindgren has updated his report. Main changes are the inclusion of a reply from John Lott and a dissection of Lott's new "Did I say three months? I meant one month. Yeah, that's the ticket!" claim.
Lots more people have blogged on this: Glenn Reynolds, Pejman Yousefzadeh, skippy, Ken Parish, Roger Ailes (twice), Atrios and Guy Cabot. And Marie Gryphon, Julian Sanchez, Jane Galt, Kevin Drum and Thomas M. Spencer have updates or new comments.
Glenn Reynolds and Thomas Spencer mention Bellesiles, but from opposite sides. Glenn states that "Lott's critics want, rather too obviously, for this to be another Bellesiles affair" while Thomas asks "Where are Bellesiles' critics?". Uh, guys, the set of Lott critics and the set of Bellesiles critics has an intersection called James Lindgren. So the answer to Thomas' question is "front and centre!". And, uh, Glenn, Lindgren really didn't want this to be another Bellesiles affair. Lindgren deserves our thanks, again, for doing an unpleasant job. As for myself, I'm certainly critical of Lott, but this is not something I wanted---it's like winning a race because your opponent is disqualified for cheating at the starting line.
Glenn also argues that even if Lott is found to have fabricated data, it would only be something akin to the Jon Ellis affair. This is patently false. Ellis lied about his past, but his dishonesty did not extend to his published work. Lott published his claim about conducting a survey on page 3 of More Guns, Less Crime and repeated it in the Criminologist. Now, the claim is only a very small part of More Guns, Less Crime, but the probate data that got Bellesiles into so much trouble was only a small part of Arming America. Lott went on to make the issue important by publishing his 98% figure in: the Los Angeles Times (three times), Investor's Business Daily, Wall Street Journal (four times), The American Enterprise, Chicago Tribune (twice), American Bar Association Journal, Consumers' Research Magazine, National Review, Washington Times, Insight on the News, American Experiment Quarterly, Intellectual Capital, Rocky Mountain News, Detroit News, Christian Science Monitor, National Forum, San Diego Union-Tribune (twice), Boston Herald, Dallas Morning News, Philadelphia Inquirer, New York Post (twice), Chicago Sun-Times, and the Detroit News. He also made the claim in testimony for the Nebraska Committee on Judiciary LB465 and the US House Judiciary Committee. He's done it on TV---Uncommon Knowledge, a TV pilot hosted by John Stossel and Hardball. He's done it on radio---South Dakota Public Radio, NPR's 's "Justice Talking", the Zoh show and Radio Liberty. He's done it in public talks---to the Independent Women's Forum, at the 2000 Gun Rights Policy Conference and at the Eagle Council Forum XXVIII. And in all these cases he used the figure to argue against gun control. It's hard to imagine a case more unlike that of Jon Ellis.
Finally, I should comment on the suggestions that Lott can somehow salvage things with his new survey. While I have it on good authority that he really did conduct a survey this time, it is really very easy to alter the interview records to give any result you want. Unless some trusted third party has verified all the records and results of the survey as being unaltered, there will be a big question mark over this survey too.