The Gryph reports some disturbing evidence indicating that John Lott may have fabricated a “national survey” that he claimed to have conducted for his book More Guns, Less Crime. Law professor James Lindgren, one of the people most responsible for the exposure of Michael Bellesiles’s fraud, has posted a report on his attempt to verify the study. It looks pretty bad. The most suspicious aspect of the affair is that there are several occasions noted by Lindgren where if Lott had done his own survey, it would have been rather natural for him to mention this in response to certain critics. Yet we hear nothing about it until a revised edition of his book, when data — the same data previously attributed merely to “national surveys” — suddenly becomes his data from his survey.

Now, it’s not clear that a finding of culpability here would undermine Lott’s general claim — that concealed carry laws have a crime-lowering deterrent effect — as severely as Bellesiles’s fabricated probate records demolished his thesis. But it certainly deals a severe blow to Lott’s credibility. It’s hard to imagine why a successful academic would risk his reputation over what is not, ultimately, a crucial point. And that is, at the end of the day, the one (the only) thing feeding a tiny spark of hope that this isn’t what it looks like.

Update: This one seems to be spreading like wildfire, having just recently been picked up by il capo di tutti bloggo — who has a good roundup of the coverage so far. Now that this has broken in a serious way, we have an opportunity to do an end run around obstinate University of Chicago administrators. Surely some of Glenn & co.’s readers were undergraduates at Chicago in 1997, and at least some of them must keep in touch with classmates, who keep in touch with classmates, who… well, you get the idea. So: if that’s you, or someone you know, let’s see what we can unearth. All it takes is one or two people who remember a friend being involved in this survey to confirm that it happened. If we don’t start hearing any such reports within a week or so (news travels fast on the internet), I’ll be inclined to think the critics are right.