Author/Radiolab Contributor Jonah Lehrer (Imagine; How We Decide): exposed for faking quotes!

[WordMan]

Interesting. Up-and-coming science / neurology writer Jonah Lehrer has quit being a staff writer for The New Yorker in disgrace.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/48404465/ns/today-books/

Lehrer said he acknowledged his actions after being contacted by Michael Moynihan of the online publication Tablet Magazine, which earlier Monday released an in-depth story on the Dylan passages in “Imagine”

“I told Mr. Moynihan that they (the quotes in question) were from archival interview footage provided to me by Dylan’s representatives. This was a lie spoken in a moment of panic. When Mr. Moynihan followed up, I continued to lie, and say things I should not have said,” Lehrer wrote in his statement.

“The lies are over now. I understand the gravity of my position. I want to apologize to everyone I have let down, especially my editors and readers.”

Wow, he had really been positioned as one of the “New Gladwellians” - a TED Lecture Darling™ and everything.

I am sure there is a story here about someone who got caught up in being the new darling and got in way over his head. Sad…

[WordMan]

bump

A subscription-only article in the NYTimes here.

A few choice quotes:

A publishing industry that is notoriously ill-equipped to root out fraud. A magazine whose famed fact-checking department is geared toward print, not the Web. And a lucrative lecture circuit that rewards snappy, semi-scientific pronouncements, smoothly delivered to a corporate audience.

All contributed to the rise of Jonah Lehrer, the 31-year-old author, speaker and staff writer for The New Yorker, who then executed one of the most bewildering recent journalistic frauds, one that on Monday cost him his prestigious post at the magazine and his status as one of the most promising, visible and well-paid writers in the business.

Mr. Lehrer, who majored in neuroscience at Columbia, rose to prominence writing about science in the mold of Malcolm Gladwell or David Brooks through his blog on Wired.com, which then moved to The New Yorker, and quickly became a popular paid speaker at conferences.

[QUOTE=Columbia journalism prof]
“Conjure me up a guy who talks science winningly, who shows you that everything is transparent, and does it in a self-help-y spirit,” he said. “In our age, a guy who looks cute and wonky is better positioned to get away with this than others.”
[/QUOTE]

Anyone else find this sad and fascinating?

[Gyrate]

Yes it’s always sad when someone with talent takes things too far and ends up destroying a promising career. I rather like Lehrer on Radiolab, and I’m guessing this won’t help him much.

I’m also reminded of the recent case of Mike Daisey who performed sections of his show “The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs” on This American Life, only to have his credibility utterly destroyed when large important chunks of his purportedly true story turned out to be false (TAL devoted another whole episode to dissecting his falsehoods in one of the most painful hours of radio I’ve ever listened to).

[Marley23]

This was really ugly. He made up a lot of quotes and in others he used real quotes in a completely distorted manner. Some people had already questioned what he says in the book, but now it can’t be relied on at all. Earlier this year Lehrer got in trouble for self plagiarism, which is a much lesser crime but in hindsight was just the first indication of what was really going on.

[Tom_Tildrum]

I can kind of understand where Lehrer was coming from; he’s probably thinking that Dylan is someone from whom it’s easy to generate quotes: “I’ll just add, ‘and then the crow spoke to me,’ to the end of this sentence. That totally sounds like something Dylan would say.” What he forgot is Dylan must have legions of fans as obsessive as Moynihan who know his every utterance.

[Tangent]

What a tool. I’m glad he was caught.

@WordMan

@Columbia journalism prof

“Conjure me up a guy who talks science winningly, who shows you that everything is transparent, and does it in a self-help-y spirit,” he said. “In our age, a guy who looks cute and wonky is better positioned to get away with this than others.”

Sad, but true.

[Sam_Lowry]

It is disappointing. I read Proust Was A Neuroscientist and How We Decide and thought they were both pretty interesting. I hadn’t gotten around to reading Imagine yet, and I guess I won’t bother with it now.

[TubaDiva]

If you can find a copy, they’re all being pulled. Major, major recall, which shows the publisher is taking this seriously.

[WordMan]

Update: a former editor of his defends him in the New York Observer -

L’Affaire Lehrer: In Defense of Jonah

He is one of the most talented, hard-working, meticulous, and careful writers I’ve edited (a group that includes Dave Eggers, Geraldine Brooks, Peter Godwin, Michael Eric Dyson, Evan Ratliff, Bryan Walsh, Jake Silverstein, and Tom Clynes). And having first-hand experience of the fact-checking departments at The New Yorker and Wired, the magazines for which Lehrer most recently wrote, I doubt very much that his manufacturing or misuse of quotes extends much to his magazine writing.

He goes on to provide a documented quote of Dylan’s to compare to the made-up quote from Lehrer:

He [Lehrer] wrote, “‘It’s a hard thing to describe,’ Mr. Dylan said. ‘It’s just this sense that you got something to say.’” Here’s Dylan, to Ed Bradley on “60 Minutes” (according to the New York Times’ Media Decoder blog): “It came from, like, right out of that wellspring of creativity…I don’t know how I got to write those songs.”

He also points out how Dylan himself appropriates melodies, chords and such from other musicians, and even his own earlier songs. And that other writers are known to write outlandishly without similar scrutiny - e.g., Bill O’Reilly and Ann Coulter. And how other recent scandals like Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass are quite different from what Lehrer did.

But, while the editors of The New Yorker and Wired will argue the point, Lehrer has become less a journalist and more of a purveyor of ideas. He’s much higher on the media totem pole than Blair or Glass ever were, and he can come back as an author of books, public speaker, TV commentator, screenwriter.… David Remnick’s distancing statement notwithstanding, Lehrer doesn’t need The New Yorker anymore (not that they would take him).

[WordMan]

Reviving this thread with an update: Lehrer has published his first book since all of this played out. It is reviewed by Jennifer Senior in the NYTimes behind their paywall. Her review closes with:

[QUOTE=NYTimes]
In his chapter on memory, I noticed a similar rewrite of a phrase from Sarah Bakewell’s “How to Live.” Though at least he credits Ms. Bakewell’s ideas.

These may seem like minor offenses. But what they betoken is a larger sort of intellectual dishonesty. If you squint, you’ll see that Mr. Lehrer often rehashes arguments made by others, both in structure and content, when writing parts of his book. Sometimes he credits these people; sometimes he doesn’t. But the point is, he’s relying on their associations and connections.

I’m guessing media reporters and other diligent reservists in the press corps will find a number of such examples. It suffices, for now, to say this: Mr. Lehrer devotes many pages in “A Book About Love” to how we grow and evolve. “People change,” he writes in his Coda. “That simple fact is one of the great themes of the longitudinal studies in this book.”

Perhaps Mr. Lehrer has changed — personally. But not sufficiently as a writer. I fear it may be time, at long last, for him to find something else to do.

[/QUOTE]

Blunt and to the point.

[Crotalus]

Pretty sad. I read the whole review. His bigger crime seems to be that he has written a vapid book.