He claims that there was a prank involving a psych test having to be retaken. The paper discusses a prank involving a psych test having to be retaken.
He claims this is proof that he was telling the truth. For many of his followers that is as far as the read will go. See there was a prank involving a psych test having to be retaken.
Ignoring that the prank described in the paper is not one that fits what he described happening at all. It was very likely the original inspiration for his … parable. And for those of us who are not Biblical literalists … sometimes myths get at greater truths after all.
It is a bit odd though - he believes that Bible stories are literal inerrrant (and not symbolic, metaphorical) truth, but his life story can be handled as fictional story to be created to serve the points he wants to make.
In his book, Carson doesn’t say he was punked. He said that God arranged for that fake test, and acted through his professor.
He says that it was the professor, not some stranger pretending to be a proctor, who gave him the ten bucks. He says there were 150 people there, not a handful. He says he was rewarded for his honesty, not compensated for being the victim of a prank.
And he says it was in his junior year, not his freshman year. That’s important, because in his book, the fake test story immediately followed a story that allegedly occurred during his soph year, when he needed money to take the bus to church, and prayed to God, and then found a ten dollar bill on the ground. The fake test allegedly occurred the next year, when he again needed ten bucks. The point of story was that God gave him that ten bucks so he could take the bus to church, just as God had given him ten bucks in his sophomore year for the same purpose.
So even if a similar prank happened while he was at Yale, he still lied about it to make himself seem so wonderful that God rewarded him for his wonderfulness, by way of the professor rewarding him for his honesty.
It’s the equivalent of somebody who happened to be in NYC on 9/11 falsely claiming that he was the first guy on the scene, and rescued a bunch of trapped people. Yes, planes hit building in NYC while you were there. But no, you weren’t the big hero of the day.
Curtis Bakal, a former editorial assistant for The Yale Record, told BuzzFeed News that he helped write the exam that Carson described taking in his 1990 book “Gifted Hands.” He confirmed to the news outlet that the Record put out a January 1970 parody issue of the university’s student paper, The Yale Daily News, that included a notice saying that “so-and-so section of the exam has been lost in a fire. Professor so-and-so is going to give a makeup exam.”
Bakal told BuzzFeed he could not confirm that Carson, or any single student, was there at the end of the fake test because he himself was not there when it was administered. A Yale Record staffer posed as a proctor for the exam, Bakal told BuzzFeed, adding: "at the end what few students remained — it may have just been one or two, I wasn’t there — received a small cash prize.”
The first paragraph talks about a fake news story.
The second jumps right into that there was an actual fake test administered.
The paper does not “discuss a prank.” The paper’s news item is a bogus item discussing burned tests. It is the prank itself and not a discussion of same.
As noted in the other Carson thread, there is someone from the Yale paper claiming to have been in on the writing of an actual fake exam (not just a fake story about an exam), and that this fake was administered to some students who apparently fell for the item in the paper.
In 1970 the Yale humor magazine published a joke version of the Yale newspaper. It consisted of parodies of news articles. One of the parody articles was an announcement that the exams in the freshman psych course had been destroyed and a make-up exam was scheduled for 7:30 that night. (The fact that it was psych exams that were destroyed is part of the joke.)
Staffers for the humor magazine wrote a fake exam and hung around in an empty classroom waiting to “administer” it to anyone who showed up. Ben Carson was one of the few people who fell for the joke. He took the exam and afterwards the “proctor” apparently shook his hand, congratulated him for being such an honest young man, took his picture, and gave him a few bucks. Then, I’m sure after Carson was gone everyone had a good laugh.
A few days later the real Yale newspaper ran a story about the prank. That’s the news story that Carson has linked to on Facebook. It’s titled “Parody” but it’s not a parody itself. It’s reporting on a parody.
Well, possibly so, anyway. I don’t think it’s been proven, one way or the other, if he was, in fact, one of those who showed up, or if the prank was simply used as the basis of the story which Carson related in his autobiography, and elsewhere.
Well, Carson himself posted the newspaper story describing how the hoax unfolded. So he’s *claiming *he took the hoax test set up by the Yale humor magazine. Since he was a freshman at Yale when the hoax occurred, it’s not a huge stretch to assume he actually did.
The timeline does seem to line up. However, Carson’s description of it in his autobiography (as being an actual “test of honesty” set up by the actual professor) doesn’t line up with the fact that it was a staged prank by students. We’re still presented with any of a number of possible scenarios:
He was actually in the class, was suckered in by the hoax retest, and continued to believe, for many many years, that the retest was conducted by the actual professor for the class. (His story is honest, if clueless and inaccurate.)
As (1), but he realized that it was a hoax some time afterwards. Despite this, he still spun the story in his autobiography as something other than what it was. (A kernel of truth, but distorted to fit his mythology.)
He was not in the class, but as he was at Yale at the time, he learned of the hoax, and used it to construct a tale for his autobiography. (Clearly dishonest.)
At this point, I’m leaning towards (1) or (2), but neither of those reflect terribly well on him, either.
And there’s a story I read once, I’m pretty sure it was in one of Cecil’s columns, about a con-man who was so good at manufacturing cover identities that he even managed to pretend to be a surgeon and successfully perform a few operations. But I can’t find it now-- anyone else remember it?