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Interesting, but extremely shallow work by the author. You checked some quote sites? That's the extent of the research done for this piece? Not taking into acco

Interesting, but extremely shallow work by the author. You checked some quote sites? That's the extent of the research done for this piece? Not taking into account the idea that they are maybe just misattributing it?

MaxGabriel 15y ago
I don't understand why this comment was downvoted. The author, in the updated post to this article, said "I was wrong." http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/anatomy-of-a-fake-quotation/238257/ http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/anatomy-... Unsurprisingly, it was not maliciously intended, it was just misattributed. As McArdle acknowledges, a facebook user had posted the first sentence, followed by the King quotation in quotations marks. When retweeted, the quotation marks were dropped (apparently to fit Twitter's character limit, according to McArdle). You might think that its unfair criticism of an author for sharing a quick thought on a blog, or for making a mistake. You would be wrong. This post by McArdle is only one of many instances of her doing extremely poor research/lying in her posts for the Atlantic. An MIT Prof has dedicated pages upon pages to demonstrating how poor of a journalist McArdle is: "... the key point is that McArdle makes a lot of stuff up, and hence is untrustworthy across the board: why should you believe any argument from someone whom, everytime you check closely, gets even the little stuff wrong — and I agree with that." and "It is now...simple prudence to assume that any fact she presents is, as she puts it, “a hypothetical” unless footnoted and checked." http://inversesquare.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/its-not-that-mcardle-cant-read-its-that-she-cant-wont-think-part-one/ http://inversesquare.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/its-not-that-m... It should come as no surprise that McArdle has whole hosts of people, entire websites dedicated to her being fired. To slack up on McArdle is to tolerate shoddy journalism not based in the facts.

MaxGabriel 15y ago

I don't understand why this comment was downvoted. The author, in the updated post to this article, said "I was wrong." http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/anatomy-of-a-fake-quotation/238257/ http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/anatomy-... Unsurprisingly, it was not maliciously intended, it was just misattributed. As McArdle acknowledges, a facebook user had posted the first sentence, followed by the King quotation in quotations marks. When retweeted, the quotation marks were dropped (apparently to fit Twitter's character limit, according to McArdle). You might think that its unfair criticism of an author for sharing a quick thought on a blog, or for making a mistake. You would be wrong. This post by McArdle is only one of many instances of her doing extremely poor research/lying in her posts for the Atlantic. An MIT Prof has dedicated pages upon pages to demonstrating how poor of a journalist McArdle is: "... the key point is that McArdle makes a lot of stuff up, and hence is untrustworthy across the board: why should you believe any argument from someone whom, everytime you check closely, gets even the little stuff wrong — and I agree with that." and "It is now...simple prudence to assume that any fact she presents is, as she puts it, “a hypothetical” unless footnoted and checked." http://inversesquare.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/its-not-that-mcardle-cant-read-its-that-she-cant-wont-think-part-one/ http://inversesquare.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/its-not-that-m... It should come as no surprise that McArdle has whole hosts of people, entire websites dedicated to her being fired. To slack up on McArdle is to tolerate shoddy journalism not based in the facts.