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Jonah Lehrer Resigns From The New Yorker After Making Up Quotes
- ChuckMcM 14y agoSad. Too many people operate with the motto 'its not illegal if you don't get caught'. It nearly always turns out badly for them.
- MrEnigma 14y agoWell, we know the ones it turns out badly for. Who knows how many out there got away with it.
- schraeds 14y agoAlso sad that this great book is going to be mothballed because the author was lazy in trying to make his otherwise valid points. The quotes were not scandalous, they were about Bob Dylan getting sick of his music and image, and wanting to leave the industry altogether, only to find that once he did, he was more inspired then ever and produced his best and most influential work. From Ted talks to interviews, and articles, I have found myself drawn to Lehrer's work (and in the best way, usually finding out he wrote a piece only after discovering it). His work on creativity and innovation is very interesting. After making the initial mistake of not being rigorous and forthright about the truth, I don't think it takes away from the underlying knowledge he is trying to share. Also, his letter of resignation was very sincere and took full responsibility of his actions. Kudos, hopefully he learned his lesson and continues in his field of study, I for one find it useful.
- astrodust 14y agoJonah Lehrer famously said "I'll never get caught, you can't catch me." and "If I get caught I'll eat my shoe." At least, that's what I've just made up and attributed to him.
- awj 14y ago"You are skirting dangerously close to creating a meme here." -- Jonah Lehrer
- credo 14y agoIt is interesting that this duplicate submission (submitted 14 minutes after http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4314048 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4314048 ) is on the front page, while the original submission only has one upvote :) [edit]: response to th0ma5: As the smiley and the comment should have made clear - this is not a matter of anyone being "too upset" about anything (and you th0ma5 were the only person investigating and talking about karma :) Btw in spite of the downvotes, the comment is back in positive territory, so presumably, other people disagree with your comments about what is OT As for the title, the NYT headline doesn't fit into 80 chars, which is why one submission removed "Dylan" and the other removed "New Yorker"
- th0ma5 14y agoWell, you have more karma by far, so hopefully you're not too upset :D This link mentions the affiliation so perhaps it just gets more attention because of that. I have been in this spot often, but in general meta-HN stuff is a bit OT, so sorry heh.
- tptacek 14y agoJust in case you're skimming: this comes at the end of a bit of a saga for Lehrer, who had also been discovered "plagiarizing himself", recycling significant chunks of previously-published work in new New Yorker pieces. No doubt there's been a fine-toothed comb running through everything he's done since that first story broke.
- alecco 14y agoAt the same time Gladwell (another New Yorker writer) was exposed for being a corporate shill, something quite more serious. Nothing happened.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- tptacek 14y agoNo, being a "corporate shill" is not "quite more serious" than fabricating quotes.
- alecco 14y agoEven if that were the case (not IMHO) it's still very bad and Gladwell just brushed it off.
- Alex3917 14y ago"No, being a 'corporate shill' is not 'quite more serious' than fabricating quotes." How do you figure? Do you actually think that corporate shills cause less harm to society than people fabricating a few (largely inconsequential) quotes?
- awj 14y ago> Do you actually think that corporate shills cause less harm to society than people fabricating a few (largely inconsequential) quotes? If I'm allowed to parenthetically assume that the shilling also is "largely inconsequential", then yes, it causes less harm.
- hammock 14y agoThe full AP story has more info at the bottom. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iEB7lzn2h8-Y8ZyDXVSZufv4IAwA?docId=fb00ecb8ff464a86b5e32e879211d5aa http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iEB7lzn2h8... Among Lehrer's inventions was a quote that first appeared in the famous documentary from the mid-1960s, "Don't Look Back," in which Dylan tells a reporter about his songs that "I just write them. There's no great message." In "Imagine," Lehrer adds a third sentence — "Stop asking me to explain" — that does not appear in the film. According to Tablet, Lehrer also invented quotes on how Dylan wrote "Like a Rolling Stone" and, when confronted about them, alleged that he had been granted access to an uncut version of "No Direction Home," a Dylan documentary made by Martin Scorsese. Lehrer now says he never saw such footage. Still curious to see a full account of all the Dylan quotes in question. Anyone have it?
- jkt 14y agoThis is the article to which AP refers: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/107779/jonah-lehrers-deceptions http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
- ajross 14y agoI have no idea. But I'm all but certain they'll turn out to be perfectly banal, expected things that Dylan certainly "could have" said. People don't invent or plagiarize blogbuster news. The cheat on the dumb stuff that no one will bother to check. Not to defend Lehrer exactly, but this is a kind of situation where hackers don't have a lot of experience to draw on to aid interpretation. It's not possible to "cheat" your way to working software. But in the world of journalism, it really is possible to fill out an article based on nothing but a little creativity. Combine that with the severe time and performance pressure these people can be under, and the temptation to cheat must be immense.
- danso 14y agoThis is a great point. I'm a working programmer and journalist...In the latter profession, there is no greater, clear-cut sin than making things up. The second is to not plagiarize...but what constitutes plagiarism can differ among different opinion-holders. I can't think of a ethical parallel in programming. I mean, there's copying of proprietary code but that's also a criminal violation. Plagiarism and fabrication can be done without incurring criminal charges, but it's basically the end of a career in journalism. The point is that even though these transgressions seem minor in quantity, for a professional journalist to have justified committing them requires either a total burst of sudden professional insanity...or a long, undiscovered history of other transgressions.
- misiti3780 14y agoI understand that making up quotes is illegal and unethical but is using prior work acceptable as long as you cite it (I'm not a journalist)
- mdm_ 14y agoI'm not sure I understand how anyone can plagiarize themselves either. Isn't that just called "recycling your own material"? For example, several parts of David Foster Wallace's speech/book This Is Water are pretty much verbatim from Infinite Jest. Or what about authors who are pushing ideologies and repeat themselves a lot? For example, there's a lot of overlap between Ayn Rand's novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. Isn't this just what writers do?
- amritamaz 14y agoI think the problem was that his deal with the New Yorker meant he would create original work for them. I'm sure it's okay when they are your own books that you sell to publishers, and the publishers are aware of the overlap in content, but in this case he was supposed to be writing new, original pieces for the New Yorker.
- acdanger 14y agoReminds me of the episode where John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival fame was sued by a former label for recording a song that was too similar to one he had recorded prior with another record label. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogerty_v._Fantasy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogerty_v._Fantasy
- msg 14y agoI don't know the facts here. In author land, you may have sold the publication rights to the prior work to someone, and you may not have reprint/derivative works rights without a new deal. You can see rights clearances on the copyright pages of some of your favorite novels, anthologies, and story collections: "Portions of this work appeared in a substantially different form in ANALOG June 2005." When I see this in magazines and newspapers the credit to prior work is often in italics at the end. I guess I assumed cash (or backscratching) was on the line for them.
- yazmeya 14y agoJournalist Embellishes Truth, Film at 11
- dmazin 14y agoMy favorite part of this mess is that Jad Abumrad (one of the two guys behind Radiolab which, I think, is extremely messy with its science) called the initial ousting of Lehrer when he recycled passages a "cheap moral crusade."[1] [1]: https://twitter.com/jadabumrad/status/218042197826732033 https://twitter.com/jadabumrad/status/218042197826732033
- phillmv 14y agoTo be fair, the "self plagiarizing" thing got way out of hand. It's a little bit not cool to not tell your audience that you've recycled some of your own columns. But… at the time I really didn't see any grounds for all the cries of lèse majesté.
- ghaff 14y agoAgreed. Reasonably large chunks of material in A-list pubs was probably over the line of accepted practice. But way, way different from plagiarizing someone else or making stuff up. In general, I don't find anything especially wrong with judiciously reusing material. If I've explained XYZ tech in an article in the past, I may well cut-and-paste that paragraph, reworking it a bit for flow, if I need the same explanation again. Similarities might well be sufficient to be called plagiarism if it were someone else I cut-and-pasted. That said, I would be a lot more conservative in the case of a commissioned article from a major publication.
- aheilbut 14y agoHis link to Aaron Sorkin's recycled dialogue is hilarious. (Fortunately Sorkin writes fiction.)
- MartinCron 14y agoIt is easy to call the Radio lab guys "messy" but it is a lot harder to tell compelling science stories that fit the medium and the audience. If you can name a better general-audience radio show about science, I will eat my tote bag.
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- dag11 14y agoAt least he was caught before he became another Stephen Glass.
- monochromatic 14y ago> "The lies are over now," he said. "I understand the gravity of my position. I want to apologize to everyone I have let down, especially my editors and readers." This reads as "I am so so sorry that I got caught."
- julianz 14y agoI love the irony of being fired for making up shit about Dylan, a noted "borrower" of other people's ideas himself!
- sensui 14y agoNow some people are bothered because a guy who sells a bunch of books, made up quotes. Well, in academy this is the rule, most citations are just skimmed and put in papers just because they sound arcane/profound. If people are buying, shame on editors, who not revised well. Even worse, why on earth the source is more important than content? Status seeking is what people do when trying to signal intelligence. Maintaining a track of published book/posts like most writers/popscience/ do is not easy. If you are already on the staff, is more efficient to manage to become permanent, then trying to be "moral". And all this time, only now someone accused him. I doubt very seriusly he'll become unemployed for this.
- gruseom 14y agoIt is not the rule in academia that people just make up quotes. Not any place I was ever at, anyway.
- rprasad 14y agoIn academia, quotes and excerpts are cited. They can be verified. Many publications do verify (at least a random selection of) the citations in an article they are publishing.
- dlevine 14y agoSounds like the story of Stephen Glass, whose meteoric rise at The New Republic was halted when it surfaced that many of his articles were made up (in part or in whole). There was a movie about it starring Hayden Christensen. Pretty interesting stuff. It's fascinating how a promising young journalist gets busted every few years for making things up. I wonder how prevalent this is.
- gadders 14y agoSounds like another Johan Hari: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari#Journalistic_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari#Journalistic_contro... although to his credit Lehrer probably wasn't editing his rivals' wikipedia pages and writing gay incest porn.
- batista 14y agoSlightly off topic: what's with the barrage of "Mr" and "Mr"? Is this proper american english? He even writes "Mr. Dylan" like he is some unknown guy.