Yesterday kind of rocked my world. Jonah Lehrer, who has been featured on this blog many times, resigned from his position as a staff writer at the New Yorker after admitting that he had fabricated quotes from Bob Dylan for his book Imagine.
I was introduced to Lehrer's work in 2009 by my friend Daniel Goldman who knew that I was interested in popular neuroscience and the study of decision-making. I read How We Decide, Lehrer's second book, and from that point on, considered Lehrer to be one of my favorite writers. I read his first book, Proust Was a Neuroscientist, followed his blog closely, recommended his work to friends, and saw him speak on his book tour for Imagine. For me, he was a writer engaging a very complex but interesting field in a way that was accessible but not oversimplifying.
When I first saw the article about his resignation, it made reference to fabricated or out-of-context quotes from Dylan used in Imagine. Obviously that sounded bad, but it didn't fully explain the extent of his academic dishonesty, which is documented in today's longread. This article, published in Tablet Magazine, served as the impetus for Lehrer's admissions and ultimately his resignation. After reading this, I could not help but feel disappointed, sad, and betrayed.
This whole situation raises a lot of important questions about reporting, science, creativity, and academic integrity. As such, the next few longreads will continue to touch on this topic.
"Jonah Lehrer's Deceptions" by Michael Moynihan
Published in Tablet Magazine, July 30, 2012
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/107779/jonah-lehrers-deceptions
Eric
PS -- The best comment on this that I got yesterday came from my roommate Gabe, who, after seeing my introduction to the F. Scott Fitzgerald piece, wrote me saying "turns out, counter to your claim on your blog today, you have been reading fiction lately."
That sucks, I liked this guy and found him interesting. Maybe he was interesting because it's easy when you make everything up.
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking about this a lot and trying to imagine why someone like Jonah Lehrer would do this and the underlying motives behind it. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt since he is one of my favorite writers (for similar reasons Eric mentioned above).
ReplyDeleteAt first I thought one quote is not that big of a deal and he should have owned up and revised his book, but after reading this article and seeing his cowardly response plus the depth of the plagiarism...I'm very upset as the web grows larger and larger.
How old is he again? Also, what is his background...is it in investigative journalism/research or something else...I'm just trying to understand if he ever went through training in journalism or not. But for any reason, it's still a huge professional mistake and hard to stomach or understand.
Anyway, I've been interested in seeing how other institutions view plagiarism. NPR has a very strict and well articulated take on it in their ethics handbook that is worth a read: http://ethics.npr.org/?s=plagiarism
I think Lehrer is 31 and had his first book published at 26. According to wikipedia, at least, he had an undergrad degree in neuroscience, spent time in some well-respected labs, but did not pursue graduate work in that field (instead it says he went to Oxford for a Masters in literature and philosophy.(Note: this is footnoted in Wikipedia to the Lavin Agency, which appears to represent Lehrer). At least I followed the footnote...
ReplyDeleteI'll have some more thoughts on this whole situation over the next few days, but this Tablet article definitely shows it was a big, ugly mess. Clearly this was more than just one isolated incident or misquoting.
Eric
Also, he may not have had extensive training in journalism, but I'm damn sure that at Oxford you learn about what constitutes fabrication. I think the "inexperience in journalism" thing can excuse him in the whole self-plagarism thing that went down. But anyone who has ever written a research paper knows you can't make up the research.
ReplyDeleteIt's also sad because one of the things I liked about Lehrer was that he always seemed to do a great job of attributing studies to other people in the field. He rarely seemed to be claiming the work of others as his own; instead, he seemed to be synthesizing and analyzing other work while giving credit where it was due. Turns out I gave him far too much credit.
Eric
Be careful not to paint with too broad a brush over everything he's ever done. Most of his writing can be linked to the source very clearly and he is generous with his citations in most cases.
ReplyDeleteThis does not take away from the severity of his plagiarism with Dylan or from the feelings of outrage and sadness over what he did. Also, I agree that he has no excuse.
Odds are if he has done it that blatantly once he's done it more frequently
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to say, but it does make it difficult to take his other work at face value.
ReplyDeleteReally, this is like trust in virtually any context. Once it is broken, you don't know what to believe. In the end, the value of that trust is almost always greater than whatever value is gained by lying.
Or as a great band once said,
"Each betrayal begins with trust,
Every man returns to dust."
Or as a famous movie character put it, albeit with a touch less class,
"All I have in this world is my word and my balls,
and I don't break em for no one."
Eric