Salon.com > Jonah Lehrer

Quote of the day

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 21:35:00 +0000

Long before Jonah Lehrer plagiarized text and fabricated Bob Dylan quotes for "Imagine," Bob Dylan himself stood in the middle of several copycat controversies (some baseless, others not so much). The singer-songwriter can get touchy about it, too: He was surprisingly dismissive when discussing Shakespeare in relation to his most recent album, "Tempest," which came out yesterday, telling Rolling Stone, "Shakespeare's last play was called 'The Tempest.' It wasn't called just plain 'Tempest.' The name of my record is just plain 'Tempest.' It's two different titles."

But if Dylan seemed overly defensive then, he goes far on the offense this month. In an interview in this Friday's issue of Rolling Stone, he calls critics who accuse him of borrowing lyrics "wussies and pussies." Below is an excerpt:

Ill Doctrine on plagiarism in hip-hop

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 15:47:00 +0000

Ill Doctrine: Can Ghostwriters Keep It Real? from ANIMALNewYork.com on Vimeo.

Why we need to rethink the rules for hip-hop & creativity.

Plagiarists’ addictive, stressful world

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 22:05:00 +0000

Fareed Zakaria says he just confused his notes. When writers are accused of plagiarism, the excuses sound familiar

Jayson Blair: Jonah Lehrer’s story reminds me of my own

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 21:48:00 +0000

Jonah Lehrer resigned his position at the New Yorker today after admitting that he fabricated the Bob Dylan quotes he used in his new best-seller, "Imagine." A young writer flaming out after reaching the top of the profession -- it was impossible not to think about Jayson Blair, the New York Times reporter who resigned amid scandal in 2003, when plagiarism and fabrication were discovered in his stories. Blair is now a certified life coach at Goose Creek Coaching and Consulting; we called him Monday afternoon to get his sense on journalism's latest cautionary tale.

Were you reminded of your own story when you heard the news today that Jonah Lehrer made up the quotes he attributed to Bob Dylan in his new book?

It's got striking similarities -- his youth, his prominence, even the way that I think he tried to defend himself by minimizing the story. All of it just rings so familiar. It's kind of sad to me we haven't learned some of these lessons, chiefly among them that we're -- we, I have to stop myself from saying we. Journalism is a profession that's built on this notion of trust. I think fundamentally because of this trust in each other, our colleagues and our friends, we're very slow to realize that any of us, under the right pressure, is capable of anything.

Jonah Lehrer resigns from the New Yorker

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 18:09:00 +0000

Jonah Lehrer, a best-selling author and prolific journalist who wrote for Wired, Scientific American Mind, the Wall Street Journal and other publications, has resigned from his position as a New Yorker staff writer after an article in Tablet Magazine reported that he had fabricated quotes in his latest book "Imagine.”

A few weeks ago, Lehrer was contacted by Michael C. Moynihan, a contributor to Tablet, about several Bob Dylan quotes that were hard to verify. Initially, Lehrer lied and tried to divert Moynihan by citing yet unavailable footage from a documentary and an ongoing collaboration with Dylan’s manager. After a few phone calls, Moynihan contacted Lehrer once again and called him out on the numerous inconsistencies. Lehrer admitted he had taken some quotes out of context, and fabricated others.

“The lies are over now,” he said in a statement. “I understand the gravity of my position. I want to apologize to everyone I have let down, especially my editors and readers. I also owe a sincere apology to Mr. Moynihan. I will do my best to correct the record and ensure that my misquotations and mistakes are fixed. I have resigned my position as staff writer at The New Yorker.”

Covers look familiar?

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 20:15:00 +0000

Do these covers, both by the photographer Stephen Wilkes, look similar?

The July cover of Scientific American, titled "The Evolution of Cooperation," touts an outline of a human head with a brain represented by tangled blue bodies. The art is nearly a mirror image of the April 19, 2009, cover of the New York Times Magazine, which featured the same illustrated head.

The only difference? A cluster of green, rather than blue, bodies represents the brain on the Times’ cover, titled “The Green Mind.”

Jonah Lehrer's career hit a speed bump when he was discovered to be recycling his own material from earlier stories on his New Yorker blog. But Wilkes says he isn't engaged in self-plagiarism. He says Scientific American asked him to replicate his own work for their cover.

How to rate a writer’s deceit

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 11:30:00 +0000

Last Tuesday, in a post on his eponymous media-news site, Jim Romenesko broke the news that best-selling author Jonah Lehrer had reused, almost word for word, the lead from an Oct. 15, 2011, Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal in a June 12 blog post for the New Yorker, where he’d recently been hired as a staff writer. Within hours, other writers turned up evidence that Lehrer’s journalistic self-abuse wasn’t limited to a single recycled passage.