It was a stupid thing to do and incredibly lazy and absolutely wrong.New Yorker blogger and author Jonah Lehrer • Apologizing for duplicating his material on his New Yorker blog from multiple other sources, including a post called “Why Smart People Are Stupid,” a recent post of his that went viral, which discussed why otherwise intelligent people make stupid mistakes. Spot the irony, folks.
(Source: The New York Times)
When I asked about aspects of his interactions with Rosen, Lehrer provided a sketchy timeframe and contradictory specifics—he first told me that he had personally exchanged emails with Rosen, then attributed this supposed email exchange to his literary agent—then further claimed that Dylan’s management had approved the chapter after being sent a copy of Imagine. He added that Dylan’s management didn’t want their cooperation sourced in the book. But when I contacted Dylan’s management, they told me that they were unfamiliar with Lehrer, had never read his book, there was no bobdylan.com headquarters, and, to the best of their recollection, no one there had screened outtakes from No Direction Home for Lehrer. Confronted with this, Lehrer admitted that he had invented it.
Holy. Shit. (via popsins)
Jonah Lehrer has since resigned from the New Yorker and his publisher is halting shipments of print copies of Imagine. (via capitalnewyork)
In other words, a slow news day in the world of journalism scandal. This is actually round two for Lehrer. As it is, Dylan says so much interesting stuff already — why do you have to make it up, anyway? (Update: Joe Hanson has pasted a version of the article on Google Docs, because the site is down.)
Newly-unemployed author Jonah Lehrer may have questionable judgment about Dylan quotes, but he has decent taste in houses. He and his wife spent $2.25 million on this home, once owned by legendary architectural photographer Julius Shulman. Something tells us the mortgage payments might not be quite so easy after today.
CORRECTION: Wrong house. Updated with the correct photo. Still a nice house, though. Apologies for the mix-up.
Jonah Lehrer just lost his Wired job, too: With Lehrer’s reputation already in tatters after it was found he fabricated quotes in his most recent book, NYU professor and occasional Wired contributor Charles Seife (on the request of Wired), did an analysis of Lehrer’s Wired work. The above graphic shows what Seife found. As you see, only one of the 18 listed articles doesn’t have a single checkmark on his list of journalistic misdeeds. While Wired chose initially not to publish the piece, Slate had no problem throwing it on their site. The result? Wired just issued this statement: “Lehrer’s failure to meet WIRED editorial standards leaves us no choice but to sever the relationship.” Ouch.
Bob Dylan has angrily responded to charges he plagiarized some of his lyrics, calling critics “wussies and pussies” and saying musical appropriation is “part of the folk tradition.”
In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine for its Friday edition, the influential singer-songwriter made his first public comments on the accusations, saying that in folk and jazz music “quotation is a rich and enriching tradition.”
“Everyone else can do it but not me,” he complained. “There are different rules for me.”
Another key line: “I’m working within my art form. It’s that simple. … It’s called songwriting. It has to do with melody and rhythm, and then after that, anything goes. You make everything yours. We all do it.” Our question: How does this make Jonah Lehrer feel?
squashed says: With respect, that’s not a very good question. If you’re making things up (like Jonah Lehrer) and trying to pass them off as factually accurate, you’re violating all sorts of journalistic ethics. If, on the other hand, you’re concerned that Bob Dylan’s songs might not be very good journalism, you’re being silly.
Some professions have very stringent plagiarism standards. Academics, journalists, and students all have serious prohibitions on plagiarism for very good reason. The reasons simply don’t hold for artists. It’s worth asking whether Dylan violated copyright law—but plagiarism is simply the wrong lens.
» SFB says: It’s a perfectly interesting question to ask, considering Lehrer was nailed on an ethics issue related specifically to Bob Dylan’s words. Now, whether the broader question of plagiarism and ethics is worth asking, the fact of the matter is, the issues have more in common than they don’t. — Ernie @ SFB
Currently making his first public statements after a scandal: Jonah Lehrer. ”If I write again, then what I write will be fully fact-checked and footnoted,” he said.
MORE STUFF: What led Jonah Lehrer to this point?
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