Non-fiction writing is entirely built upon trust. I have to trust that the author is attempting to tell the truth because I don't have the resources to fact-check every little thing.<p>Jonah Lehrer violated this trust. Big time. He has shown himself to be someone who lies and manipulates. And I think this is a cynical manipulation in an attempt to restore his career. (He should donate that $20k to some charity, btw.)<p>But he has forever lost my trust. There are too many other good writers and good books out there -- there will never be a reason for me to pick up a Jonah Lehrer book or pay attention to his words. Sorry.<p>Let's find some less well-known thinkers who deserve our attention and leave this guy out of the public conversation.
Slate's take on this article is particularly interesting and has one strong perspective about Lehrer - <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/02/jonah_lehrer_apology_standard_operating_procedures_can_t_fix_arrogance_and.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...</a><p>(not a positive viewpoint)
Was that a real Joan Didion quote?<p>Seriously, he's correct in many of the things he said, but he's probably the wrong person to be saying this. Perhaps in a couple of decades he might be the right person. Humans really are flawed creatures. We really do screw up all the time. It really isn't enough to be governed by a strong moral compass: that sense of morality must be assisted by the wisdom to avoid situations that will corrupt it. Strong habits, traditions, or even "standard operating procedures" assist the wise in this avoidance.<p>I still have sympathy for this guy. My suspicion is that those in the media who are really piling on, are doing so at least partially to avoid hearing what's being said. Lehrer is <i>bad</i>, so we can't admit that most of what he did, we do if only to a lesser degree. Otherwise <i>we</i> would be <i>bad</i>. This sort of binary morality is really primitive and pathetic, but many people don't have anything else available to them.<p>If's fine if you don't sympathize with Lehrer as I do, but I don't understand how people can complain that he brought up the FBI lab as an example. Why would they be above him? He didn't send any innocent people to jail! If you'd like proof that this is a serious problem, read up on the mess they have in Mississippi with bogus forensics. If Lehrer does anything to improve forensics in this country, all his plagiarism will have been worth it.
<i>The first phase involved a literal reconstruction of my mistakes. I wanted to have an accounting, in my head, of how I fabricated those Dylan quotes. I wanted to understand the mechanics of every lapse, to relive all those errors that led to my disgrace. I wanted to understand so that I could explain it to people, so that I could explain it in a talk like this.</i><p>This is basically doing a post-mortem. When I think about things I've done wrong, I go through this process. Then when I try to explain to people, I go through this process. However, when I do this, I fear that other people think I'm just trying to justify my mistakes.<p>As such, I don't often try to explain myself to others. I apologize, but I don't go into detail; and usually, people are willing to accept simply the apology and the high-level explanation. When I say go into detail, I mean a truly blow by blow account of every premise, piece of context, and minor decision that led to the big one. I think part of it is that a lot of people simply don't have the patience for such details.<p>To clarify what I'm talking about in terms of level of detail, I give the example of a time a girl asked me, "So do you prefer Vancouver food or Hong Kong food?". And I responded with a 5 minute dissection of the question to better understand what the question was asking, because the answer could vary depending on the question's true meaning and intent. Then she got exasperated and said, "Wow, I just asked you whether you prefer this food or that food!!! What's the big deal???")<p>So maybe I have two fears when I want to give the blow by blow account. The stupid fear is that people will think I'm crazy for going into such detail. The more scary fear is that people will think I'm trying to justify myself when I'm in fact not trying to do that at all. And this fear keeps me from sharing my thoughts with others.<p>I have no idea whether this guy is sincere or not, and so it's funny that the fear I have regarding other people being suspicious of my sincerity, I am casting similar suspicions (though not aggressively, as it's not a significant event to me whether or not this guy is sincere).
The weird (infuriating?) part of this is that he was paid $20,000 by the Knight foundation to give this speech. We shouldn't be rewarding plagarisers, he should have given the speech for free out as an opportunity to explain himself.
Some background on Mr. Lehrer's previous resignation from the New Yorker via the NY Times: <a href="http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/jonah-lehrer-resigns-from-new-yorker-after-making-up-dylan-quotes-for-his-book/" rel="nofollow">http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/jonah-lehre...</a>
It would be cool if he could go back through all the "defective" works he's produced, rewrite them so as to be accurate, and republish them for free. Those who have bought his work will be able to get the updated and amended copy without charge, and those who haven't been exposed to anything other than the drama around his transgressions will have an almost no-risk access to his works. It's easier to forgive when an apology is combined with action.<p>His work had so much promise and appeal. If anything, it would be a shame if we couldn't benefit from his ability to convey concepts in an interesting and engaging way.
In the Navy, your career is over if your ship goes aground. Even if it wasn’t your fault. The lack of justice for the one guy is way more than made up by a greater justice for everybody else when every captain makes sure their ship doesn’t go aground.<p>Unfortunately, non-fiction writing is a system entirely built on trust. The system may be unfair, but Jonah Lehrer violated that trust, and now his career is rightfully over.
Hard to dislike a guy that writes so well, and I agree with the general premise of recognizing the human capacity, and necessity, for error.<p>But I do think it's a bit disingenuous to compare the "mistakes" of scientists to fabrication and deceit. Would Niels Bohr have been referring to the manufacture of evidence when he spoke of "all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field?"
This was extremely well-written. It's a shame he had to sully his good name by taking the easy route and make up quotes, etc. Hopefully he can bounce back and revitalize his career.
Does anyone else feel like Lehrer is receiving more criticism than he deserves? The fact that he defended the fabricated Dylan quotes is regrettable, but it's so trivial compared to lies we hear everyday from people we "trust" (media, politicians, bloggers, friends). And I don't give a damn about the self plagiarism. It was sloppy, not evil.<p>I personally wish we could forget about the whole thing. After this debacle, I'd trust Lehrer over almost any other science writer. If he ever writes Frontal Cortex again, I'm sure it will be the most thoroughly fact-checked journalism available.
From the article:<p>> Designers refer to this sort of rule as a forcing function. These functions are everywhere and they keep us from doing all sorts of stupid things. Just think of your car. There is, for instance, the reverse lockout, which prevents us from throwing a moving car into reverse and accidentally ripping apart the transmission.<p>> whatever I write will be fact-checked and fully footnoted.<p>I was interested in learning more about this "reverse lockout." From the Wikipedia entry [1] which is the top Google result for "reverse lockout" (I typed it into Google without quotes):<p>> a forcing function or poka-yoke, is a technique used in error-tolerant design to prevent the user from making common errors or mistakes. One example is the reverse lockout on the transmission of a moving automobile.<p>I don't want to spend time researching this further, but it's interesting that he came up with the same name and example of the concept as the Wikipedia article (without attribution). Wikipedia articles are supposed to be secondary sources -- "original research" is an explicitly discouraged category of content. But none of the links cited by the Wikipedia article mention "forcing function."<p>So here's someone, writing a <i>mea culpa</i> about his past plagiarism, who uses a phrase and idea without proper footnoting of it (nebulously crediting "designers" with the idea); and a single Google search for the idea turns up a Wikipedia article which also mentions the idea without citing a source!<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior-shaping_constraint" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior-shaping_constraint</a>
I'm going to read this again after I post this comment. Everything he says applies equally to me.<p>Thought I had something more insightful to say. Guess not.
This might just be me, but I don't like wordsy apologies. I don't like apologies with intricate explanations.<p>Lehrer's point is that a lot of people try to soften apologies and remove some accountability, as if the apology is just part of a status quo, and he's worried people will think he's trying to do that; really, he's just trying to make a record of his actions.<p>But honestly, I think he's got it a bit wrong. People don't distrust verbose apologies because they're intended to be excuses, but because they are excuses by design.<p>If Lehrer said something to the effect of, "I fucked up. I'm sorry. I understand you may never trust me again and I'll have to deal with that." I would trust his apology <i>much</i> more than I do now.<p>But providing an explanation, however benign it is (especially in a highly media fueled instance like this where not much explanation isn't already <i>known</i>) garners sympathy from the audience and wraps the apology in something tolerable for the author.<p>I don't think it should be tolerable. But that's just my thought on it.
Journalistically, there's a rather large asterisk that needs to be put out here: <a href="http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/regret-the-error/204097/lehrer-falls-into-familiar-pattern-fails-to-face-his-reckoning/" rel="nofollow">http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/regret-the-error/204097/l...</a>
Blogging has always been questioned and critqued by trained journalists. We should be questioning anything self-published that appears to be journalism.<p>For reference, this is the original article that Michael Moynihan wrote:
<a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/107779/jonah-lehrers-deceptions" rel="nofollow">http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/107779/jon...</a><p>Q/A with Michael Moynihan:
<a href="http://observer.com/2012/07/michael-c-moynihan-jonah-lehrer-bob-dylan-07302012/" rel="nofollow">http://observer.com/2012/07/michael-c-moynihan-jonah-lehrer-...</a>
I hope he follows it up with another apology about the horrible unreadable text on that website. Good luck with that career, though, bud. You're going to need it.
Just so that we don't feel left out, we have our own UK equivalent with a weirdly similar name:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari#Journalistic_controversy" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari#Journalistic_contro...</a>