Is this the result of the slop we read on the Internet or is this guy just lazy?

Forums: Books, Writing, Facts, Sources, Self-Plagiarism
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http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/107779/jonah-lehrers-deceptions?all=1

Dylan fans, be prepared to be enraged, but also, people who actually write for a living. And, us---the poor saps who read, what do they call it now?, content with the idea of that the non-fiction stuff will actually be factual. God help us.

Is this the future? Where we just make up **** instead of sourcing it. Where we attribute authorship where there is none - It's NOT a Frank Sinatra song, he didn't write any---and if we have two quotes made by someone fifteen years apart, but they would work so well together for our purposes that we can just MASH them together and be done with our day's work?

Is it any wonder that the extremely wacky people on all sides of the spectrum seem to have a never ending source of material which reinforces their beliefs but, when examined closely, turns out to be really low quality horseshit that somebody just made up.

Voter Fraud in Pennsylvania, Florida and Texas.
Terror Babies being born in the USA
Police Departments being Trained to run Concentration Camps
Fundamentalists are the American Taliban (wait, this one might be true Smile

)

How are we supposed to run a democratic republic without access to facts?

Is this writer of Imagine, a creature of his times, or is he just lazy and the rest of us will be alright?

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Type: Discussion • Score: 2 • Views: 2,339 • Replies: 9

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@Joe Nation,

I'm just happy and grateful that there are people like Michael Moynihan who bother to check the authenticity of information contained in current best-sellers and bring it to readers' attention. To me that's the real positive story here. That there are authors like Jonah Lehrer who make a million bucks writing tripe off the top of their heads is an old, old story. Nothing new there, folks. Leherer, as you suggest, Joe, is just providing "content."

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@Lustig Andrei,

Lustig: But who is paying attention to Moynihan? Lehrer is making changes to his book (too bad for those who bought the first runs) but are there enough Moynihans out there to keep us from being drowned in bogus books?

Joe(eight billion blogs of mis-information)Nation

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@Joe Nation,

Constant vigilance is the price we pay for living in the electronic age, Joe.

Lustig (Idont believe anything if it's not on A2k)Andrei

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Yeah. I posted this story on my Dylan thread. I would like such persons to get sued so that they lose any income made from their writing.

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@edgarblythe,

It's not like this stuff turns to dust (at least, not right away.) Somebody, twenty years from now, is going to read this crap and say "Wow, what an insight into a really great mind." not knowing that the schmuck, whenever he didn't have the right quote to fit his opinion, would just make one up out of whole cloth, as they used to say.

Is this worst now then it's ever been or I am just old enough to notice??

Joe(What's that you say, sonny?)Nation

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@Joe Nation,

It's been going on forever, Joe. On respectable newspapers, formerly well-respected writers/reporters have lost their jobs and had their careers ruined by just such shenanigans. (Cf. New York Times, Boston Globe, others.) I have a suspicion that Lehrer will not be with The New Yorker for long if this brouhaha becomes general knowledge (as seems to be happening).

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@Joe Nation,

my fave radio show (ron & Fez on sirius/xm) had the author on and interviewed him, they were less than impressed by him in general, and yesterday they had a competition to win an autographed copy of the book for folks who called in or messaged the best faked dylan quote, many were inside jokes from the show, but still it was pretty funny

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@djjd62,

Do you think the guy is lazy? Or did he have a paradigm in mind and wouldn't be dissuaded by the lack of available quotes?

AND he lied so many times about seeing an unpublished film and other things.

After he goes bust on this, how will he recover his ability to work as a writer.

Dear Reader: I promised everything in this book, unlike my last book, is true.

Joe(look,. my fingers aren't crossed!!)Nation

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@Joe Nation,

Adopt a pen-name, that's all. He knows all the right people in the publishing biz already. He has enough "friends" who'll publish his writings as long as his real name isn't on them.

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Is this the result of the slop we read on the Internet or is this guy just lazy?

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