Jonah Lehrer Resigns From The New Yorker After Making Up Quotes • Hacker News Board

Re: Jonah Lehrer Resigns From The New Yorker After Making Up Quotes

#31

Post by Alex3917 » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 9:13 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #20

alecco wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time Gladwell (another New Yorker writer) was exposed for being a corporate shill, something quite more serious. Nothing happened.

No, being a "corporate shill" is not "quite more serious" than fabricating quotes.

"No, being a 'corporate shill' is not 'quite more serious' than fabricating quotes."

How do you figure? Do you actually think that corporate shills cause less harm to society than people fabricating a few (largely inconsequential) quotes?

Re: Jonah Lehrer Resigns From The New Yorker After Making Up Quotes

#32

Post by dag11 » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 9:23 PM UTC

At least he was caught before he became another Stephen Glass.

Re: Jonah Lehrer Resigns From The New Yorker After Making Up Quotes

#33

Post by msredmond » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 9:28 PM UTC

misiti3780 wrote: post #14

I understand that making up quotes is illegal and unethical but is using prior work acceptable as long as you cite it (I'm not a journalist)

I'm a journalist -- technically you can't plagiarize yourself, so while not best form, it's not really anything "wrong." And often there's certain phrases that as a writer you are going to use over and again (he took it well beyond that though). So that's why he was still around. But yes making up quotes is WAY across the line. I'm curious if he just up and resigned knowing he would be fired; if I were his boss, I'd rather fire him to make sure people know how serious his transgressions are.

Re: Jonah Lehrer Resigns From The New Yorker After Making Up Quotes

#34

Post by phillmv » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 9:30 PM UTC

dmazin wrote: post #18

My favorite part of this mess is that Jad Abumrad (one of the two guys behind Radiolab which, I think, is extremely messy with its science) called the initial ousting of Lehrer when he recycled passages a "cheap moral crusade."[1] [1]: https://twitter.com/jadabumrad/status/218042197826732033

To be fair, the "self plagiarizing" thing got way out of hand.

It's a little bit not cool to not tell your audience that you've recycled some of your own columns. But… at the time I really didn't see any grounds for all the cries of lèse majesté.

Re: Jonah Lehrer Resigns From The New Yorker After Making Up Quotes

#35

Post by CapitalistCartr » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 9:33 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #20

alecco wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time Gladwell (another New Yorker writer) was exposed for being a corporate shill, something quite more serious. Nothing happened.

No, being a "corporate shill" is not "quite more serious" than fabricating quotes.

Fabricating quotes is doing a sloppy, lazy job of defending one's position. Selling one's position, on the other hand, is clearly more serious.

Re: Jonah Lehrer Resigns From The New Yorker After Making Up Quotes

#36

Post by electronous » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 9:38 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #13

ajross wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea. But I'm all but certain they'll turn out to be perfectly banal, expected things that Dylan certainly "could have" said. People don't invent or plagiarize blogbuster news. The cheat on the dumb stuff that no one will bother to check. Not to defend Lehrer exactly, but this is a kind of situation where hackers don't have a lot of experience to draw on to aid interpretation. It's not possible to "cheat" y…

This is a great point. I'm a working programmer and journalist...In the latter profession, there is no greater, clear-cut sin than making things up. The second is to not plagiarize...but what constitutes plagiarism can differ among different opinion-holders. I can't think of a ethical parallel in programming. I mean, there's copying of proprietary code but that's also a criminal violation. Plagiarism and fabrication…

I would argue that passing insecure systems off as secure, like what we saw with Tesco today, would count as unethical. That's a case where you can cut corners and nobody might notice for a while, and the system in question seemingly works.

Re: Jonah Lehrer Resigns From The New Yorker After Making Up Quotes

#37

Post by danso » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 9:40 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #20

alecco wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time Gladwell (another New Yorker writer) was exposed for being a corporate shill, something quite more serious. Nothing happened.

No, being a "corporate shill" is not "quite more serious" than fabricating quotes.

It depends what the magnitude of the transgression is, and whether you are a journalist or non-journalist.

If you are a journalist, the faking of a quote, even if it's something as benign as, "Sally Smith, an 8-year-old from Chicago, said, 'I really love the clowns. They mak eme smile'" is punishable by the (journalistic) death penalty. No one was harmed, especially if 'Sally Smith' was herself made up, yet such a writer would have a very, very hard time finding work at a reputable non-fiction publication.

To a non-journalist (who, in this case, is anti-fossil-fuel), though, someone who worked in the Exxon PR department as an entry level job out of college and then worked his/her way into a respectable columnist position, would always have the taint of Big Oil Money...even if said columnist never fabricated a quote in his/her career.

Re: Jonah Lehrer Resigns From The New Yorker After Making Up Quotes

#38

Post by danso » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 9:45 PM UTC

electronous wrote: post #36

danso wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great point. I'm a working programmer and journalist...In the latter profession, there is no greater, clear-cut sin than making things up. The second is to not plagiarize...but what constitutes plagiarism can differ among different opinion-holders. I can't think of a ethical parallel in programming. I mean, there's copying of proprietary code but that's also a criminal violation. Plagiarism and fabrication…

I would argue that passing insecure systems off as secure, like what we saw with Tesco today, would count as unethical. That's a case where you can cut corners and nobody might notice for a while, and the system in question seemingly works.

Yes, I agree that would be unethical and should be a career-killer. But that's a decision arguably made possible by several layers of incompetent management, not just one manager or coder. Higher-level managers can say that they aren't expected to know of the technical details. And coders can blame the result on legacy systems that they had to interact with. The buck does not stop as cleanly at one person as it does in the case of the writer who plagiarizes/fabricates.

Moreover, journalistic writing is very public. Your byline is attached to a piece that was seen by at least a few hundred, if not hundreds of thousands of people. If you get called out on fabrication/plagiarism, well, people are going to know about it. Editors and proofreaders rarely get called out by name for mistakes. But that's irrelevant, since an editor/proofreader isn't really in the position to fabricate/plagiarize in a writer's piece...they're there to edit/fix/separate-the-chaff-from-the-wheat-and-keep-the-chaff

Re: Jonah Lehrer Resigns From The New Yorker After Making Up Quotes

#39

Post by danso » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 9:53 PM UTC

msredmond wrote: post #33

misiti3780 wrote: post #14

I understand that making up quotes is illegal and unethical but is using prior work acceptable as long as you cite it (I'm not a journalist)

I'm a journalist -- technically you can't plagiarize yourself, so while not best form, it's not really anything "wrong." And often there's certain phrases that as a writer you are going to use over and again (he took it well beyond that though). So that's why he was still around. But yes making up quotes is WAY across the line. I'm curious if he just up and resigned knowing he would be fired; if I were his boss, I'd…

Self-plagiarism is most definitely not as "wrong" as plagiarizing from someone else. But in some contexts, the amount of work you've produced for esteemed publications is essentially part of your prestige and resume. To have significant number of pieces actually just be recycled material, while bragging about how you were published in X, Y, Z magazine, is looked down upon.

Re: Jonah Lehrer Resigns From The New Yorker After Making Up Quotes

#40

Post by ghaff » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 10:03 PM UTC

phillmv wrote: post #34

dmazin wrote: post #18

My favorite part of this mess is that Jad Abumrad (one of the two guys behind Radiolab which, I think, is extremely messy with its science) called the initial ousting of Lehrer when he recycled passages a "cheap moral crusade."[1] [1]: https://twitter.com/jadabumrad/status/218042197826732033

To be fair, the "self plagiarizing" thing got way out of hand. It's a little bit not cool to not tell your audience that you've recycled some of your own columns. But… at the time I really didn't see any grounds for all the cries of lèse majesté.

Agreed. Reasonably large chunks of material in A-list pubs was probably over the line of accepted practice. But way, way different from plagiarizing someone else or making stuff up. In general, I don't find anything especially wrong with judiciously reusing material. If I've explained XYZ tech in an article in the past, I may well cut-and-paste that paragraph, reworking it a bit for flow, if I need the same explanation again. Similarities might well be sufficient to be called plagiarism if it were someone else I cut-and-pasted.

That said, I would be a lot more conservative in the case of a commissioned article from a major publication.