Until recently, Jonah Lehrer was a columnist with "The New Yorker" magazine, where he specialised in writing public science about topics in neuroscience and psychology. His latest book "Imagine: How Creativity Works" (published in 2012) not only fetched mixed reviews, it cost him his job.
In this book, among other topics, Lehrer analyses the creative process of some famous artists. Journalist Michael Moynihan then discovered that some of the quotes attributed to one singer were either incorrect or, worse, concocted. Lehrer first lied about the veracity of these quotations, but later admitted to making them up.
Which singer's quotes were these?
[+ Show Answer]
Bob Dylan.
Lehrer was also found to be reusing entire blocks of his own work written for other publications or books in New Yorker articles. This had led to a lot of interesting discussion about the nature of plagiarism and fact-checking. See
this Language Log article for more).