Caught Getting Creative

Until Jonah Lehrer was found by his publishers to be doing it, nobody really knew that it was possible to plagiarise yourself. Repurposing earlier work for new material would have been bad enough on its own, but it was his fabrication of Bob Dylan quotes really put a stop to his fledgling career. Amy Wallace finds Lehrer's behaviour puzzling:

Lehrer must have known he’d likely be found out. Making up Dylan quotes is the journalistic equivalent of poking a stick into a hive of angry bees. When plotting a deception of this sort, wouldn’t it have been prudent to quote someone completely obscure? Or someone with logorrhea, whose words are nearly impossible to track because of their sheer volume? Choosing an icon who rarely gives interviews, each of them the subject of worshipful study by his fans, seems pathologically self-destructive. It reminds me of a remark an LAPD officer made about how, if criminals were true masterminds, they probably wouldn’t be resorting to lawbreaking in the first place. His colleagues’ term for this knack people have for making such revealing and incriminating mistakes? “Felony stupid.”

The newest development on the story is that the disgraced boy wonder might be looking to get a book deal out of the scandal.