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Author of book on Creativity Busted for being a bit too...Creative?

by Jeremey
13 replies
I was sitting in the Dr office yesterday waiting to get seen for a sinus infection I've been fighting for over a month now, and passed the time thumbing through a nearly-year old People Magazine...I came across a blurb on Jonah Lehrer's book "Imagine," a study on the science of creativity.

I remembered listening to an interview with Lehrer on NPR when the book first came out this past spring & thought there were some good points made about the origins of creativity and what Lehrer identified as the 3 different types of creative thinking.

Got to thinking about how it applied to copywriting, as anyone who's sat down with a blank piece of paper and what Carlton refers to as a "gun to the head" would immediately recognize the type of creativity our brains were tapping into.

So this morning I had a few minutes to get online and look up more references to Lehrer's book...And discovered the publishers had since pulled the book due to Lehrer fabricating quotes from Bob Dylan about the creative process.

Everything the guy has said now is pretty much discredited, I guess...But I still think he brought up some good points about accessing the creative brain for problem solving - not for writing haikus or screenplays, but for coming up with different angles and plans of attack for problems such as writing the tenth series of diet autoresponders in a week and keeping it somewhat fresh without cannibalizing your own work.

Here's a story about the whole hullabaloo surrounding the Dylan quotes and the subsequent backlash...


How Jonah Lehrer was caught inventing Bob Dylan quotes - CSMonitor.com
#author #bit #book #busted #creativity #toocreative
  • Profile picture of the author ChadRichards
    Lehrer's story is a sad one.

    The blogging content cycle is so damn short. It wasn't long before he had to start cannibalizing his old posts and reusing content: self plagiarizing, they call it.

    From there, it was a hop, skip, and a jump to actual bonafide plagiarism: just straight up copying from the studies he was writing about instead of summarizing and explaining the way he had been before. The Dylan quotes were what finally outed him.

    I feel bad for the guy. What he did was obviously wrong, but on the spectrum of wrongness, it's pretty minor. And he's a young guy. Hopefully he can get himself a fresh start somehow and learn from his mistakes.
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  • Profile picture of the author Loren Woirhaye
    I read the book before the hullaboo hit. It was okay.

    Lehrer was born in 1981. I've read that cheating and
    plagiarism are endemic in that generation and
    subsequent ones. With the availability of content
    that can be copied and pasted, it's not surprising
    I suppose.

    From an article at Studies Show More Students Cheat, Even High Achievers - NYTimes.com

    Experts say the reasons are relatively simple: Cheating has become easier and more widely tolerated, and both schools and parents have failed to give students strong, repetitive messages about what is allowed and what is prohibited.

    “I don’t think there’s any question that students have become more competitive, under more pressure, and, as a result, tend to excuse more from themselves and other students, and that’s abetted by the adults around them,” said Donald L. McCabe, a professor at the Rutgers University Business School, and a leading researcher on cheating.

    “There have always been struggling students who cheat to survive,” he said. “But more and more, there are students at the top who cheat to thrive.”

    I'm decade older - when I was in college I never
    cheated and I don't remember anybody I knew at
    school talking about cheating at all... I reckon
    either people did it and didn't talk about it or
    they really didn't do it so there wasn't much to
    talk about.
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    • Profile picture of the author Jeremey
      Originally Posted by Loren Woirhaye View Post

      I read the book before the hullaboo hit. It was okay.

      Lehrer was born in 1981. I've read that cheating and
      plagiarism are endemic in that generation and
      subsequent ones. With the availability of content
      that can be copied and pasted, it's not surprising
      I suppose.

      From an article at Studies Show More Students Cheat, Even High Achievers - NYTimes.com




      I'm decade older - when I was in college I never
      cheated and I don't remember anybody I knew at
      school talking about cheating at all... I reckon
      either people did it and didn't talk about it or
      they really didn't do it so there wasn't much to
      talk about.
      I'm also 10 years older!

      I was thinking the same thing to myself. You know he's right at the cusp of the generation that would have had the WWW in pretty wide-spread availability and use. I've often wondered what college would have been like with all that information at your fingertips.

      I probably fit right into that magic window of 2-3 years where there were actual "computer" type word processors to write on (like my old Brother) before everyone started using WordPerfect.

      Funny, I saw an old guy bring in the exact Brother Word Processor I had my freshman year of college on Pawn Stars. They offered him a token $5 so he wouldn't have to walk home with it.

      I think Lehrer had some good insight from what I heard (I did not read the book but heard multiple interviews with him), and it's too bad he did something as stupid as embellish interviews with Bob Dylan to completely marginalize his message.

      And I agree, Chad, the blogging mentality is just perpetuating recycled content and rehashing the same ideas over and over in order to stay relevant. You can't sit around 4 years researching and publishing your next book anymore.

      You've got to publish relevant and meaningful 500-word "books" several times a week now. And it just leads to a lot of fluff to sift through.
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  • Profile picture of the author lanew
    Actually it was sad to me that Lehrer got slapped over Boby Dylan and not his academic dishonest which almost ruined the brainstorming concept which has been a creative work-horse for 60 years. His cherry-picking of the data from Nemeth et al. study, "The liberating role of conflict in group creativity: A study in two countries" should have been his downfall. I am glad he bit the dust of his own hubris. He did a lot of damage to a very noble academic field:creativity.

    Be well,
    Lane
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  • Profile picture of the author Michael Ten
    Yeah. Dishonesty is a horrible strategy in life.
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    • Profile picture of the author marciayudkin
      self plagiarizing, they call it.
      This is a part of the controversy that I do not understand.

      Where is it written that we can only use a story or a sentence in one piece of writing?

      Unless there was a contract with a magazine or book publisher to the contrary, I fail to see how this is some kind of moral failing or a form of dishonesty.

      Repurposing, we call it.

      Marcia Yudkin
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      • Profile picture of the author ChadRichards
        Originally Posted by marciayudkin View Post

        This is a part of the controversy that I do not understand.

        Where is it written that we can only use a story or a sentence in one piece of writing?

        Unless there was a contract with a magazine or book publisher to the contrary, I fail to see how this is some kind of moral failing or a form of dishonesty.

        Repurposing, we call it.

        Marcia Yudkin
        Right. But publishers and magazines pay for the right to publish new, exclusive content. They believe they're getting a new, never-before-seen article. So if you "repurpose" your content that way... well, you've pretty much scammed them.
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        • Profile picture of the author marciayudkin
          Right. But publishers and magazines pay for the right to publish new, exclusive content. They believe they're getting a new, never-before-seen article. So if you "repurpose" your content that way... well, you've pretty much scammed them.
          True for magazines, definitely not true for book publishers.

          In any case, that's an offense against the publishers involved, not against the public. The criticism of this guy made it seem like his "self-plagiarism" was a moral failing that hurt the public. I don't see that.

          Marcia Yudkin
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          • Profile picture of the author Jeremey
            Originally Posted by marciayudkin View Post

            True for magazines, definitely not true for book publishers.

            In any case, that's an offense against the publishers involved, not against the public. The criticism of this guy made it seem like his "self-plagiarism" was a moral failing that hurt the public. I don't see that.

            Marcia Yudkin
            I may be wrong but I think the repurposed content thing was separate from the book being pulled. I believe the book was pulled for the sole reason that he fabricated quotes from Bob Dylan for the book...Which is why I thought it was so crazy...He certainly didn't need the made-up quotes to support his arguments in the book. It was like he just jazzed up a few things Dylan said to make it seem like a previously unreleased interview.

            He got exposed because an interviewer was a Dylan fanatic and had never heard the quotes before...And Lehrer made up his source to stonewall.

            His resignation from The New Yorker was the result of the Dylan controversy, but he was already in hot water because he took articles he previously published in other magazines and "spun" them for The New Yorker.

            From the interviews I heard, he did have some good insights on creativity and I do see some merit in his dismissal of "brainstorming," as I heard him explain it...But the bizarre thing is just...Why did he make up quotes from Bob Dylan...that were really unnecessary in the book to begin with?

            Psshhh...kids.
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            • Profile picture of the author angiecolee
              Originally Posted by Jeremey View Post

              I may be wrong but I think the repurposed content thing was separate from the book being pulled. I believe the book was pulled for the sole reason that he fabricated quotes from Bob Dylan for the book...Which is why I thought it was so crazy...He certainly didn't need the made-up quotes to support his arguments in the book. It was like he just jazzed up a few things Dylan said to make it seem like a previously unreleased interview.

              He got exposed because an interviewer was a Dylan fanatic and had never heard the quotes before...And Lehrer made up his source to stonewall.

              His resignation from The New Yorker was the result of the Dylan controversy, but he was already in hot water because he took articles he previously published in other magazines and "spun" them for The New Yorker.

              From the interviews I heard, he did have some good insights on creativity and I do see some merit in his dismissal of "brainstorming," as I heard him explain it...But the bizarre thing is just...Why did he make up quotes from Bob Dylan...that were really unnecessary in the book to begin with?

              Psshhh...kids.
              Hey...I'm younger than that guy. Just 'cause he felt it appropriate doesn't mean all kids my age feel the same way
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  • Profile picture of the author travlinguy
    Looks like the guy got just a little too creative.
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  • Profile picture of the author Loren Woirhaye
    Wired was, like, "We love him and stand by him,
    even if he did this bad thing for another publisher."

    Then they put a probe on him and found a reason
    to fire him.

    The pressure was on the guy to be the next
    Malcolm Gladwell. There are half a dozen young
    writers in the running and he was one of them -
    he was obliged to produce work that appeared
    more profound than he was perhaps ready for,
    and in quantity..
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    • Profile picture of the author marciayudkin
      Thanks, everyone, for your comments. I definitely do understand why it's a fatal offense to make up quotes.

      Here is another bit of input on the "self-plagiarism" point. From an article in today's NY Times:

      In these keyboard concertos Bach recycled and adapted movements from existing pieces, including violin concertos and vocal works.
      Bach did this all the time, as did Mozart. I don't think anyone has ever given them any grief over this, so why is it not OK for a contemporary writer - as long as the overall new work is fresh?

      Marcia Yudkin
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