Jonah Lehrer Resigns at The New Yorker

By Jason Boog 

Author Jonah Lehrer has resigned from his post at the New Yorker after confessing that he fabricated Bob Dylan quotes for his book, Imagine: How Creativity Works.  You can sample the Dylan section of the book at this Google Books link.

Lehrer confessed after journalist Michael Moynihan contacted him for a story in Tablet. According to The New York Times, publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt “will halt shipment of physical copies of the book.”

The Times’ Media Decoder blog has a statement from Lehrer: “The quotes in question either did not exist, were unintentional misquotations, or represented improper combinations of previously existing quotes. But I told Mr. Moynihan that they were from archival interview footage provided to me by Dylan’s representatives. This was a lie spoken in a moment of panic. When Mr. Moynihan followed up, I continued to lie, and say things I should not have said.”

The science writer joined The New Yorker in early June.

Lehrer has published three books, including How We Decide and Proust Was a Neuroscientist. Follow this link to read his first New Yorker essay, “Why Daydreaming Makes You Smarter and More Creative.”