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.”