New York Observer interview with Michael C. Moynihan, who wrote the article for Tablet about Lehrer's fabricated Dylan quotes

  • Interviewer: I wonder if that’s a sense of urgency, or a sense of entitlement? As in: I work so hard, I’m allowed to take liberties with ethics.
  • Moynihan: I don’t know. I’m a guy that went to state school and is at 37 blogging and freelancing. What it’s like to be in that pressure cooker situation—being a Rhodes Scholar as Jonah Lehrer was, rising up the ranks so quickly as he did, and getting to that place like The New Yorker and having to perform? His initial performance there was to cannibalize his own material. I think that shows a level of pressure and a level of stress that affects this and guides people’s behavior

Source: observer.com

1 Notes/ Hide

  1. englishprof said: He’s onto something, of course. Nearly every student I catch for plagiarism says it was done the night before in a panic or as an “accident” (didn’t proofread to cite the material adequately).
  2. elizs posted this