All three of Jonah Lehrer’s bestselling books are under review by publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, according to Lori Glazer, the company’s vice president and executive director of publicity. The publisher pulled copies of “Imagine” and halted e-book sales last week, after journalist Michael Moynihan revealed that Lehrer had made up and mangled some Bob Dylan quotations.
Moynihan went on to look at “How We Decide,” published in 2009, to see if there were suspicious passages in it, too. With “no more than a few hours of checking and a few emails [to] people mentioned by Lehrer … I found fake interviews, quotes that can’t be located, and plagiarism,” he wrote Friday. One example: Lehrer claimed to have interviewed the pilot of a commercial airliner that crashed in 1989, but the quotation is remarkably similar to a speech the pilot gave in 1991.
“All of Jonah’s books are under review,” Glazer told me.
The publisher has told booksellers to send copies of “Imagine” back for a refund. Consumers can get refunds, too.
Related: Lehrer wasn’t just sloppy, he was arrogant (Seth Mnookin) | Jonah Lehrer exemplifies everything wrong with TED culture, even though he’s never done a TED talk (Reuters) | Karl Taro Greenfeld says journalism is policing itself better, but the field isn’t getting better (GalleyCat)
Earlier: Jayson Blair on Jonah Lehrer fabrications: ‘There’s probably more than what we’ve seen so far’ | Former fans, loyalists respond to Jonah Lehrer’s fall | ‘It’s hard to start at the top,’ says Sharon Waxman of Jonah Lehrer
Comments