It looks like self-plagiarism wasn’t Jonah Lehrer’s biggest crime against journalism. The New Yorker writer apparently fabricated Bob Dylan quotes in the first chapter of his latest book, Imagine: How Creativity Works, and has resigned from the magazine. Michael C. Moynihan, a Dylan-obsessed writer from Tablet, first got suspicious when he couldn’t find the source of several quotes from the chapter. Moynihan got in touch with Lehrer, who repeatedly lied to him about where he got the quotes during three weeks of back-and-forth, at one point telling Moynihan that Dylan’s manager had given him access to an unreleased, extended cut of a documentary interview. Eventually, Lehrer confessed to lying to Moynihan, apologized, and resigned.
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