King Lehrer: A Tragedy in 3 Quotes
My episodic memory stinks. All my birthday parties are a blur of cake and presents. I’m notorious within my family for confusing the events of my own childhood with those of my siblings. I’m like the anti-Proust. That’s how Jonah Lehrer began a Wired Science blog on false memories. I believe in false memories. Thanks to Jonah and others, we know that memories change a bit every time we recall them. And we are pretty sure that multi-tasking impairs the brain’s episodic filing system. Perhaps Jonah is a multi-tasker. Yesterday, Jonah Lehrer resigned from The New Yorker magazine after admitting that he invented quotes from Bob Dylan and subsequently lied about doing so. Like Jayson Blair, the disgraced New York Times reporter who wrote Jonah’s journalism epitaph, Jonah Lehrer took license from his fast fame. The story in his mind was much richer than the story the facts supported. So he told the story in