Up until 2012, Jonah Lehrer was a wunderkind of everything he touched; Rhodes Scholar, degree in neuroscience, contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Wired, etc, and author of three books.

Then people started noticing alarming similarities in his writings. At first it was just self-plagiarism, borrowing text from his books to write newer articles. Some still argue that plagiarizing yourself is no crime but when you are getting paid for original work it probably should be, well, original.

Next up was grabbing material from press releases and pasting them into his articles without attribution. Then onto very slightly modified posts written by others without any attribution. Made up quotes followed.

After in-depth investigations into his work Jonah Lehrer was fired from The New Yorker and Wired plus two of his books were recalled.

Source: The Fall of Johah Lehrer by Jonathan Bailey, 2012, Plagiarism Today. Johnah Lehrer’s Journalistic Misdeeds at Wired.com by Charles Seife, 2012, Slate. Graphic: AI generated, 2024.