I was led to the book by highly favorable comments by Nick Hornby (whose critical columns are a joy), and I think that Hornby's praise was warranted, notwithstanding the also warranted criticism of Mr. Lehrer since. This has definetly changed my life. The books breezy methodology makes for some problems its often difficult to tell just how representative a study or survey, cited by the author, might be but Mr. Lehrer largely avoids the sort of gauzy hypotheses and gross generalizations that undermined Mr. Gladwells 2008 book, Outliers.. Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them. Unable to add item to List. But as this commentator indicates, the publishing industry has put itself at risk for these kinds of catastrophes by cutting back or eliminating fact-checking resources. You can return the item for any reason in new and unused condition: no shipping charges. Whenever I saw something in a manuscript that I knew was wrong, or at least wondered about, I would double check (and this was before the Internet, so it consumed time), but systematic fact checking was expressly discouraged. Here's a line from the book: "But then, just when Dylan was most determined to stop creating music, he was overcome with a strange feeling. Great analysis. Imagine: How Creativity W has been added to your Cart. Please try your request again later. 'It's a hard thing to describe,' Dylan would later remember. Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Dr. Fiona McQuarrie and All About Work with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Thank you! Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Mendel adds that nonfiction writers throughout history have faked materials, discovered lost texts that weren't truly lost, or made up characters and events. As a non-fiction writer myself, i know that the onus is on the writer to ensure their material is verified to the best of their ability; and nobody, probably, is going to follow that up in any detail even though the book still goes through the usual publisher processes involving copy-editing, line-editing and multiple proofing. The InnoCentive Web site, started by an Eli Lilly executive in 2001, has shown that solutions to difficult scientific problems (which are posted online, with a monetary reward attached to each challenge) are often solved by people working at the margins of their fields, who were able to think outside the box. Authors who do not have (or didnt once have) a huge reputation like Lehrers get extremely low advances some as low as $5,000 or $10,000 in return for which they are expected to research, write and revise up to 100,000 words. Without this, where is the integrity of the written piece or the publication venue that it appears in? And in either situation, whether the primary responsibility for fact-checking lies with the author or with the publisher, readers have a right to expect accurate and complete material. We would be fools to think that Lehrer is the only one to have been negligent with the rigours of providing a complete and accurate bibliography. The complete article is available here. Book almost as good as promised! There is no reference for the direct quotes, although theres contextual information that makes, Footnote 3 on page 101 describes the cinematic improv of actor Mike Myers in a scene in an Austin Powers film (the Austin Powers film containing the scene is not identified, but its fairly easy to discover through Google that its. What's new, he says, is how quickly Lehrer was exposed. Learn more about the program. it gives credit where credit is due for work by other writers or researchers. The book is relatively short because it focuses on giving evidence for just a few basic principles. Shipping cost, delivery date, and order total (including tax) shown at checkout. It always seemed wrong-headed to me isnt it important to make sure the author got things right? From your critical analysis, i did learnt something from you. "Why people do it in this day and age, when it's so easy to get caught, is beyond me," he says. Anyone can read what you share. it gives factual support to the writers claims; it demonstrates that the writer is familiar enough with existing knowledge about the subject to be able to make an informed contribution of new knowledge; it tells readers who want to learn more about the subject where they can find other sources of information; and. I began reading this book, fascinated by some of the ideas, and not knowing much about Dylan's history or creative process, or the medical research Lerher describes. We dont share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we dont sell your information to others. What is the catalyst for groundbreaking inventions and innovative breakthroughs? "He's too young to have that kind of experience.". Translators of non fiction and proofreaders of academic papers and theses need to ensure vigilance in this regard too. There was an error retrieving your Wish Lists. Sorry, there was a problem loading this page. Having read it I will not need to refer to it again, but will pass it on to someone else in the family. And in the tradition of the fabulist James Frey, who wrote A Million Little Pieces, refunds are being offered to readers whose trust was betrayed. Thanks for your diligence in following up on this, even though the book was pulled. Bravo. Apparently, not only was Lerher's understanding of our biology lacking, but, based on this misunderstanding, he invented a fake research narrative - an elaborate house of cards based on something that anyone who was awake through a semester of psychology should know to be false. Find all the books, read about the author, and more. I am not trained as a neuroscientist, so I cant tell whether the neuroscience research described in Imagine is accurately reported or referenced, and I cant address the allegations of selective cherry-picking from that body of research. The past few months have been a series of revelations about Lehrer's tendencies to reuse his own material and make up quotes. Learn more. The referenced article is, Page 141 contains a discussion of an epic study of nearly every musical produced on Broadway between 1877 and 1990, analyzing the teams behind 2,258 different productions. In recounting such creation myths, Mr. Lehrer, a contributing editor at Wired and a contributor to The New Yorker, proves an engaging tour guide to the mysteries of the imagination and the science of innovation. Maybe I am just a cynical person. Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video! And finally, I found four factual statements (e.g. Sacks spent decades as a practicing neurologist and psychologist, Mendel says, but Lehrer benefited too quickly from a system that likes its stars. Now, Dylan nerds are notorious completists, so everything the singer's ever said is archived somewhere fairly easy to find for an inquisitive journalist.But Moynihan could not find seven Dylan quotes Lehrer used in his first chapter, so he started a three-week long correspondence with the author, who gave increasingly fantastical excuses for lacking sources. What the numbers clearly show, and what she was clever enough to anticipate, Mr. West says, is that when people come together, they become much more productive per capita., One study by Mr. West and another physicist, Lus Bettencourt, Mr. Lehrer writes, suggests that a person living in a metropolis of one million should generate, on average, about 15 percent more patents and make 15 percent more money than a person living in a city of 500,000.. (LogOut/ Neither kind of search is particularly time-consuming, highly skilled, or prohibitively expensive. This is an excellent book not just in creativity but on the whole dynamics and culture that can support a creative environment. Full content visible, double tap to read brief content. I am not sure what lesson the publishing industry will take away from the saga of Imagine, other than being very careful with any subsequent work by its author. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. With these suggestions, his book implies, you too might be able to maximize your creative output. "You know, I do think in some level this is the predictable outcome of expecting a young journalist to be the next Oliver Sacks," says literary agent Scott Mendel. If a book is structured to include a reference list, its reasonable for the reader to expect that everything in the book that should be referenced is going to be referenced, and is going to be referenced accurately. I enjoy the watchful eye that follows me. After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. , Item Weight And he examines the art of improv, as taught by the Second City training center in Los Angeles, with the same appraising eye he brings to more arduous discussions of brain science. If you're a seller, Fulfillment by Amazon can help you grow your business. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. Academic publishers (journals and books) also have differing degrees of fact-checking rigour; some review everything very closely, some dont check at all. Wow. Instead she saw a prototype for a new toy for girls: an alternative to the baby dolls then popular. But when journalist Michael Moynihan picked up Imagine he was already a little suspicious. Some authors hire and pay their own fact-checkers, yet another cost they must carve out of their (low) advance which some of us actually live on with few other sources of income. His or her agent will be fine. In a lengthy and fascinating section on Pixar, Mr. Lehrer recounts how Steve Jobs designed that animation studio to force employees to visit the buildings main atrium: mailboxes were shifted to the lobby; meeting rooms were moved to the center of the building, followed by the cafeteria, coffee bar, gift shop and bathrooms. Much as he did in his earlier books How We Decide and Proust Was a Neuroscientist, Mr. Lehrer shows how adept he is at teasing out the social and economic implications of scientific theories while commuting easily among the realms of science, business and art. : Given this premise, the lack of a reference for this study is, in my opinion, a serious omission. Because Handler didnt speak German, she didnt realize that the doll was a sex symbol sold mainly to men. Lehrer started to attract unwanted attention earlier this year when his magazine work was found to borrow liberally from his own previously published articles. Previous page of related Sponsored Products. I agree with previous reviewers though: the text is not very challenging, especially for someone who might be interested in creativity from a more scientific perspective. Information from each eye goes to both hemispheres. In the later pages of this engaging book Mr. Lehrer turns from analysis and reportage to prescription. Hopefully, another lesson of the Imagine story for publishers will be that investing in fact-checking is worth the cost not only to avoid the financial and reputational consequences of uncorrected errors, but also to be sure that authors are fulfilling their part of the responsibility for the accuracy of their work.. Echoing Jane Jacobs, he argues that the sheer density of urban life, the proximity of all those overlapping minds, forces people to mingle and interact with a diversity of individuals. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. So Lehrer's predicament, given his preferred topic, makes irony an understatement in this case. There was a problem loading your book clubs. We work hard to protect your security and privacy. allegations of selective cherry-picking from that body of research. Its entirely possible that some of those readers looked at conceptual or structural issues, and thus missed any referencing problems. Now whenever i read something important or interesting from a book, i will do some research and not just read and believe whatever it says. ". Former New Yorker staff writer Jonah Lehrer is the author of Imagine: How Creativity Works. For example: Imagine: There, in some sort of ghostly version, is the opening of a song. Wow, you indeed did a very thorough research on this one. Around the same time, in March, Lehrer's third book came out. ASIN "You can't write about something people care deeply about without assuming that hundreds, if not thousands, of people will immediately begin checking your facts," Mendel says. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness. These items are shipped from and sold by different sellers. Something we hope you'll especially enjoy: FBA items qualify for FREE Shipping and Amazon Prime. I mean, that's a matter of opinion, but i think it was an album before that. Nina Subin/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Sold by Atasoys and ships from Amazon Fulfillment. on page 180: the United States, for example, is 81 percent urbanized) that were not referenced, along with two instances of discrepancy between the information in the text and the information in the reference. His or her editor will be fine. Ridiculous. George de Mestral came up with Velcro after noticing burrs clinging to the fur of his dog. And you know, these are things that Dylan nerds like myself care about.". Cognitive biases and heuristicscan lead to serious damages in multiple areas of life if you dont recognize them and stop them dead in their tracks! He graduated from Columbia University and studied at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. Moynihan takes no pleasure in having exposed someone whose talent he says he admired. Imagine is written for a popular (non-scientist) audience, so obviously it shouldnt be held to the same rigorous standard of referencing as, say, a scientific research article in a peer-reviewed academic journal. All of these problems in addition to the other problems in Imagine that have already been identified seriously make me question how this book ever got published as it is. Other problems that I found relating to referencing published academic research: Three other academic studies that were mentioned did not have references. 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Fact checking meet crowdsourcing. A worth read, you will not be disappointed. So I ran a search using five EbscoHost reference databases (PsycInfo, PsycArticles, Academic Search Premier, Business Source Complete, and ERIC) that include psychology journals, as well as searching Google Scholar andI could not find a published article that fit all of the identifiers of the study as described in the sentence. Change). Imagine had been a best-seller, another coup for the 31-year-old writer who was frequently asked to discuss science, creativity and the brain, including on NPR and with Stephen Colbert. It is disconcerting to be reminded, after reading this book, about the underlying scandal of Mr. Lehrer's evidently "imagining" too much in his sourcing. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blogs author/owner is strictly prohibited. , Hardcover First impressions of the book: superb hard cover quality, elegant look, very inviting. UPDATE: A writer has alleged that a quote in Imagine was borrowed from a piece he wrote, which he discovered because Imagine did not reference the source of the quote. Page 140 includes a discussion of research on trends in scientific production. Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative. "I thought the general premise of the chapter that, you know, Dylan had a creative breakthrough with the writing of 'Like a Rolling Stone' was wrong. Thanks for sharing this with me! Id also point out that the rules of academia and the practices of trade/commercial publishers are not as different as you suggest. Indeed, group interaction appears to play a key role in innovation. Since no single author or researcher could possibly cover this huge subject on their own, theyre going to have to draw on other sources for at least some of their material and those sources need to be acknowledged. Suppose everything had been properly sited (the fact that references were sited at all might lend a false sense of legitimacy to the work,) how do we know the work cited was accurate or on the level? This is one of the questions I repeatedly ask myself and this book helps answer it. I left publishing years ago, partly because publishers were doing everything possible to relegate tasks to computers so they could get rid of expensive people, and the work was becoming increasingly clerical and boring. (The copy I read came from my public library.) : It is quite shocking that this happened, and eye-opening indeed. Jonah Lehrer Resigns From 'New Yorker,' Admitting He Made Up Quotes In Book, Interview: 'Imagine' That: Fostering Creativity In The Workplace, Interview: 'How Creativity Works': It's All In Your Imagination. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. On reading, mainly through stories and case studies, I found the text engaging and easy to follow. The sentence contributes to setting up the premise of the book: i.e., how creativity works hasnt been extensively researched, so the books contribution is to examine this important yet overlooked topic. : In other words, Mr. Lehrer says: Chemists didnt solve chemistry problems, they solved molecular biology problems, just as molecular biologists solved chemistry problems. The 18th-century philosopher David Hume, Mr. Lehrer notes, argued that invention was often an act of recombination, of compounding an idea or transposing it from one field to another: Johannes Gutenberg transformed his knowledge of wine presses into an idea for a printing machine capable of mass-producing words. This book is interesting because it gives results of activities in companies actually doing research for new products. Instead, I checked the reference list while I was reading the book, and I marked points in the text where I thought there should have been a reference and there wasnt or where I felt that a referenced topic was close enough to my own expertise that I could reasonably assess whether the referenced material was accurately reported. "There was a point when it seemed panicky," he says, "and that's when it started to unravel." Like Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point, Blink) and Joshua Foer (Moonwalking With Einstein), Mr. Lehrer takes scientific concepts and makes them accessible to the lay reader while dispensing practical insights that verge on self-improvement tips along the way. Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club thats right for you for free. It seemed lazy and embarrassing, but not punishable. Not only, what makes you tick, but how you get to that point and where to go from there.