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Inventing Dylan

An album cover with a black background. Diagonally aligned, a photo of a man runs across one side of the cover. He is in a brown shirt and looks at the camera, turning the left side of his body towards it. To the right of him are large words printed on the black background, reading: "Bob Dylan", "Like a Rolling Stone", and "Gates of Eden".

Jonah Lehrer has left his post at The New Yorker amidst a bit of scandal.

Lehrer is the author of a non-fiction book on neurology, called Imagine, published in March of this year. The subtitle of Lehrer's book sounds a bit ironic now, "How Creativity Works."

Lehrer uses Bob Dylan as one of his examples of a creative individual, someone whose creativity can be understood through contemporary neuroscience.

Well, this is how creativity doesn't work: making up sh!t and attributing it to someone else.

Michael Moynihan pointed out in the devastating article that forced Lehrer's admission and resignation at TNY, Lehrer had simply lied. He had invented some Dylan quotes out of thin air, and in other cases terribly distorted their significance to fit his broader neurological narrative. Lehrer has now admitted as much, "The quotes in question either did not exist, were unintentional misquoations, or represented improper combinations of previously existing quotes."

You can read the pertinent chapter of Lehrer's book for yourself here.

I think there's something broader to say about this than simply, "Shame on you, Josh Lehrer."

This is, I would hope, a setback for the cause of contemporary neuroscience or for its prestige witht he broader public. The scientists should do what they can to press their field forward, of course, but I do personally have the feeling that in another 100 or 200 years the state of their science circa 2012 will look very primitive. Consider the way in which the alchemy of as late as 1700 looked to the chemists (properly speaking!) of as early as 1800.

The real neurologists of the not-too-distant future will see that neuroscience as we backward creatures know it could even begin to explain anything, including Dylan.

Admittedly, the neurologists of today dress so fine, they can throw the bums a dime in their prime, can't they? 





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