(This article was originally published at Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science, and syndicated at StatsBlogs.)
Remember Jonah Lehrer—that science writer from a few years back whose reputation was tarnished after some plagiarism and fabrication scandals? He’s been blogging—on science!
And he’s on to some of the usual suspects: Ellen Langer’s mindfulness (see here for the skeptical take) and—hey—“an important new paper [by] Kyla Haimovitz and Carol Dweck” (see here for background).
Also a post, “Can Tetris Help Us Cope With Traumatic Memories?” and another on the recently-questioned “ego-depletion effect.”
And lots more along these lines. It’s This Week in Psychological Science in blog form. Nothing yet on himmicanes or power pose, but just give him time.
Say what you want about Malcolm Gladwell, he at least tries to weigh the evidence and he’s willing to be skeptical. Lehrer goes all-in, every time.
It’s funny: they say you can’t scam a scammer, but it looks like Lehrer’s getting scammed, over and over again. This guy seems to be the perfect patsy for every Psychological Science press release that’s ever existed.
But how could he be so clueless? Perhaps he’s auditioning for the role of press agent: he’d like to write an inspirational “business book” with someone who does one of these experiments, so he’s getting into practice and promoting himself by writing these little posts. He’d rather write them as New York Times magazine articles or whatever but that path is (currently) blocked for him so he’s putting himself out there as best he can. From this perspective, Lehrer has every incentive to believe all these Psychological Science-style claims. It’s not that he’s made the affirmative decision to believe, it’s more that he gently turns off the critical part of his brain, the same way that a sports reporter might only focus on the good things about the home team.
Lehrer’s in a tough spot, though, as he doesn’t that much going for him. He’s a smooth writer, but there are other smooth writers out there. He can talk science, but he can’t get to any depth. He used to have excellent media contacts, but I suspect he’s burned most of those bridges. And there’s a lot of competition out there, lots of great science writers. So he’s in a tough spot. He might have to go out and get a real job at some point.
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