Please enjoy this excruciating speech from fabricator and plagiarist Jonah Lehrer, a shit sandwich lovingly-prepared for journalism by the Knight Foundation. If the former Wired and New Yorker writer's contrition leaves a bad taste in everyone else's mouth but his own, it is because a) it's delivered in the same charming yet bland pop-sci literary style as his ersatz journalism ("a consistent asymmetry in the way I noticed error"), and b) the foundation paid him $20,000 to do it.
Perhaps it isn't too much to hope, one might ask, that everyone else will continue to see through him? But, ah, protip, he'll be rehabilitated soon enough. What is journalism, if not a stepping stone to greater things?
Plagiarism Pays: Jonah Lehrer Gets $20,000 for Speech [NYT]
Jonah Lehrer Thinks He Can Humblebrag His Way Back Into Journalism [Forbes]
Update: The foundation tweeted that paying Lehrer to speak "was a mistake".
