This week we concluded a preliminary WIRED review of a sample of articles from Jonah Lehrer's personal blog, Frontal Cortex, which was active on Wired.com from July 2010 through June 2012. The review was conducted by Charles Seife, an associate professor in NYU's science journalism program. He examined 18 posts out of a total of 252. Some were selected because they had been challenged publicly for accuracy; the rest were picked because they were complex, or contained multiple sources.
The review uncovered examples of work that do not meet WIRED editorial standards. (List of posts with confirmed issues to date below.) Although Frontal Cortex posts were not edited or fact checked, we expect those whose work appears on our site to follow basic good journalism practices. Lehrer's failure to meet WIRED editorial standards leaves us no choice but to sever the relationship.
As we've said previously, we have found no issues to date with Lehrer's magazine articles, which were subject to the usual thorough fact-checking process.
We will annotate the affected posts on Wired.com. In addition, all Frontal Cortex articles will carry a notice indicating some work by this author has been found to fall outside our editorial standards, along with a custom feedback link for suggestions, comments or further questions. We will try to follow up as appropriate on new information. Also, going forward, we will spot check random Wired.com articles for similarities with previously published material before posting them.
Evan Hansen,
Editor-in-Chief, Wired.com
1. "The Psychology of Nakedness," 11/30/2011
2. "Every Child Is A Scientist," 9/28/2011
3. "Basketball and Jazz," 6/6/2011
4. "The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories," 8/4/2010
5. "Cognitive Dissonance," 1/11/2011
6. "The Difficulty of Loving Strangers," 1/12/2011
7. "Ritalin in the Water," 8/6/2010
