In a conversation with New Republic writer Isaac Chotiner, New Yorker Editor David Remnick said “the idea that what brought Jonah down was faked Dylan quotes is an irony. But it wasn’t in our magazine.” Chotiner asks about “the pop science that you publish.”
To make the leap that somehow what Malcolm [Gladwell] does leads directly to the ultimately sad story with Jonah Lehrer is itself fake science. The fact that Malcolm is a terrific storyteller and is willing to do this thing that no one else was doing—you may not like it, but there is nothing in my mind fake about it. I find it at its best thrilling. And when he started doing this no one else was. I think Malcolm is an original.