Basketball and Jazz, and Plagiarism

In June 2011 Jonah Lehrer wrote an article for his blog at Wired.Com, Frontal Cortex.  When his reputation came under fire for questionable journalism, several of his articles were analyzed for possible misuse, misrepresentation, illegitimacy, and plagiarism. Specifically, his article Basketball and Jazz received scrutiny for alleged plagiarism, recycling of previous material, and quotation issues. In fact, an entire paragraph in this article was taken from a previously published Newsweek article. Lehrer’s uncomplicated language and ability to incorporate scientific studies to unusual subjects made his work easy to believe by a younger, wider audience. In this article Lehrer reaches out to the sports audience, music enthusiasts, as well as his previously established followers. He reaches out to these audiences in this article by focusing on the stasis of value regarding the ability to play jazz and play basketball. The levels of stasis outlined by Fahnestock and Secor paired with Rettberg's definition of a blog allow a reader to understand how Lehrer misrepresented his article.

Researchers Fahnestock and Secor define stases as points that constitute an order in an argument (Fahnestock and Secor, page 428). They claim that stases in scientific arguments occupy in the lower stases, Lehrer creates his argument to show the reader how a particular set of skills honed by both jazz musicians and basketball players is of great value in their respective fields. He functions to get to this argument by defining the exigence. Lehrer begins by defining the historical parallels between jazz and basketball. By making interesting observations, Lehrer brings in the reader and introduces his topic slowly. Fahnestock and Secor’s notion of how stases can become a sensitive tool of audience analysis is evident in the transitioning of this essay. Lehrer eases his way into the scientific component of his article, to appeal to a wide audience. By starting with two different, culturally appealing topics he is creating interest in the reader to find out what the true connections are between jazz and basketball.  By defining the historical situation first, Lehrer is anticipating the reactions of his audience who may have been confused by the title of the article in the first place. In this article Lehrer does not quote a prior value argument, because he assumes the audience is fully aware of the two primary subjects (jazz and basketball).

According to Rettberg’s classification of blogs, Lehrer’s blog is considered a topic driven one due to its focus on the role of science in social, every day perspectives. In this article he accomplishes this role by shifting his view to a sports topic and music topic, while keeping the heart of the story about the role science plays in it. Although Lehrer does cite a couple different studies to supposedly give credit to his article, the main purpose of the article is not to report on something new or provide breaking news to the public. Lehrer is an example of what Rettberg defines as a “citizen journalist” because in this article and his blog overall he blurs the line between journalism and blogging by acting as a gatewatcher. Lehrer takes news on the studies he finds about rebounding, jazz, and coordination and filters them according to his interests. What conflicts about Rettberg’s analysis of bloggers though is how she throws away the claim that bloggers are not as qualified or experienced as professional journalists. She claims that in today’s society a reader is more likely to find their information from online sites and blogs than a newspaper, so people trust these bloggers already. However, just because society has learned to believe what they read on the Internet does not mean it is true. Since bloggers do not usually have editors to read over or ensure they are abiding by journalistic standards, they have more leeway with what they write. Lehrer is guilty of this. His editors at Wired.Com said his articles were not subject to the typical fact-checking process (like his magazine articles were, for example) and therefore his misrepresented article was published digitally.

In this article, Lehrer was found to have copied an entire paragraph of his article from a previous article of Newsweek, which summarized the rebounding experiment that substantiates his thesis that basketball players make accurate predictions based on their speed of judgment and coordination. This plagiarism can be examined using Galin’s fair use four-factor analysis. The purpose of using this copyrighted work from Newsweek was not strictly for educational purposes, since his blog is a featured of Wired.Com. The nature of the amount he copied was factual, and his major claims and theories are not cited to have come from the Newsweek article, just the summation of the experiment. Out of the entire article, he outwardly plagiarized about 4% of the article. However, after an investigative analysis conducted by Charles Seife, an associate professor at NYU, showed that in this article Lehrer had also been guilty of recycling copyrighted information and quotation issues in addition the plagiarism. The effect of the misuse of journalistic integrity on the market or the copyrighted work in this article can be said to be minimal. As a whole Lehrer was caught doing this in several articles which may be difficult to ignore. However, you may ask, since Rettberg says bloggers are not aiming to be professional journalists, why are they held to these journalistic standards? Wired.Net issued a statement that Lehrer had failed to meet to their editorial standards.

This is an example of how a blogging is becoming more of an issue when it comes to copyright and misuse of the written word. Perhaps this is an example that implies the consistent issues that we will face in the upcoming digital future. Since Lehrer was able to pull off these types of journalistic inaccuracies in more than one article, this may be an implication that it will be tougher in the digital age to stop plagiarism and violations of copyrighted work.

Works Cited:


Fahnestock, Jeanne and Marie Secor. “The Stases in Scientific and Literary Argument.” Written Communication 5.4 (Oct 1988): 427-443.

Rettberg, Jill Walker. Blogging. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2008. Excerpts from “What Is a Blog?”, “Citizen Journalists,” and “Blogging as Narrative.” 4-30, 84-110, 111-126.