Greg Bales

Proust Wasn’t a Neuroscientist. Neither was Jonah Lehrer.

The Insight is less of an idea than a conceit, a bit of alchemy that transforms minor studies into news, data into magic. Once the Insight is in place—Blink, Nudge, Free, The World Is Flat—the data becomes scaffolding. It can go in the book, along with any caveats, but it’s secondary. The purpose is not to substantiate but to enchant.

Kachka’s postmortem review of Johah Lehrer’s downfall argues that Lehrer was a storyteller in pursuit of “Insight” at the expense of science and ignored the inconvenience of contradicting information. He was enabled by editors who championed him (and—in his magazine pieces, at least—corrected his drafty mistakes) and encouraged by the audiences who paid him to lecture to them and the readers who bought his books.

“Proust Wasn’t a Neuroscientist. Neither was Jonah Lehrer.” by Boris Kachka for New York