On Jonah Lehrer and living with lies

Jonah Lehrer

Jonah Lehrer's 2012 fall from grace, following the discovery of errors and 'self-plagiarism' in his published work, is a well-known story in academic and journalistic circles. It seems to have been, not his editorial mistakes, which are so easy to make, as much as his subsequent lies and deception about them, which really turned people off, and caused his spectacular career shutdown. 

In July 2016, Lehrer told the story of 'what happened next', for The Moth in Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife and children. Before you read any further, please listen to what he has to say: he calls the story 'Attachment'. 

I had been made aware of Lehrer's book Proust was a Neuroscientist back in 2007, by friends who knew I'd written on Proust, and who sent me copies of his work. Professional jealousy compelled me to smile publicly but privately find fault with it – he seemed only to have read the opening pages of A la recherche, and was basing complex neuroscience only on the celebrated 'madeleine' episode, rather than digging a little deeper into the Proustian manifold. 

Lehrer was co-opting Proust in his own broader argument – that we need to overcome what C.P. Snow called in 1959 the 'Two Cultures' problem: the over-valuation of the Humanities at the expense of scientific understanding in the British education system. 

'A good many times, opined Snow, 'I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists.' 

Snow goes on to point out tartly that the incredulous educated would have been unable to describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or even to explain mass or acceleration. I wonder whether Snow would make the opposite case now, when 'creativity' has been appropriated by tech, and the Humanities lie in ruins? 

I was undoubtedly guilty of scorn at Lehrer's lack of deep reading in Proust was a Neuroscientist, and am not too hot on the Second Law myself. But even I could see that, once he'd started lying, Lehrer's 'isolated system' of researching and writing too quickly, without thorough checking, had increased in entropy and was heading from order to chaos. Here was a man who had lived in his head too long, and was about to confront unforgiving reality very hard indeed. 

After his fall, he reached thermal equilibrium instantaneously. The process was irreversible. He was condemned to go home, tail between his legs, and face his wife and daughter. In the story he tells the Moth audience, he makes clear that, as well as being a poor scholar, he had also been an absent father. He had never once put his daughter to bed before the scandal that ended his career. Once he was home, she judged him categorically: she did not know him and did not accept him. She cried herself to sleep, longing for her mother, while he sat outside her bedroom on the landing, and cried too – for himself and his lost status. 

He confesses, humbly, that he does not find parenthood an adequate compensation for his lost career and success. It is tedious, messy, and makes him angry. Who knew? But he knows that he has no choice but to suck up his exile and imprisonment. After all, he brought it on himself, and must endure the consequences. It is the only manly thing left to him to do. 

I found – I find – it difficult to know what to think about Lehrer's story, both the fall from grace and his Moth story of life After the Fall. I had initially been jealous of his young man's success, both for professional ("you didn't read my book, mate") and excruciatingly personal reasons. 

In 2004 (as readers of this blog will be wearily aware), I was forced to make a choice between my baby and my career by my Head of Department, who refused to allow me to work flexibly. My husband was unwell, struggling with the fact of my return to work, and the pressure on him to liaise with nanny and nursery at the end of his working day without me, as I 'kept term' in another city. 

In this false Solomon's Choice, I felt I had no option but to resign my lectureship, so that he had the support he needed to keep working. By the time I read Proust was a Neuroscientist, I had been kicked out of academia.  I wasn't plagiarising or lying. In fact, I'd been teaching on more papers than anyone else in the department. I was pretty good at my job. All that would have been needed was a little support from the Head of Department – with flexible working, I could have gone on performing most of the same duties for the department, and been able to look after my baby, gradually rebuilding as she needed me less. The Head of Department was herself a mother, but would not countenance making a managerial decision to support me. 

I don't regret the decision I made. It was the right one – my daughter did not ask to be born, and deserved all the care and love that I could give her, and my husband needed me. My family came first, there was simply no question.  

Academic life does not matter so much that it is worth giving up marriage and motherhood for. It is not worth killing yourself for. It is not worth lying for.

I have long since made my peace with my choice. It's an old story. What I have never come to terms with, and never forgiven is the madness of the injustice. It was assumed, when I resigned, that I 'wanted to be with my baby', that 'my husband was the main breadwinner', that it 'made sense' as a decision, because I was a mother.  Those things were, of course, partially true. But they did not in and of themselves signify that I no longer wanted any status of my own. Who would willingly choose to abandon everything he had worked for during the course of his twenties, his research, his publications, his teaching… his reputation? I hadn't died. I wasn't ill. I hadn't committed a crime. I wanted to go on lecturing and writing, exploring French literature, keeping literary criticism relevant and alive. That's what I was good at. No one questioned whether there was something untoward about my decision, whether I was being bullied. I tried to tell people, but I wasn't believed. 

Like Lehrer, however, I was expected to defenestrate myself, simply because my partner and I had had a baby. This wasn't the 1900s. It was 2004. I was expected to quit without a fight… and I expected myself to sacrifice myself. Because what other choice was there? 

To put my intellectual needs before my child's? 

To be a writer when there was a pram in the hall? 

Jonah Lehrer stood alone on a Moth stage four years after his disgrace, humble and penitent, a lowly figure to be pitied, and ultimately forgiven. He has been punished enough, he hopes. He is still publishing science writing. He does some (not all) of the childcare – his wife didn't leave him, and they have a second child now. He carries his Fatherload meekly. 

I, too, stood alone on a Moth stage. It was in May 2018, in London, where I live with my husband and children. My story involved screaming at another mother, on a North London high street, in the spring sunshine at 9 o'clock one morning, on my way to a mammogram. Tra la la. 

There is a direct line that runs between the day in July 2004, when I signed off on my own exile and imprisonment, resigning my academic post for the sake of my baby, and the day in April 2017 – my mother dying of a brain tumour, my son bullied by the other mother's little girl, half my left breast removed because of early cancer – when I turned and faced her, a woman attacking me through my child, and finally stopped lying to myself.  

The volcanic fury I sprayed at the other mother that day was not entirely justified by her petty mendacity, I concede. I had survived far worse, and behaved far better. I knew I was just sinking to her level, shouldn't be wasting time on her, that I had far bigger fish to try.  

But it was the day I finally drew a line under the idea that I needed to live a lie, to accept other people's lies as any kind of truth about myself, and started to walk free of my own condemnation. My debts – debts I never owed in the first place – were paid. 

I was terrified to tell my story, and even the director was nervous that it might backfire badly – the audience might turn against me, and take the side of the other mother. After all, I was the one screaming at another mother. It wasn't entirely clear that I wasn't bonkers… It took many rehearsals for me to stop trying to explain and defend my actions, and just spit out the truth. 

I enjoyed unleashing my Fury.  

I made a decision about what I was going to do, in the very second I heard the woman tell a lie about my child, and I never apologised for letting her have it with both barrels, for teaching her a lesson she would never forget (and humiliating myself in the process). I had absolutely nothing to lose – abased as I had been, I could fall no lower.

The audience loved it. 

I will forever be grateful to The Moth, who helped me to tell the right story about my Motherload. I wasn't right to scream my rage, it was a guilty pleasure. 

And I. don't. care. 

Perhaps Jonah Lehrer could have used it as a longitudinal case study in his book How We Decide? 'Deciding fast and slow', perhaps. It took me a minute to sign away my life's work, and a minute to blast away my child's bully. But nearly thirteen years to decide to stop living a lie.  

Enough is enough. I didn't need to be outed by a fellow writer for my lies and deception. I just had to out myself.