Gladwell's Fact-Fudging No Secret at 'New Yorker'

Meme-spewing writer Malcolm Gladwell has come under the microscope this week for dining out on a largely bogus story about his exploits as a newspaper fabulist.

That Gladwell would feel the need to exaggerate his tendency for fudging details smacks of irony to some at The New Yorker, where he has long been known as the bane of the fact-checking department.

Accrued through repeated run-ins, that reputation was cemented by a mistake he made in the Dec. 17 issue. Writing about I.Q., he claimed that the authors of The Bell Curve, Richard Hernstein and Charles Murray, had called for low-I.Q. individuals be "sequestered" in reservations apart from the general population--in effect, concentration camps.

In fact, Hernstein and Murray had only raised the prospect of such camps in order to criticize it--as the fact-checker assigned to the piece realized. According to a New Yorker source, the mistake was brought to Gladwell's attention during editing, but, insisting his own interpretation was correct, he declined to change his copy. The result: an embarrassing correction for the magazine, and an underserved chewing-out for the fact checker.

I emailed Gladwell yesterday to confirm this account but haven't heard back.

Editor's Note: Originally posted March 21, this blog item was temporarily removed to allow for additional reporting. The item was republished on March 26. Click here to read the latest.