Swiss Jonah Lehrer

Psychology researcher Chris Chabris writes:

Rolf Dobelli, a Swiss writer, published a book called The Art of Thinking Clearly earlier this year with HarperCollins in the U.S. The book’s original German edition was a #1 bestseller, and the book has sold over one million copies worldwide.

In perusing Mr. Dobelli’s book, we noticed several familiar-sounding passages. On closer examination, we found five instances of unattributed material that is either reproduced verbatim or closely paraphrased from text and arguments in our book, The Invisible Gorilla (Crown, 2010). They are listed at the end of this note.

Apparently he ripped off Nassim Taleb too.

A million copies, huh? I guess crime really does pay! Maybe he could get an appointment at Harvard Law School or, if that falls through, a position as writer-in-residence at the statistics department of George Mason University [no link needed for that one — ed.].

P.S. Chabris notes that there’s an odd coincidence regarding the analogy to Jonah Lehrer, since he reviewed Lehrer’s last book for the Times. The assignment I want from the Times is to review “Evilicious: Why We Evolved a Taste for Being Bad.” Please please please let me review that one!