What do you get if you repeatedly plagiarise other people’s work, allegedly fabricate quotes, and spend hours of your life editing the Wikipedia pages of your rivals under an assumed name to make them look bad? Three massive book deals!
Johann Hari used to be a star columnist at The Independent, and popped up in numerous other publications. After his various misdeeds came to light in 2011, he briefly disappeared, then reinvented himself as a non-fiction author and highly successful TED Talk speaker.
Maybe there’s nothing wrong with this transformation. He did, after all, apologise — after a fashion — for the plagiarism and the malicious editing. Perhaps he’s now a reformed character, worthy of rehabilitation. But as Jeremy Duns has pointed out, Hari has never provided a full account of everything he did wrong. His articles are still online without any flags from the newspapers that published them — and some of them make quite, well, surprising assertions.
But what if his books really are that good? They must have done something to earn such laudatory quotations and blurbs from varied luminaries including Hillary Clinton, Elton John, Russell Brand, George Monbiot, Glenn Greenwald and Tucker Carlson. On the back of all this support, and some heavy marketing, his books have been best-sellers.
Unfortunately, the books are not, in fact, that good. In his first, Chasing the Scream — in which he announced that “everything you know about addiction is wrong” — Hari hadn’t quite changed his ways. Even though he posted audio clips of his interviews online (a concession born of the ethical lapses he’d previously committed), actually listening to the clips revealed that, in very many cases, he seemed to be misconstruing what his interviewees said.
The neuroscientist Dean Burnett wrote an exasperated critique of an extract from Hari’s second book, Lost Connections, which asked “is everything you know about depression wrong?” Hari’s condemnatory attitude to anti-depressant drugs, for example, wasn’t exactly nuanced, and he made some truly bizarre (and bizarrely untrue) points — for example that, “if your baby dies at 10am, your doctor can diagnose you with a mental illness at 10.01am and start drugging you straight away”.
Hari’s third book, Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention, published yesterday, is not much better. Which is frustrating, because the phenomenon Hari addresses — the feeling that, with so many distractions around in the modern, online-centric world, it’s harder than ever to focus — is one many of us experience. Hari says that he and almost everyone around him feels this way, and describes a several-months-long “digital detox”, where he went to live in a small town on Cape Cod with no smartphone and no internet.
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SubscribeJohann? Is that you?
Said comment did me the best belly laugh so far today though.
Hahaha
The reason why Hari has been able to be rehabilitated is because he’s a leftist. The left does not object to lying to further the cause of leftism. In fact, it approves of it.
Compare Stephen Schneider’s quote about climate scientists having to choose between being honest and being effective; if you have to lie to sell the message, well, that’s just a choice. Peter Gleick stole papers from the Heartland Institute, then released them along with a forged one. He subsequently admitted the theft and still works in climate science. He chose to be dishonest.
Hari is likewise doing what the left expects, so it’s fine. When you’re as impeccably moral as the left, and when your views are unquestionably the right ones, it’s legitimate to lie and deceive to get people to swallow them. They’ll thank you in the end.
Good analyses there Mr Redman. Despite arguable encouragement from the Holy Bible in places like Matt 10:16 & 1 Cor 9:22 , I often wonder if we on the Left take the idea of the white lie too far. Still, as even conservatives like His Holy Father Pope Benedict admit (Caritas in veritate) that without Love, truth is unbearable.
Spot on. A glance at any Independent headline will confirm your final paragraph.
Wikipedia: “In politics, a noble lie is a myth or untruth, often, but not invariably, of a religious nature, knowingly propagated by an elite to maintain social harmony or to advance an agenda. ”
So, if you hold a social agenda dearly the nobility of the lie excuses the lie – or the need for rehabilitation?
To be fair, the issue is on both sides. Boris Johnson has also be rather more rehabilitated by the Right after being fired for lying by the Telegraph….
Hari is a prime slimeball. Readers outside the UK should be enlightened.
“must have done something to earn such laudatory quotations and blurbs from varied luminaries including Hillary Clinton, Elton John, Russell Brand, George Monbiot, Glenn Greenwald and Tucker Carlson.”
Wow, what a list of endorsements. That should warn anybody off from reading him
Here is another article I have saved myself reading by looking at the comments, which as often is the case are enjoyable, pithily direct and accurately informative.
Of course, Hari will get a pass from people who probably thought he was unlucky to be caught out the first time.
Good grief. I missed that. Incredible.
Here are many comments I have saved myself reading by looking at this comment, thank you JB. I had always thought Johann Hari was less a titan and more a Titanic.
One of his gems is that if rats are in a bare box and offered heroin they will take it. If they are given a playground they will refuse heroin.
Blimey, Hari solves the problem of addiction in two sentences.
I don’t get what the issue is with Hari rehabilitating himself, its up to people to choose if they listen/buy his stuff. That said, he is a class A bullshitter. The whole premise of AA, or any 12 step programme is that it recognises that addiction is a loss of connection with others and with a higher power. To present this as a new idea, and get away with it shows the gullibility andd stupidity of people
But can we blame Hari for that?
The cure for all these neuroses is of course organised religion, Catholicism in particular.
On the attention economy more broadly I’d recommend “Stand out of our light” by James Williams, a short but interesting book by a former Google engineer turned Oxford philosopher. I wouldn’t be bothered with Hari’s book.
Thanks for the James William book recommendation, I just downloaded it for free as a PDF
Cool. Hope you find it interesting
“What do you get if you repeatedly plagiarise other people’s work, allegedly fabricate quotes,”
Do you become Prime Minister and continue to lie and cheat and defraud the British public?
Golly, that’s a nasty little article, especially considering most people won’t have any idea who Hari is. It feels like there is a personal grudge in there somewhere.
Why is it nasty? It is critical, and provides plenty of evidence.
“I had forgot the fart” Attributed to Queen Elizabeth Ist.
‘Recollections may vary’ – “We have not forgotten thy fart” after an absense from Her court of 7 years but His name escapes me – as so much does these days.
“…he wrote a 92,000-word novel while on his Cape Cod getaway” – God help us. Expensive fire lighters.
Thank you for a great (and well cited) article Stuart.
I’d heard about the plagiarism before, but, prior to following your links, hadn’t realised how odious this individual is.
Is unfathomable to me how this “guy” has been rehabilitated, let alone keep getting book deals.
Hari is one of the reasons I stopped reading The Independent.
Never heard of him!
Sounds like I’ve dodged a bullet there
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You`re the sweetest—you don`t have an average bone to your frame do you?
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You’re so awesome! I don’t believe I have read a single thing like that before. So great to find someone with some original thoughts on this topic. Really.. thank you for starting this up. This website is something that is needed on the internet, someone with a little originality!