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Monday, February 12, 2007

Funky Fishing


Slate's Jack Shafer, who prides himself on his bullshit detection, fell for quite the turd himself a few years ago, when some guy claiming to have gone fishing for monkeys got himself published in Slate, thanks to Shafer's enthusiasm.

The minute the story appeared people called it crap, but Slate's been temporizing about its accuracy ever since.

Only now, with a big Columbia Journalism Review article about its total obvious falsehood (lately confirmed by the wretched writer himself) about to appear, has Slate fully disavowed the story.



This unfolding of events featured two male primates - the guy who wrote the original piece, and Shafer, whose primitive ego still can't admit wrongdoing:


'Wary of describing lessons learned from the episode, Mr. Shafer noted that “any publication can be duped by a writer who is prepared to lie in a suicidal fashion and commit career suicide.”'



That's real dramatic and all about the suicide, but it isn't true that any publication can be duped by people writing about fishing for monkeys. Only dupes get duped.