And then Einstein told me...

I've mentioned before that the most frustrating part of fact-checking work -- real fact-checking, not rubberstamping opinion, as the Washington Post does -- is checking quotations. Writers cull quotations from exceptionally unreliable sites like BrainyQuote all the time. They don't even care if the quote is true. What matters is that it illustrates the writer's own point and sounds like it comes from someone much brighter than the writer or the reader. 

That second bit is where the real trouble starts. For example, say I was writing an article on the modern view of religion, a topic for which one might expect a learned readership largely immune to boredom. And say I want to use an interesting quote from Charles Peirce, founder of Pragmatism, who noted that "a pseudo-evolutionism which enthrones mechanical law above the principle of growth, is at once scientifically unsatisfactory, as giving no possible hint of how the universe has come about, and hostile to all hopes of personal relations to God." Well, most readers, even those who read The New Yorker (maybe especially them, these days), would have no idea who Charles Peirce was, and so the impact of the quote would be diminished, even by taking the time to explain Peirce and his connection to the topic. 

BUT! I attribute his thoughts to Einstein, and everyone smiles and goes on his merry way, both educated and miseducated at a stroke.

Poor Einstein is a particular case. He's misquoted more than anyone else I know, more than Churchill, Lincoln, Hemingway, Warren Buffett, and Oprah combined. Here are some quotes commonly attributed to the late professor that he did not say, according to our friend at Quote Investigator: 

"Any Fool Can Know. The Point Is to Understand."

"The Search for Truth Is More Precious Than Its Possession."

"Insanity Is Doing the Same Thing Over and Over Again and Expecting Different Results."

NOT EINSTEIN!

I bring this up because a month or so ago I was asked to fact-check a series of health-related articles that turned out to be very easy. The information was all pretty well documented and not controversial. I spent far more time sourcing and mostly disproving quotations the author had inserted. It was not even why they asked me to do the job, I'm sure, but it turned out to be the most expensive part -- for them. I got paid by the hour.

Since people refuse to consult Bartlett's Familiar Quotations or the Oxford one or even The Ultimate Quotable Einstein before they throw around quotations, I decided: That's it. I quit. I too am going to make up quotes and slap them on Albert Einstein, or as his personal friends like me called him, Cheech. Here's an anecdote with a 100% fake quote:

One day I said to Einstein, "Cheech, that chick in Accounts Payable is a knockout. I've got to get her number."

The great professor looked me in the eyes sadly. He put his hands on my shoulders, and said, "I musht tell you a piece of advice I got from mine own grandfather. He vuss a genius, maybe schmarter than me. You vould do vell to listen to him, ja?"

"What was it?"

"I had a shimilar problem vhen I vuss young like you unt asked him vhat to do. He said to me, very solemnly, 'Al, Tauchen Sie Ihren Stift nicht in das Tintenfass des Unternehmens.'"

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"Don't dip your pen in the company inkvell."   

Feel free to use the story, pass it around, put it in your doctoral thesis, whatever. Scientific papers are loaded with junk citations now. No one cares anymore! Everyone is happier with lies, so why be different?