Just Making Shit Up

We covered last month the budding controversy over a NYT Magazine column by a writer breathlessly describing an airline "emergency" he experienced n his passenger seat.  The details seems so implausible they raised red flags for many and then we awaited the Magazine's response.  When it came it was laughable--hey, it's how this guy remembered it, and memories can be faulty, and of course subjective, and blah-blah.   You know, the usual memoirist's excuse--hey, it probably didn't happen this way but that's how it felt to me.

Now James Fallows at The Atlantic, also bothered by this (but giving it a fair shake), reports on an expert actually finding the logs for the alleged incident and discovering that, indeed, the whole tale is bogus, "tilting his entire account from one of eye-rolling embellishment toward one of outright fabrication."  I love the pilot's line about "artisanal Brooklyn fiction."  Now will the Times respond?