Cooked books

If I had to guess whether
Wikipedia or the median refereed journal article on economics was more likely
to be true, after a not so long think I would opt for Wikipedia. This
comparison should give us pause.

That’s me, writing for The New Republic.  But what does this all mean?  ("Sadly, the final lessons here are brutal.")  I consider the recent spate of fake biographies and memoirs and arrive at some conservative and traditionalist answers.