Discussion:

Discussion for article #242640

So was Carson one of the students who was duped by this hoax? Maybe his candidacy is retribution for this humiliation.

I’ve read this story over and over and I still don’t understand why staying later than the others was supposed to show he was “most honest.” Can anyone help me out here?

Nope, sorry, can’t help. There IS no logical connection — if anything, the more we learn about the whole thing, the more it shows that he would be the most gullible person in the room.

So the real story is:

The Yale humor magazine published a hoax, which a small number of students fell for, among whom Carson was one.

This is what Carson claims substantiates his story of exceptional integrity, professorial acclaim, and campus wide recognition.

Really? This is his defense? In reality it definitively disproves his story. Wild elaboration of a real incident, completely changing its character, is still a lie.

The biggest hole in Carson’s story is it makes no sense if you look at real human behavior. In what world does a professor take “I didn’t see the notice” as an excuse for not taking a test? I never knew a professor to give a free pass like that. It was your job to keep track of notices, period.

Plus I can’t believe that not one student would do their absolute best and try to take the test. This is YALE we’re talking about. These kids aren’t strangers to hard tests. They might complain to the professor afterward, or even go over their head and ask that the test be thrown out. Again this is Yale, most of the students have some connections and could make their complaints heard by the college higher ups. Heck, even if the whole class failed one test, it wouldn’t mean they failed the class.

Then there is the “proof” that he was the only honest person there because one by one people left. Maybe they left because they’d finished the test to the best of their ability and didn’t see any reason to hang around anymore? How did they get the tests? Did the test fairy magically drop them on the desks? Or was there a proctor who could testify that “Honest Ben” wasn’t the only student to show up for the test. If the students knew a proctor had seen them, then leaving and “pretending we didn’t see the notice” wouldn’t work, because the proctor had seen them there. Plus, how could they know that EVERYONE would leave? Wouldn’t an honest student, like Honest Ben tell the professor that other students DID show up then leave? What about the kids that actually didn’t see the notice? Are they less honest than Honest Ben?

It’s a self-congratulatory story but it doesn’t track with how people behave in real life. I just makes zero sense if you try to fit it into the real world.

150 students in a 300 level course?

there is definitely duping going on. maybe even some schtuping

“God works in mysterious ways” is the conclusion, I guess…

I have, more than one time, heard Ben Carlson refer to himself as ‘a scientist’, but he appears not to know how to apply a scientist’s mindset to the things he talk about, e.g. what was the purpose of the pyramids.

I have known scientists, Dr. Carson, and you are not a scientist !

I think it shows, in case there was any doubt, that Carson doesn’t know what the word “honest” means.

The whole story is so on the face of it absurd—every detail—it’s ridiculous to claim that “fact-checking” is needed to show its falsity. Is there anyone who went to college, let alone a good college, who would believe this?

I’m lost. Why would the students show up for an exam and then walk out?

Doesn’t anyone want to question that his defense of this story is to post a parody news article?? Instead, its being taken that a parody news article is verified fact. That’s pretty much saying everything The Onion puts out is totally dead on and they are a strong source of the news.

And the larger issue, which the MSM is having difficult tip toeing around, is each and every time one of these things pops up…Carson changes the story details. Every time. To match up to what CAN be verified. The things that can’t, oh he get those details 100% correct.

The pattern is pretty clear now. If the verifiable details of every story someone tells you turn out to be completely false…you shouldn’t take his word on the un-verifiable parts either.

If a professor singled me out like that, I’d probably be complaining to the dean. What a horrible thing to do to a student–if it were even remotely true.

How soon before he resurrects Thomas’ whine of his confirmation being a “high tech lynching”?

As far as I can tell, the last person to leave was the last person to figure out it was a hoax. This was probably humiliating to him, so he immediately rewrote all the details of the incident in his mind so that he could deal with having been duped. There is probably a name for this mental gymnastics.

with all due respect to the late Mr. Thurston and navels everywhere, the name Dr. Fuzzy Carson seems to fit.

Ben Carson: biggest Republican “hoax” of 2015. Anyone who considers voting for him is hoodwinked by his seemingly charming personality.

Even Jesus loved him. Proof in this picture.

Carson related the tale in his 1990 book “Gifted Hands.” He wrote that he showed up to retake an exam for a psychology course, which he said was titled “Perceptions 301,” after the original tests were “inadvertently burned.” The retired neurosurgeon claimed in the book that all 150 students who showed up for the makeup test walked out except for him. In Carson’s telling, the professor then told him the makeup test was a hoax designed “to see who was the most honest student in the class.” The professor then handed him $10 and a photographer from the Yale Daily News took his photo, according to Carson’s book.

Even if we were to be excessively generous and take the story as true I’m still not seeing how the fuck a fake make up tests works as a test to identify the most honest student or what sticking with the fake test the longest has to do with honesty.

Determination for sticking with it if we are generous or gullibility if we aren’t and assume the other students figured out it was a fake test, sure. Honesty doesn’t seem to come into it at all and not just because it appears to be a lie made up so Ben can show off his “honesty” and “dedication.”

The question is whether this will work. Carson’s story: the professor said I was the most honest person in a class of 150 by being the only one not to walk out on a difficult exam. The “evidence”: there may have been a hoax put on by students that successfully fooled a few students—possibly including Carson— into showing up for a false makeup exam. Just incredible for Carson to think this validates his account. But again: does this succeed in muddying the waters, showing there are “two sides” to the controversy?.

I wonder what he later spent the $10 on?

yes, I wonder, if we have seen other evidence of that recently…there is something, I vaguely remember, grains, corn, something…