<story><title>Marathon Man: A Michigan dentist’s improbable transformation</title><url>http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/08/06/120806fa_fact_singer?currentPage=all</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>yaakov34</author><text>I am a runner also (finished one marathon with a time that is nothing to write home about), and was looking forward to an interesting story. I read this whole article with a growing feeling of incredulity, not about the cheating that it describes (yes, I understand that there are confabulators of this type - Stephen Glass was already mentioned in the comments), but about the effort and space that a national magazine would spend on this story. I kept waiting for SOMETHING of momentous importance towards the end somewhere that would justify all this buildup, but it never came. Yup, a guy cheated in a bunch of races. Yup, he is a confabulator who will invent any number of details and fake personas to build up his fantasies. Yup, he was caught in due time. You could summarize this in five lines. This is not just beating a dead horse, this is shooting it with a howitzer, repeatedly.&lt;p&gt;The only truly interesting detail would be the method by which he cheated, which the reporter, at long last, admits that nobody has figured out. This leaves the possibility that other people are cheating the same way, although maybe less brazenly. Again, this could be summarized in a line (it&apos;s clear that he cheated, the method is difficult to figure out). What is this, a slow news year?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>themgt</author><text>This is a very strange perspective, demanding a five-sentence summary and details on the technical aspects of the cheating, rather than this a well-written close-lens narrative of a fascinating person and his bizarre, borderline-inexplicable behavior&lt;p&gt;This isn&apos;t being presented as &quot;news&quot;, whatever that even means. I think you should reflect on what you&apos;re looking for from the world - I would consider this kind of work a form of art, and one I very much appreciate. You don&apos;t have to appreciate it, but you&apos;re asking it to be some other thing you&apos;d rather have - raw facts and data, summarized into as few words as possible&lt;p&gt;Some of us would rather the world still have some art</text></comment>
<story><title>Marathon Man: A Michigan dentist’s improbable transformation</title><url>http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/08/06/120806fa_fact_singer?currentPage=all</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>yaakov34</author><text>I am a runner also (finished one marathon with a time that is nothing to write home about), and was looking forward to an interesting story. I read this whole article with a growing feeling of incredulity, not about the cheating that it describes (yes, I understand that there are confabulators of this type - Stephen Glass was already mentioned in the comments), but about the effort and space that a national magazine would spend on this story. I kept waiting for SOMETHING of momentous importance towards the end somewhere that would justify all this buildup, but it never came. Yup, a guy cheated in a bunch of races. Yup, he is a confabulator who will invent any number of details and fake personas to build up his fantasies. Yup, he was caught in due time. You could summarize this in five lines. This is not just beating a dead horse, this is shooting it with a howitzer, repeatedly.&lt;p&gt;The only truly interesting detail would be the method by which he cheated, which the reporter, at long last, admits that nobody has figured out. This leaves the possibility that other people are cheating the same way, although maybe less brazenly. Again, this could be summarized in a line (it&apos;s clear that he cheated, the method is difficult to figure out). What is this, a slow news year?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>DanBC</author><text>People who cheat one marathon are not common, but they do exist.&lt;p&gt;People who cheat multiple marathons are rare.&lt;p&gt;People who go as far as to invent a marathon, and to create fake runners for that fake marathon, are very rare.&lt;p&gt;The article isn&apos;t about how or why a man cheats.  It&apos;s about a man who cheats; and everyone knows that man cheats; and yet he still maintains his innocence; and so he still hasn&apos;t &quot;had his comeuppance yet&quot;.</text></comment>