Johann Eduard Hari (born 21 January 1979) is a Scottish writer and journalist whose books include 2022's Stolen Focus, about technology and modern lifestyles' impact on attention spans and mental health, and 2015's Chasing the Scream, about addiction and the war on drugs. Both were New York Times bestsellers, and Hari’s 2015 TED Talk based on Chasing the Scream was one of the most-watched of the year. Up until 2011, Hari wrote for The Independent, among other outlets, before resigning after admitting to plagiarism and fabrications dating back to 2001. Hari’s other books include Magic Pill, about semaglutide medications used to treat type 2 diabetes and obesity, and Lost Connections, about depression, anxiety, and related mental health conditions. He is also listed as a producer and writer on the 2021 film The United States vs. Billie Holiday, which was nominated for an Academy Award, two Golden Globes, and other awards.

Early life

Hari was born in Glasgow, Scotland, to a Scottish mother and Swiss father, before his family relocated to London when he was an infant. Hari states he was physically abused in his childhood while his father was away and his mother was ill. He attended the John Lyon School, an independent school affiliated with Harrow, and then Woodhouse College, a state sixth form in Finchley. Hari graduated from King's College, Cambridge, in 2001 with a double first in social and political sciences.

Early career

In 2000, Hari was joint winner of The Times Student News Journalist of the Year award for his work on the Cambridge student newspaper, Varsity. After university, he joined the New Statesman, where he worked between 2001 and 2003, and then wrote two columns a week for The Independent. At the 2003 Press Gazette Awards, he won Young Journalist of the Year. A play by Hari, Going Down in History, was performed at the Garage Theatre in Edinburgh, and his book God Save the Queen? was published by Icon Books in 2002. Hari supported the Iraq War. In 2005, Hari wrote an article in The Independent entitled "Pinter does not deserve the Nobel Prize", arguing that Harold Pinter, due to a misguided and misinformed anti-imperialist and anti-war stance, should not have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Pinter's official, authorised biographer, Michael Billington, commented that Hari "dismissed (Pinter's) Lecture in advance [of its broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK] as a 'rant' and falsely claimed that Pinter would have refused to resist Hitler." In addition to being a columnist for The Independent, Hari's work also appeared in The Huffington Post, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, The Nation, Le Monde, El País, The Sydney Morning Herald, and Haaretz, and he reported from locations around the world, such as Congo and Venezuela. He appeared regularly as an arts critic on the BBC Two programme The Review Show and was a book critic for Slate. In 2009, he was named by The Daily Telegraph as one of the most influential people on the left in Britain.

2011 plagiarism, fabrication and misconduct scandal

Plagiarism

In June 2011, bloggers at Deterritorial Support Group, as well as Yahoo! Ireland editor Brian Whelan, discovered that Hari had plagiarised material published in other interviews and writings by his interview subjects. For example, a 2009 interview with Afghan women's rights activist Malalai Joya included quotations from her book Raising My Voice in a manner that made them appear as if spoken directly to Hari. A piece entitled "How Multiculturalism Is Betraying Women" which Hari submitted when entering the Orwell Prize was plagiarised from Der Spiegel. Hari initially denied any wrongdoing, stating that the unattributed quotes were for clarification and did not present someone else's thoughts as his own. However, he later said that his behaviour was "completely wrong" and that "when I interviewed people, I often presented things that had been said to other journalists or had been written in books as if they had been said to me, which was not truthful". Hari was suspended for two months from The Independent and in January 2012 it was announced that he was leaving the newspaper. The Media Standards Trust instructed the council of the Orwell Prize, who had given their 2008 prize to Hari, to examine the allegations. The council concluded that "the article contained inaccuracies and conflated different parts of someone else's story" and did not meet the standards of Orwell Prize-winning journalism. Hari returned the prize, though he did not return the prize money of £2,000. He later offered to repay the sum, but Political Quarterly, which had paid the prize money, instead invited him to make a donation to English PEN, of which George Orwell had been a member. Hari arranged with English PEN to make a donation equal to the value of the prize, to be paid in installments when he returned to work at The Independent, but he did not return to work there.

Fabrication and misrepresentation

In an article about military robots, Hari falsely claimed that former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi was attacked by a factory robot and was nearly killed. Hari falsely claimed that a large globe erected for the Copenhagen climate summit was "covered with corporate logos" for McDonald's and Carlsberg, with "the Coke brand ... stamped over Africa." Private Eye's Hackwatch column also suggested that he pretended to have used the drug ecstasy and misrepresented a two-week package tour in Iraq as a one-month research visit, in order to bolster support for the Iraq war by stating that Iraqi civilians he spoke to were in favour of an invasion, although in an earlier article he had given a conflicting account stating that Iraqis were reticent about their opinions. Hari has been accused of misrepresenting writing by George Galloway, Eric Hobsbawm, Nick Cohen and Noam Chomsky.

Malicious editing of Wikipedia

In September 2011, Hari admitted that he had edited articles on Wikipedia about himself and journalists with whom he had had disputes. Using a sock puppet account under the name "David r from meth productions", he added false and defamatory claims to articles about journalists including Nick Cohen, Cristina Odone, Francis Wheen, Andrew Roberts, Niall Ferguson and Oliver Kamm, and edited the article about himself "to make him seem one of the essential writers of our times". In July 2011, Cohen wrote about the suspicious Wikipedia editing in The Spectator, prompting the New Statesman journalist David Allen Green to publish a blog post collecting evidence. Hari used the fake identity "David Rose" to pretend to be an editor who was qualified in environmental science, and David Allen Green noticed that an 'methuselahproductions' email address associated with the David Rose identity had also been used to post incest erotica. This led to an investigation by the Wikipedia community and "David Rose" was blocked from Wikipedia. Hari published an apology in The Independent, admitting that he had been "David Rose" and writing: "I edited the entries of people I had clashed with in ways that were juvenile or malicious: I called one of them anti-Semitic and homophobic, and the other a drunk. I am mortified to have done this, because it breaches the most basic ethical rule: don't do to others what you don't want them to do to you. I apologise to the latter group unreservedly and totally."

Use of libel law to suppress criticism

Hari used threats of suing for libel to prevent critics revealing his misrepresentations. British bloggers criticised his critique of Nick Cohen's What's Left: How Liberals Lost Their Way for factual and interpretive errors. Hari used libel law against a blogger who wrote that "a reputation for making things up should spell career death", leading to the blogger removing the post in question.

Later career

Chasing the Scream (2015)

Hari’s 2015 book, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, is a comprehensive critique of the global prohibition of illicit drugs, such as cocaine, heroin, and marijuana. Through extensive research involving travels around the world and interviews with experts on all sides of the debate, Hari builds an argument that prohibition, drug laws, and the persecution of people who use drugs collectively do more harm to people and society than the drugs themselves. The book also popularized the idea that “the opposite of addiction is connection,” after Hari delivered a 2015 TED Talk with that title, which became one of the nonprofit organization’s most-watched presentations of that year. The idea – supported by a variety of evidence presented in Chasing the Scream – posits that illicit drug use and most addictions are not character flaws, nor are they primarily a result of genetic disorders, but rather, are functional responses to negative experiences – early childhood experiences, especially – and/or a lack of supportive relationships. The book delves into the history of drug prohibition, tracing its roots back to early 20th-century America. Delving into the life of American jazz singer Billy Holiday as an example, Hari argues that the criminalization of drugs was often driven by racial and social biases rather than scientific evidence. He also highlights the role of figures like Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, who played significant roles in shaping the application of early anti-drug laws, again rooting actions in racism as opposed to science or legitimate health policy. Chasing the Scream also examines the societal consequences of the war on drugs, including mass incarceration, crime and violence, and the rise of powerful drug cartels. These policies have not only failed to reduce drug use, Hari shows, but have also created significant social and economic problems in most countries around the world. The book proposes a radical shift in drug policy, advocating for decriminalization, harm reduction, and treatment as alternatives to punishment. It presents examples of where such policy shifts are proving effective, including Portugal and Vancouver, Canada, among others.

Lost Connections (2018)

In January 2018, Hari's book Lost Connections, which deals with depression and anxiety, was published, with Hari citing his childhood issues, career crisis, and experiences with antidepressants and psychotherapy as fuelling his curiosity in the subject. Kirkus Reviews praised the book.

Stolen Focus (2022)

In January 2022, Hari published a book called Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention, arguing that elements of modern lifestyles, including social media, are "destroying our ability to concentrate." The book debuted at number seven on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list for the week ending 12 February 2022.

Magic Pill (2024)

Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight Loss Drugs, Hari's first-person account of taking the weight loss drug semaglutide, was published in 2024.

Criticism of inaccuracy and misrepresentation in books

Due to the previous scandals, Hari put the audio of some interviews conducted for Chasing the Scream online. Writer Jeremy Duns criticised instances where quotes were inaccurately transcribed or misrepresented, stating that out of a sample of dozens of clips, "in almost all cases, words in quotes had been changed or omitted without being noted, often for no apparent purpose, but in several cases to subtly change the narrative." In a review for New Matilda, Michael Brull expressed reservations about Hari's citational practices and highlighted contradictions between the narrative in Chasing the Scream and a 2009 article by Hari. The journalist Zoe Stavri criticised Lost Connections for a lack of citations for key claims like "between 65 and 80% of people on antidepressants are depressed again within a year", reliance on the work of a single researcher, treating research on a single class of antidepressants as if it applies to all antidepressants, and conflating stress and depression. The psychologist and science writer Stuart Ritchie criticised Hari for repeatedly stating that "between 65 and 80% of people on antidepressants are depressed again within a year" without a clear citation. He traced the source to a pop science book rather than a review of the scientific literature. Ritchie and the neuroscientist Dean Burnett both criticised Stolen Focus for failing to cite strong evidence for the existence of shrinking attention spans, as well as for presenting mainstream psychological concepts as niche ideas that Hari had discovered. Writer/broadcaster Matthew Sweet investigated some of the statements in the book and found that Hari had failed to cite the primary sources for some studies, and misrepresented the results of studies that suggested multitasking could have benefits in certain conditions. An author of one of the papers Hari cited intervened to state that he was "not happy with misrepresentation of our results". Magic Pill attracted criticism for inaccuracies. Writing for The Guardian, Tom Chivers criticised the use of references which did not support the book's claims, as well as scientific inaccuracies. A fact check by The Daily Telegraph found six examples of "errors, outdated data and disputed claims". Private Eye magazine lambasted Hari's book for what it described as false claims and dubious references.

Personal life

Hari is gay. In a 2002 article, he stated that he had had sex with men who were members of homophobic far-right and Islamist groups.

Awards

Books