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Comment by oh_sigh | Hacker News Reader

Is there any verification of this story? The way it ends with "As told to Amy Sedghi" makes me think this is some spoken word story rather than some journalistic recounting of events.

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It just means that Amy Sedghi interviewed him, and then wrote it from a first person pov. It's not unusual.

Why aren't there any pictures of this imposter? Surely respecting his privacy isn't warranted since he's public with his imposter persona.

Not surprised I'm getting downvoted by people that support abusers.

The claim is unusual. My guess is this article (or the alleged events it describes) is part of someone's art project or experiment.

Well, the person telling a story is a real person and it's been printed in not only the Guardian but the BBC and I assume elsewhere. These are news organizations that do at least a modicum of fact-checking.

And the guy is clearly a real scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=0g9Hm1cAAAAJ&hl=en...

I noticed that. It's why afaic the most plausible explanation — considering the incredible claims — is that this is part of some experiment that has socially redeeming value.

  These are news organizations that do at least a 
  modicum of fact-checking.

Depending on the situation, it could be impossible for a fact-checker to prove that the two people in the story had an agreement and a prior relationship. Not to mention, it's a novelty item in the 'Lifestyle' section, not a report on an arms accord or something.

Malcolm X's autobiography is "as told to Alex Haley". I believe it's a common phrase used when an article is written by a journalist, but from the first-person perspective of the interviewee.

That's maybe not the most comforting example – Alex Haley's Roots was both convicted of plagiarism and seemed to be very amateurishly researched, to put it mildly. At least it was called "fiction", although it was sold in non-fiction sections. And the central claim was presented as if true; "he claimed to have traced his family lineage back to Kunta Kinte, an African taken from the village of Juffure in what is now The Gambia". The wikipedia page is fascinating, e.g.

"Donald R. Wright, a historian of the West African slave trade, found that elders and griots in The Gambia could not provide detailed information on people living before the mid-19th century, but everyone had heard of Kunta Kinte. Haley had told his story to so many people, and his version of his family history had been assimilated into the oral traditions of The Gambia. Haley had created a case of circular reporting, in which people repeated his words back to him."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roots:_The_Saga_of_an_American...

Yes. Some other well-known ones are Richard Feynman's Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman and What do you care what other people think?, which are "as told to Ralph Leighton".

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