Ethnographer Alice Goffman's study of the Philadelphia police department is challenged.

This reviewer questions whether Goffman's 2014 tome, which was highly acclaimed, embelishes the facts to make a better story.
http://chronicle.com/article/Alice-Goffmans-Implausible-/232491/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

If so, she joins a distinguished list of guilders of the truth:
1.  Hunter S. Thompson, the Rolling Stone's doctor of gonzo journalism, comes immediately to mind.  Of course, Thompson's yarns, such as "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," were so over-the-top that only someone as drugged up and spaced out as Thompson himself would have taken them at face value.

2.  Unfortunately, in the Thompson tradition, but without his obvious satirical stance, Rolling Stone last year published a piece, now internationally infamous, about an alleged rape at a UVa fraternity.  Never interviewing the accused, the author allowed the alleged "victim" to hold center stage, her version of the tale unchallenged.  A Rolling Stone editor, who previously had defended unobjective journalist in a college-campus speech, allowed this travesty to be published.  Naturally, lawsuits have followed.

3.  The late, famous historian Stephen Ambrose was accused in 2010 of making up some of his interviews with Dwight Eisenhower.  Ambrose had unique acces to Ike, but relatives of the great general and president have since questioned some of the yarns subsequently spun by Ambrose. 
http://abcnews.go.com/US/historian-stephen-ambrose-lie-interviews-president-dwight-eisenhower/story?id=10489472 

4.  And of course there is the now-legendary story of Stephen Glass, the journalist courted by (yes) Rolling Stone and the New Republic, who was found to have fabricated many of his best magazine pieces. The 2007 film, "Shattered Glass", does  a nice job of dramatizing his rise and fall.  Vanity Fair's in depth article is even better.
http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/1998/09/bissinger199809

The desire for fame is felt by many of us.  The urge to burnish our own images is also powerful.  Thus the case some years  ago of the Holy Cross history prof who claimed he had fought in Vietnam, when he had never been near the place.  He suffered a one-year suspension without pay during which to ponder his indiscretions.

As Karen Black tells Robert Redford in "The Natural," fame without fortune doesn't amount to much.  Yet, going viral has been the goal of many who post on the Internet.  Not so for Goffman, Thompson, Ambrose and Glass, as well as Rolling Stone magazine, for whom fame and fortune did go hand in hand.  Thompson and Ambrose got out of Dodge before their reputations faded (in Thompson case, he killed himself when his notoriety waned) or were soiled (the accusations against Ambrose came after his demise).  Insurance no doubt will cover Rolling Stone's exposure; I suppose, and hope, that the author of the UVa article is being forced into a different career.  I don't know what happened to Glass, but I hope he too is practicing something other than journalism.

As for Alice Goffman, well, I think that young woman is in for a rocky ride before this business is put to rest.