Unethical (Short Assingment #2)

Jonah Lehrer, a well-known sci-tech blogger, was extremely successful in engaging his audience by fully possessing two of the three rhetorical appeals: ethos and logos.  He established ethos, credibility, through his logos, logical arguments that he established by drawing on facts and statistics from others.  Unfortunately he did not give proper credit to the original sources of these facts and statistics, which resulted in plagiarism and misuse.
Like most sci-tech bloggers, Jonah Leher was credible and trustworthy because his blogs, which were full of scientific data and ideas, were transformed into vocabulary and ideas that the rest of us can understand.  Unfortunately these ideas and scientific facts were either unoriginal, simply made up, or recycled (this guy even plagiarized himself!).

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/08/jonah_lehrer_plagiarism_in_wired_com_an_investigation_into_plagiarism_quotes_and_factual_inaccuracies_.html

When applied to the Conference on Fair Use's "four-factor test," I think Lehrer definitely misused information regarding numbers 2 and 3:
"2.  The confusion/misuse could be seen in the nature of the work, whether it is factual but passed off as creative, or vice versa."  Lehrer tried to relay much of his information as innovative ideas, but was actually plagiarizing other authors.
"3.  The confusion/misuse could be seen in the amount and substantiality of the text used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole."  Most of Lehrer's work was not substantial; most of it was stolen or made up.

So through Lehrer's corrupt logos, he destroys his ethos.  Plagiarizing, recycling, and simply making up information does not translate into good character and/or credibility.