Ben Carson appears to have a somewhat complicated relationship with the truth, or at least that is the picture emerging of him as new challenges to the truthfulness of his biography surface.  After Politico checked into Carson’s claim that he had received an offer of a “full scholarship” to West Point, his campaign was forced to concede that he had never actually applied and been granted admission, but the campaign “attempted to recast his previous claims of a full scholarship to the military academy — despite numerous public and written statements to the contrary over the last few decades,” the news outlet reported.  (Politico came under scrutiny itself for the way it initially characterized Carson’s concession.)  On Friday, The Wall Street Journal looked into another episode: “In his 1990 autobiography, ‘Gifted Hands,’ Mr. Carson writes of a Yale psychology professor who told Mr. Carson, then a junior, and the other students in the class — identified by Mr. Carson as Perceptions 301 — that their final exam papers had ‘inadvertently burned,’ requiring all 150 students to retake it. The new exam, Mr. Carson recalled in the book, was much tougher. All the students but Mr. Carson walked out. ‘The professor came toward me. With her was a photographer for the Yale Daily News who paused and snapped my picture,’ Mr. Carson wrote. ‘ “A hoax,” the teacher said. “We wanted to see who was the most honest student in the class.” ’ Mr. Carson wrote that the professor handed him a $10 bill.”  But here is the kicker, according to The Journal: “No photo identifying Mr. Carson as a student ever ran, according to the Yale Daily News archives, and no stories from that era mention a class called Perceptions 301. Yale Librarian Claryn Spies said Friday there was no psychology course by that name or class number during any of Mr. Carson’s years at Yale.”  Sunday on ABC News, Carson claimed to have found the newspaper article about the incident published in the Yale Daily News and said that his campaign planned to release it. But also during that interview, he suggested that his autobiography wasn’t “100 percent accurate.”  And last week, CNN tried to find someone who could corroborate Carson’s account of having tried as a young man to stab a friend. The network interviewed nine friends, classmates and neighbors from Carson’s childhood, but none could remember the outburst. A 10th person initially said he had no recollections of any violent incidents, but when asked directly about the stabbing incident, “said he had heard talk about an incident like that back in those days, but didn’t know ‘if it was just a rumor or what.’ ” That’s clearly not proof that it didn’t happen, but it begs for some proof, anything or anyone (besides Carson), to say that it in fact did happen.  Maybe people might be a bit more willing to excuse some of these biographical blips if Carson hadn’t already been caught being dishonest on so many other subjects during the campaign.  The Journal pointed out that Carson falsely claimed last week in a Facebook post that “Every signer of the Declaration of Independence had no elected office experience.” The paper interviewed Benjamin L. Carp, an associate professor of history at Brooklyn College and author of books on the American Revolution. According to The Journal’s article on the matter: “Mr. Carp said Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, John Hancock and many other signers had been elected members of their colonial assemblies, prior to signing the Declaration.”  In comparing the success of his Carson Scholars Fund to other nonprofits, Carson has repeatedly claimed that “nine out of 10 nonprofits fail,” a claim that The Washington Post Fact Checker has rated false with four Pinocchios, the worst rating — what the newspaper simply calls “whoppers.”  Of the 19 claims of Carson the fact checking site PolitiFact has delved into, none have been ruled true and only one mostly true. Indeed most — like Carson’s claim that he “ ‘didn’t have an involvement with’ nutritional supplement company Mannatech” — have either been ruled false or what the site calls “pants on fire,” a statement the site rules as not only not accurate, but “ridiculous.”  Carson has pushed back on the biographical charges with more verve than he has exhibited at any of the debates. That is because the biographical charges don’t simply threaten the Carson campaign, they threaten Carson the corporation — the former I have always contended was simply a vehicle for the latter. Has no one else wondered why Carson’s chief media surrogate isn’t his campaign manager or communications director, but his business manager, Armstrong Williams?  Carson may no longer be a practicing physician, but he is a full-time profiteer, selling his story in books and speeches and paid handsomely to do so. Good work, if you can get it. But these new charges threaten to reduce the legend to a fairy tale, and thereby threaten the checks to be cashed after the votes have been cast.  Media observers seem to me too focused on Ben Carson the candidate. I remain focused on Ben Carson the enterprise, and apparently, so is he.  A version of this op-ed appears in print on November 9, 2015, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: Ben Carson and the Truth. Today's Paper|Subscribe
A mounting list of disproven claims threatens not only the Republican’s campaign, but perhaps more importantly, his lucrative celebrity.