What Elizabeth Holmes and the Salt Path controversy tell us about stories
much-discussed investigation
by the Observer newspaper last weekend into author Raynor Winn's memoir, The Salt Path, which was adapted into a film starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs.
The Salt Path tells the story of Winn and her husband, Moth, who become homeless and embark on a 1,000km journey along the Devon and Cornwall coast, wild camping in all weathers. Nature proved not just spiritually healing but also physically, as Moth's degenerative condition seemed to improve.
Unbelievable? Well, perhaps. The couple, whose real names are Sally and Tim Walker, said they lost their home because of a bad loan made to help a friend. But the Observer reported that Winn had embezzled money from her employer. The newspaper also questioned Moth's health condition.
The memoirist is taking legal advice. In a statement this week, she said the investigation was 'grotesquely unfair, highly misleading'.
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This episode has implications for business beyond the publishing industry, which must be scrutinising its fact-checking procedures. After all, falsehoods are rife in working life. One recent survey by fraud detection service Hedd found that '67 per cent of large companies have seen an increase in job application fraud, attributing the trend to AI tools being used to enhance or fabricate experience or qualifications'.
I suspect the trend in storytelling for business, which requires entrepreneurs, leaders and brands to have a narrative and encourages embellishments, imposing a simplistic arc with a successful ending. It can lead people to exaggerate their humble origins to showcase their accomplishments through their own skill and talent. Like
Kemi Badenoch
, leader of Britain's Conservative party, saying working in McDonald's for three months made her 'working class'.
Or entrepreneurs in the fake-it-till-you-make-it, start-up culture, telling a tall tale for investors about their future profits, the scale of business and even whether a product works (
Elizabeth Holmes
).
This is a peculiar moment in history. It has never been easier to scam – fraudulent emails can be dispatched in large numbers and deepfake experts generated quickly. It is also easier to expose falsehoods, after all, anyone can play armchair detective, piecing together personal details from social media and online databases.
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The Irish Times view on the Salt Path controversy: what should we expect from a memoir?
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At the same time, there is greater tolerance for lies as long as a story has 'truthiness', to use US comedian Stephen Colbert's phrase, by being plausible and emotionally resonant.
The same weekend The Salt Path story broke, I stumbled across an Instagram account with thousands of followers in which people told heartbreaking stories of unimaginable human tragedy, such as entire families killed in a car crash. How could you survive such grief, I thought, looking at the sad-faced but well-put-together bereaved. Except, as I looked closer, I saw the narrators were AI-generated characters. While some commenters complained about the fakery, others seemed moved, perhaps motivated not by gullibility but a desire to believe.
The truth matters less to some than the narrative. A couple of years ago, I asked the Hollywood actor Tom Hanks how he felt about an AI character taking his place in a film. 'Some people are not going to dig it because it's not really a real human being, and other people simply aren't going to care because the story is okay,' he said. Frank Abagnale, whose own story of deception became the film Catch Me If You Can, told me this week: 'People want to believe stories are true, especially if the character turns out to do something very positive with his life.'
It can sometimes seem arbitrary, who is investigated for wrongdoing and who is not. Whatever the veracity of Winn's story, she could not have predicted such attention. Books are not an obvious choice for anyone wanting to get rich quick.
It also appears random who gets judged in the court of public opinion. Against a backdrop of global economic and political turmoil, The Salt Path investigation became a viral hit.
Yet, if you are found out, it may prove to be the only thing you are remembered for, said Abagnale. Despite decades of working with businesses and law enforcement to combat fraud, he said it was 'once a criminal, always a criminal in the eyes of some'. While taking 'sole responsibility for my mistakes,' he added, 'notoriety is the worst curse an individual can experience'. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
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Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
How can I find what my likely State pension will be?
I am 59 this year and I am trying to enquire with Department of Social Protection about transferring and combining my UK national insurance contributions to my Irish PRSI record in order to plan my retirement at 60 years of age in 2026. DSP advise repeatedly that this is done six months prior to applying for the old-age pension but I need to know now, as I plan to retire at 60 and can't risk not qualifying for the maximum OAP. Is it possible to have my UK contributions transferred and combined into my Irish record now? Ms SC READ MORE I'm a big fan of planning ahead but I wish you luck if you think you can strong-arm the Department into changing its structures to accommodate you. However, that does not mean that you cannot get an understanding of what State pension you will ultimately be able to get. The Department of Social Protection is set up to address people's likely State pension in the months running up to the point at which the qualify – currently when they turn 66 years of age. As I understand it, the legislation allows the Department determine when application should be made for the contributory state pension and the Department has determined that it will entertain applications only six months before a person reaches retirement age. As recent legislation allows people defer pension drawdown, that date is not necessarily when we are 65 but, for most people, it is likely to be. Why? There is little point, as they would see it, in telling people definitively what their State pension position will be several years hence when they have no clarity on whether you will or won't work here or elsewhere in that time. You say you are retiring next year but I have come across many people who do that only to find they miss work for one reason or another – not always financial – and go back part-time or on a consultancy basis here or in another country. All of that will affect your entitlement and, as importantly, the calculation of the impact of any UK contributions. However, there is nothing stopping you at any time getting details of your Irish PRSI record up to the end of the most recent tax year. And, given you are going to have to calculate your future entitlement for yourself, this is a necessary first step. If you have a MyGovID, the easiest way of doing this is via . If you don't have a MyGovID or do not wish to sign up for one, you can contact the PRSI records team at Department of Social Protection, McCarter's Road, Ardaravan, Buncrana, Co Donegal, or by phone at (01) 471 5898 or 0818 690690 PRSI and pension It doesn't help that the whole system is currently in a period of transition. There are two ways of calculating your pension entitlement. The newer one is called total contributions and simply tots up your paid and credited contributions, including for up to 20 years of homecaring if appropriate. You need 2080 (40 years of weekly PRSI payments) for a full State pension. If you fall short of that figure, you get a reduced pension calculated strictly on a pro-rata basis. The old system is called yearly averaging. It starts the clock on the date you first pay PRSI (possibly as a student). It tots up all your weekly PRSI payments and divides it by the number of years from your first payment to the end of the tax year before the year in which you will turn 66. You do not get credited contributions for homecaring; instead, under what it calls homemakers, it will take up to 20 years as appropriate out of the equation to cover years out of the workforce caring four young children so that your average is worked out over a shorter number of years. If at the end of the day, you average is greater than 48, you get the full pension. Below that number, you get a reduced pension in a system that runs in bands. Anyone with an average of between 40 and 47 gets a pension that is just over €5 a week less but the figure drops more sharply for those with average contributions per year of between 30 and 39, 20 and 29, 15 and 19 and, finally between 10 and 14. Over recent years, the Department calculated your entitlement under both systems and paid you on the basis of whichever one delivered a better pension. From this year, the yearly average is being phased out. What does that mean? The Department will still calculate your entitlement using both systems and if the more modern total contributions pays better, great. If not, they will pay you a pension based on a blend of your entitlement under both systems. For instance, in 2025, the pension paid would be base don 90 per cent of what you would get under yearly averaging and 10 per cent of your total contributions entitlement. By 2033, it will be 10 per cent yearly average and 90 per cent total averaging and from the following year yearly averaging will not count at all. For you, hitting 66 in 2032, your entitlement will be measures under total contributions and, separately, on the blending of 20 per cent of your yearly average record and 80 per cent total contributions. The UK impact Having spent some years in the UK, there will clearly be gaps in your Irish pensions record. That will obviously impact the yearly average over your working life and most likely reduce the chance of you hitting 2,080 stamps under the total contributions approach. This is where your UK record comes in. To understand how your UK record will affect your ultimate State pension, you need to multiply something called a 'notional rate of pension' (A) by the number of Irish contributions (B) as per your PRSI record updated to when you will finish work next year and then divide that by the total of all contributions – Irish and UK (C). The tricky bit here is the notional pension, which is the pension you would get if all your social insurance contributions in Ireland and Britain were treated as Irish PRSI payments. To get this figure, you add all the contributions from your time here and in the UK and then divide that figure by the number of years between the year you first paid PRSI and the last year before the year in which you turn 66. If you turn 66 in 2032, the last year for notional pension is 2031. Let's say you started work in 1986 when you were 19 or 20. That will be a working life of 46 years. 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Irish Independent
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