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...
