Paul Ryan Makes NY Times...In Study Of Sports' Liars

Really, he's got no one to blame but himself for finding himself in this story:

In fact, most people do not lie, said Michael Sachs, an exercise psychologist at Temple University. That is one reason athletes often are so outraged when they catch someone who fibs about his or her performance in a competition...

So it should come as no surprise that Representative Paul D. Ryan, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, was called out recently when he told a radio interviewer he had run a marathon in around 2 hours 50 minutes...

...his actual time in the marathon he was referring to, the 1990 Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, Minn., was 4 hours 1 minute, for an average pace of 9 minutes 12 seconds a mile...

Mr. Ryan is not alone, of course, in substantially misstating his achievement... “They want to present themselves in an overly optimistic way,” said Dan Ariely, a behavioral economics professor at Duke who has studied lying...

“People find excuses,” Dr. Ariely said, and those who dissemble often start believing their own lies.