It wasn’t that long ago that NFI went head-to-head with the New York Times over its misuse of science and distortion of data in reporting about seafood. You might remember that led to not only a correction by the paper but an admonishment by the Times public editor and a rebuke by Time magazine, Slate.com, and The Center for Independent Media. It wasn’t quite the dark days of Jayson Blair but it also wasn’t a journalism highlight for the Old Grey Lady.

This week the Times proves it has apparently not learned from its mistakes. The following is an “Editor’s Note” found in the corrections section:

• An article in the Itineraries pages last Tuesday reported about the increasing stress on business travelers, and cited the findings of “Stress in America,” an annual survey of the American Psychological Association. That survey found that economic factors were the leading causes of stress levels in 2008, but it did not say, as the article did, that “the crisis on Wall Street was the No. 1 cause of anxiety,” nor did participants in the survey say they felt most vulnerable to stress “in the office and on a business trip.” The survey included data from Sept. 19 to Sept. 23, 2008, a period of volatility on Wall Street, but none of the questions in the association’s survey referred to Wall Street or any economic crises. Participants were not asked how business travel affected their stress levels or where they felt most vulnerable to stress. The author of the article distorted the survey’s findings to fit his theme, contrary to The Times’s standards of integrity. The article also quoted incorrectly from a comment by Nancy Molitor, a psychologist in Wilmette, Ill., who told the author that, “In my 20 years of practice I’ve never seen such anxiety among my patients,” not “among my banking and business patients.” While Dr. Molitor does have patients in banking and business, she did not single them out as being more anxious than her other patients.

This is no small matter. What you’ve read is the New York Times casually noting that its reporter “distorted the survey’s findings to fit his theme.”

We’ve got a reporter writing about the psychological impact of the Wall Street collapse and using as evidence an annual survey that did not address the Wall Street collapse; “none of the questions in the association’s survey referred to Wall Street or any economic crises.”

What’s more he made up quotes to fit his theme.

Distorting science, filling in the blanks to fit your story and making up quotes- that’s Mad Libs not journalism.