The TED Augmented Reality Hoax 17 years ago
I was at the talk at TED and was blown away by what he said did. I spoke to some other folks at ITP and they said that he didn't actually train the crows in the way he very explicitly said he did during his TED talk.
He very clearly gave the impression that he had trained the crows following all the steps described in his talk.
I could be wrong about the details, but it certainly wasn't the NYT's fault. They reported it as he described it.