Oliver sacks put himself into his case studies. What was the cost?

Weirdly, what’s currently linked in the article is https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/12/16/oliver-sacks-c..., which doesn’t exist.

Unrelated(?) classiness:

> In his own journals, Sacks admitted he had given his patients "powers (starting with powers of speech) which they do not have." Some details, he acknowledged, were "pure fabrications."

— post

> But, in his journal, Sacks wrote that “a sense of hideous criminality remains (psychologically) attached” to his work: he had given his patients “powers (starting with powers of speech) which they do not have.” Some details, he recognized, were “pure fabrications.”

— New Yorker article

https://archive.ph/0MFPK

We’ve updated it, thanks!

Humans are not magically better now just because the calendar reads 2025 instead of 1900. Much of what academics do today is not science either.

Journals are filled with supposedly scientific publications, but actually producing new scientific knowledge is really difficult and rare.

There's a lot of garbage in there.

Sacks wrote from 1970 through to 2015; so more recent than just the fusty old 1900s…

> "Science" of the 1900s was heavily influenced by people willing to do whatever it took to achieve fame or fortune.

Scientific research of the 1900s made incredible improvements in medicine and technology. Most of the researchers and scientists weren't trying to be famous or extraordinarily wealthy.

The people you see pursuing fame and fortune, writing books, doing podcast tours, and all of the other fame and fortune tricks are a very small minority. Yes, people in that minority have often been discovered as writing stories that sound good to readers instead of the much more boring truth. However, most people doing science and research aren't even operating in this world of selling stories, books, and narratives to the general public. Typecasting all of "science" based on the few people you see chasing fame and fortune would be a mistake

> "Science" of the 1900s

Science of any kind, looked at dispassionately, is more of a cult than we're prepared to admit. Not a discussion we're going to have any time soon, not until the miracles run out.