Oliver Sacks put himself into his case studies – what was the cost?

I think the title doesn't really give a good impression of the contents of the article.

The article spends most time on evolution Sacks' homosexual identity and struggle with sexuality and repression.

His uncertainty and melancholical bouts maar him question his own work and make the author conclude him 'putting himself in his work'.

However very little evidence is presented. Most insinuated about is 'awakenings' yet even in that case it's hard to reach conclusions.

The author plays of his perennial self-doubt as aan admission, but there's very scant evidence about him actually making up stories.

I'm not saying his method is our isn't flawed, it's just that the title belies the story. The struggle with his sexuality is the main subject and only small bits are about his uncertainty of his work.

This was a nice profile of (one side of) Sacks and his life, and as usual some mischievous or click-seeking online editor has given it a headline (and sub-heading) that are almost completely unrelated to what the article is about. In fact, at the bottom it says:

> Published in the print edition of the December 15, 2025, issue, with the headline “Mind Over Matter.”

and a headline like that (saying nothing) would be more appropriate to this.

The very fact that Sacks wrote about his patients has always had its detractors—based on his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, someone called him “the man who mistook his patients for a literary career”—but what was surprising (to me) from this article is that it seems that after that early book, he actually became careful not to exaggerate or make up stories, to the extent that someone closely following him looking for discrepancies was not able to find any. I would have expected the stories to be mostly fictional, but it appears that this is so only of his early books.

I actually set that book down while reading it and said, “this sounds made up.” Ahh the quiet satisfaction of witnessless vindication.

In case this piqued your interest, I really enjoyed the documentary about his life's journey, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Sacks%3A_His_Own_Life - can recommend! (Also, fan of his books and research.)

I feel that his pretentious, overwrought and unctuous writing was perhaps all because of an emptiness or inadequacy… His final years as a nice old gay man seem much more _normal_ and real, and he seems less of a fantasist at that stage…

(I wanted to put https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46204853 in the second chance pool* but it was too old, so I spawned a new copy of the submission and moved the (relevant) comments hither. I hope that's ok as a technical workaround...

* explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308)

Loved Oliver Sacks. He was such a kid at heart with a big brain and soft demeanor. His interviews are great. Here is one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AnuxDdg2II It is rare a lisp can improve how one sounds, but I like his.

> When [Sacks] woke up in the middle of the night with an erection, he would cool his penis by putting it in orange jello.

This is a remarkable sentence, and it appears suddenly in the article without context or explanation.

Naturally, there are questions. Was it necessarily orange jello? Does orange refer to the flavor or the color? What property of this particular jello made it preferable to other flavors and colors of jello? Did he prepare the jello for this particular purpose, or did he have other uses for the orange jello? What were they? Did he reuse jello or discard it after one use? Most important though: why would he do this??

The article does not say.

I rather liked Private Eye’s spoof Sacks book title many years ago: “The Man Who Mistook his Patients for a Publishing Opportunity”

Or more recently Dan Kahneman, Dan Arielly or Stephen Jay Gould have also been caught fabricating details or whole results.

Not shocked.

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

The replication crisis is the result.