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

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.

9 days agoby svat

I disregarded everything from him after I read two of his books. It’s not perfect, but my rule of thumb is simple: If a scientific story feels sexy, cinematic, and narratively perfect, it’s likely fabrication.

Same reason I have been skeptical towards dark energy, EMDR, and the blue light destroys sleep craze. And many other stupid stuff. If you like a story or a finding, that’s a clue to double the critical sceptisism.

10 hours agoby jtrn

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

6 days agoby webwielder2

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.)

9 days agoby rendx

(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)

13 hours agoby dang

> 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.

5 days agoby rendall

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

11 hours agoby Angostura

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.

9 days agoby sshadmand

Another book I was recently sad to learn was at fabricated is The Salt Path, which was great but apparently based on lies, the author was fleeing debt and lawsuits and stole $86,000 from their previous employer prior the walk. What is super sad is they didn't pay the people back they stole money from after their book became a best seller:

https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-real-salt-p...

It's also became a movie staring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs.

4 days agoby randycupertino

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

6 days agoby RachelF

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…

11 hours agoby lloydjones

Anyone seeking fame must be considered suspect

4 hours agoby abstractspoon

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.

6 days agoby readthenotes1

Steven Pinker on this article:

>https://x.com/sapinker/status/1999297395478106310

>"Bombshell: Oliver Sacks (a humane man & a fine essayist) made up many of the details in his famous case studies, deluding neuroscientists, psychologists, & general readers for decades. The man who mistook his wife for a hat? The autistic twins who generated multi-digit prime numbers? The institutionalized, paralyzed man who tapped out allusions to Rilke? Made up to embellish the stories. Probably also: the aphasic patients who detected lies better than neurologically intact people, including Ronald Reagan's insincerity."

6 days agoby Ambolia

Subtitle

> The scientist was famous for linking healing with storytelling. Sometimes that meant reshaping patients’ reality.

TLDR

> after her grandmother’s death...she becomes decisive, joining a theatre group.... in the transcripts... [she] never joins a theatre group or emerges from her despair.

AFAICT the quote above is the only thing directly relevant to the title.

From what I read, skimming through the article, it paints Sacks as being a delusion driven emotional romantic and was practicing some sort of cult medicine, but I can't tell how much of that is reality and how much is NYT's ridiculously flowery embellishing of everything.

9 days agoby rendaw

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.

5 days agoby Akasazh