Oliver Sacks put himself into his case studies – what was the cost?
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
> 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.
what exactly was I supposed to find and see people believe?
Anyway sorry I didn't keep track of the pages I visited, but here are some of the search results I see now, indicating at least some time wasted exploring something that did not need to be explored if it had been clear that the story was not fully real:
- https://empslocal.ex.ac.uk/people/staff/mrwatkin/isoc/twins....
- https://www.goertzel.org/dynapsyc/yamaguchi.htm
- https://www.pepijnvanerp.nl/articles/oliver-sackss-twins-and... (pretty good article!)
- https://www.ams.org/journals/bull/2005-42-01/S0273-0979-04-0... (mention by Granville!)
- https://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2009/09/possibly-re...
- https://www.discovermagazine.com/oliver-sacks-and-the-amazin...
- https://forum.artofmemory.com/t/prime-numbers-mental-calcula...
BTW the same account of the twins (https://archive.is/MmogP) also has several paragraphs revealing major misunderstandings on the part of Sacks, e.g.:
> And yet they are called “calendar calculators”—and it has been inferred and accepted, on next to no grounds, that what is involved is not memory at all, but the use of an unconscious algorithm for calendar calculations. When one recollects how even Carl Friedrich Gauss, at once one of the greatest of mathematicians, and of calculators too, had the utmost difficulty in working out an algorithm for the date of Easter, it is scarcely credible that these twins, incapable of even the simplest arithmetical methods, could have inferred, worked out, and be using, such an algorithm.
[Needless to say, calculating the day of the week for a fixed date is a much easier and completely unrelated problem to that of Easter, “the first Sunday after the Paschal full moon (a mathematical approximation of the first astronomical full moon, on or after 21 March” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_of_Easter ]
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.
not necessarily - your eyelids aren't perfectly opaque
>also, circadian rhythms were proven to be unaffected even when living in a cave with no natural sunlight - so theres more to sleepiness than just light hitting your eyebaws
yeah, not disputing this. Blue light doesn't have to be the sole determinant to have an effect though
And a note: EMDR works MUCH better than blue-light-reducing therapy. It's just that the theory for WHY it works is insane (integration of memories/thoughts across brain hemispheres is facilitated by moving eyes back and forth). It's just exposure therapy, and the "follow the light" stuff is just structuring the exposure setting. You get the same effect while doing exposure therapy while driving a car.
Added: ok, found a more careful description. https://www.pepijnvanerp.nl/articles/oliver-sackss-twins-and...
While Oliver didn't know math enough to talk about known prime number tricks, the author of the article also clearly didn't know books well enough to include ruling that aspect of the story as false since a commenter found at least a contender for the book, which also opens up the theory that the twins memorized the numbers from a book. To take it a step into theorizing, since it's been shown at least one book existed, maybe others that have been lost to age also existed.
Also, with no proof the article talks about how the twins perceived the numbers, saying "More likely is that they called out the numbers figure by figure" instead of in the extended format. A 25 digit number is only in the septillion area, and numbers follow a latin naming scheme so it's not even that hard to remember. This is comparable to Oliver assuming further numbers were prime with no proof.
Plus there's the fact that this is all in hindsight, I think it'll be fun to look back in 40 years from now and see how the article stands the test of time. Maybe we discover an easy way to calculate arbitrary primes in our head and the original story becomes believable.
Also a very notable statistic/anecdote at the end. I don't know how wide the scope (only one university?), but about a third of the incoming neurology students chose the field because of Oliver Sacks.
I always found the bulk of the criticism leveled against him to be faulty. However, if he did indeed fabricate a lot of details - it is concerning.
* explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308)
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.
<https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/addiction/what-are-whipp...>
Context was a stage performance (not by Devo) roughly 20 years ago, referring to late 1970s / early 1980s youth culture. The song itself was released in 1980:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/orange-fruit-color-ori...
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-real-salt-p...
It's also became a movie staring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Cups_of_Tea#Controversy>
Specific allegations and refutations were raised by 60 Minutes and The Daily Beast:
<https://web.archive.org/web/20110416212133/http://www.cbsnew...>
<https://web.archive.org/web/20110424154702/https://news.yaho...>
I know the underpowered studies cited in Thinking Fast and Slow didn't replicate but I don't think there was any fabrication?
https://retractionwatch.com/2021/09/14/highly-criticized-pap...
https://retractionwatch.com/2017/02/20/placed-much-faith-und...
In 1981 Gould accused Morton of fabricating details. Gould died 20 years after that. Nine years after Gould died, some said Morton had not fabricated details.
I should add Morton was a phrenologist who did not believe in common descent.
>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."
> 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.
Its shocking how bad some writers are these days.
The first sentence too is apt, "butter colored suit that reminded him of the sun" is a great example of Sacks' writing style.
> Other doctors had dismissed these patients as hopeless, but Sacks had sensed that they still had life in them—a recognition that he understood was possible because he, too, felt as if he were “buried alive.”
[...]
> Another patient is so aroused and euphoric that she tells Sacks [according to his telling in Awakenings], “My blood is champagne”—the phrase Sacks used to describe himself when he was in love with Vincze.
[...]
> “I know, in a way, you don’t feel like living,” Sacks tells her, in another recorded session. “Part of one feels dead inside, I know, I know that. . . . One feels that one wants to die, one wants to end it, and what’s the use of going on?”
> “I don’t mean it in that way,” she responds.
> “I know, but you do, partly,” Sacks tells her. “I know you have been lonely all your life.”
It's the equivalent of those people on Reddit or social media in general who make fun of three-star Michelin restaurants.
I get that sometimes you just want McDonald's, and I don't think there is a definition of better and worse in either of these contexts that doesn't require injecting some kind of taste. But nonetheless.
Long form journalism is not a common thing anymore, men (who dominate HN) are not enthusiastic readers anymore, and the cultural conversation that a dead-tree magazine represents is no longer amplified in mass media (as opposed to an era when David Frost and Dick Cavett had primetime shows on TV).
I don't disagree about the reverse snobbery, but IMO people being "not equal to the challenge" isn't the actual problem.
This was just a slog that I felt went nowhere and the points were buried in between rambling information about Sacks and his gay lifestyle, lovers and living in NYC and the gay lifestyle there at the time.
Not only was it not interesting, it was poorly written and hard to read. Sometimes writers just need to stick to the facts instead of trying to write another "The Phenomenology of Spirit" for a "middlebrow magazine".
Writers write, and editors edit, for an audience. HN is definitely not a perfect match for the New Yorker's intended audience.
But most readers of the New Yorker would choke on the kind of stuff that is perfectly aligned with HN's readership, so...
Pros and cons but often in the old days it was spun out to fill some volume the the printing press was set for like 400 pages in a book. I did Great Expectations at school which had about ten chapters with the main story and then about 60 chapters of irrelevant stuff because Dickens was paid weekly by the chapter.
I also don't agree with your interpretation of what the article is trying to paint Sacks as, though of course you are entitled to it.
I think the the point of the article is to articulate what Sacks himself said:
> "As Sacks aged, he felt as if he were gazing at people from the outside. But he also noticed a new kind of affection for humans—“homo sap.” “They’re quite complex (little) creatures (I say to myself),” he wrote in his journal. “They suffer, authentically, a good deal. Gifted, too. Brave, resourceful, challenging.”"
I was once at a small dinner talk by a well-respected headache specialist, surrounded by a dozen neurologists. He asked, "How many here have chronic headaches?" Every hand went up except mine and the drug rep's.
"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.
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.
Or even better, clearly and honestly spell out what you actually think?
It’s just quiet whispers in small conferences at the moment, but this is how the breaking of all spells begins. The momentum is & will continue to build, and probably quicker than many imagine (or will like!).
Because of course "science" is a term that's been quite often usurped by all kind of snake oil sellers, but that's nothing new is it?
A scientist names names. Not doing so is innuendo, and prevents any verification.
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.
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
The Solvay Conference happened in 1927
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.
You're just making it look like the article is picking on a troubled, vulnerable person for being troubled and vulnerable, and ignoring the elements of the article inconvenient to that, such as the mild-mannered, introverted patient made disruptively ultra-sexual by L-dopa who had actually been an enthusiastic rapist and who no one described as shy and introverted. Or the audio recordings of a woman being told how she felt by him (and denying it), and how she was described that way in the books. Or how he put quotes from his own interests into his patients mouths.
> there's very scant evidence
If you ignore it, there isn't any. Do you think there's some threshold of quotes you're allowed to make up, or abilities you're allowed to give to people that they don't have (like the prime number thing, that even involved a fictional book), or a particular number of lies you get to tell about someone's past before it becomes dishonest?
I have no idea what motivates people to make excuses like this for professional dishonesty. Sometimes I just think it's celebrity worship, but other times I think it's because people are dishonest in their own professional lives, and want to be excused by proxy.