I actually set that book down while reading it and said, “this sounds made up.” Ahh the quiet satisfaction of witnessless vindication.
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.
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
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.
Maybe a better source, linked in the article: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/12/15/oliver-sacks-p...
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
We’ve updated it, thanks!