Overall, I remain a fan of Oliver Sacks.

Pedro Franco writes: I just saw that the noted Oliver Sacks has had what seems a very damning article published in the New Yorker (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/12/15/oliver-sacks-put-himself-into-his-case-studies-what-was-the-cost). Here’s a couple of selected tidbits: In a letter to one of his three brothers, Marcus, Sacks enclosed a copy of “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,” which was published in 1985, calling it a book of “fairy tales.” The case study is presented as an ode to the power of understanding a patient’s life as a narrative, not as a collection of symptoms. But in the transcripts of their conversations—at least the ones saved from the year that followed, as well as Sacks’s journals from that period—Rebecca never joins a theatre group or emerges from her despair. Obviously very damning quotes. Another stab at the “scientist as a hero” myth to boot. What’s been interesting to me are the reactions. Both Tyler Cowen…