Oliver Sacks Controversy

Oliver Sacks was an extremely popular writer in 20th century psychology, maybe the most celebrated medical storyteller of his generation. His perhaps most famous work is the book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Its stories are intriguing, revealing great insights into the human mind and neurology that surprise, impress, and just improve understanding of humans. I have read and enjoyed some of them myself. Clearly, he has had a long and successful career, and he ran into many curious cases that others can only dream of. Or maybe all is not as it seems.

I came across this topic twice in recent podcasts, though I am still months late to the discussion. The Science Fictions Podcast dedicated an episode to it, and Very Bad Wizards also touched on the topic. While there was always some criticism of Sacks’ methods, the recent discussion was started when Rachel Aviv wrote an exposé in the New Yorker based on Sacks’ own private journals.

We learn that he has a long history of projecting his own psychology onto his patients and knowingly embellishes his cases for better narratives. In other words, his stories are so unbelievable because they’re not real. Or, certainly there is truth to at least some of them, but it is unclear what is real and what is not, and that makes it very hard to trust any of his reports.

As an example, maybe the most egregious one, are the prime twins. A pair of twins who communicated with each other by exchanging 6-digit prime numbers. Impressive enough, but, according to story, they would eventually progress to exchanging significantly longer prime numbers still. An incredible mathematical feat if real. Unfortunately, a book of prime numbers that Sacks used to join in on the exchange couldn’t possibly exist due to the sheer number of pages required to list them all – there exist over 455 million prime numbers of 10 or fewer digits – and he himself could no longer find it to confirm when challenged. In his private journals, he admitted that this might have been the “most flagrant example” of his distortions.

This is all rather terrible and once again makes the world a place where trust becomes harder. The social sciences already have a history of fighting for legitimacy. The stories that he wrote – it would have all been completely fine if they weren’t presented as scientific case studies from a medical professional. If we knew they were partly fiction, we could have treated them accordingly. But they weren’t, and that’s the problem.

That is not to say that Sacks was a bad human. By all accounts, he was a great therapist that was well liked by his patients. He always put the person and their humanity first. Even in his books, they were portrayed in a very sympathetic and human light, and when misrepresented, then in ways they didn’t personally mind overmuch.

He also battled with his own psychological issues and underwent therapy himself for nearly 50 years. And maybe, even if he misrepresented the truth, he still benefitted psychology as a field by popularising it and motivating many to make it their career. That he was such a hero is why this topic is such a divisive controversy with many decrying his deeds and others taking his side. And how much less inspiring would his books have been with a good disclaimer?