Dec 23, 2025 07:01 PM
As if the human-centered sciences were not unreliable enough via their usual invalid science problems. Now it's divulged that even their most lofty practitioners can dabble in outright fiction.
Since storytelling is a key component of CRT and other critical theory offshoots, it is not inconsistent for Horgan -- as a past defender of the former Scientific American regime's political tinkering in that area -- to seemingly be excusing Sacks' "fudging".
#Overview: "Critics have raised concerns about critical theory's reliance on Marxist revisionism and its frequent emphasis on subjective narratives, which can sometimes be at odds with empirical methodologies."
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Oliver Sacks fudged facts. Does that bother me?
https://johnhorgan.org/cross-check/olive...-bother-me
EXCERPT: Oliver Sacks made up details of his stories about patients with brain disorders, Rachel Aviv reports in the December 15 New Yorker. Does this revelation diminish my admiration for the neurologist/author? Before I answer this question, a quick history of my interactions with Sacks... (MORE - details)
The man who mistook his imagination for the truth
https://mariakonnikova.substack.com/p/th...magination
EXCERPT: On December 8, Rachel Aviv, a brilliant New Yorker staff writer, published an exposé of sorts about Sacks and his work: the good doctor, it turns out, was prone to invention, with details peppering his work that were, in his own words, “pure fabrications.” The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, that paragon of scientific writing that I had held as my beacon? Sacks referred to it in his diaries as a collection of “fairy tales.” Here’s what he wrote about the chapters that I’d spent so long studying:
Since storytelling is a key component of CRT and other critical theory offshoots, it is not inconsistent for Horgan -- as a past defender of the former Scientific American regime's political tinkering in that area -- to seemingly be excusing Sacks' "fudging".
#Overview: "Critics have raised concerns about critical theory's reliance on Marxist revisionism and its frequent emphasis on subjective narratives, which can sometimes be at odds with empirical methodologies."
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
Oliver Sacks fudged facts. Does that bother me?
https://johnhorgan.org/cross-check/olive...-bother-me
EXCERPT: Oliver Sacks made up details of his stories about patients with brain disorders, Rachel Aviv reports in the December 15 New Yorker. Does this revelation diminish my admiration for the neurologist/author? Before I answer this question, a quick history of my interactions with Sacks... (MORE - details)
The man who mistook his imagination for the truth
https://mariakonnikova.substack.com/p/th...magination
EXCERPT: On December 8, Rachel Aviv, a brilliant New Yorker staff writer, published an exposé of sorts about Sacks and his work: the good doctor, it turns out, was prone to invention, with details peppering his work that were, in his own words, “pure fabrications.” The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, that paragon of scientific writing that I had held as my beacon? Sacks referred to it in his diaries as a collection of “fairy tales.” Here’s what he wrote about the chapters that I’d spent so long studying:
“These odd Narratives-half-report, half-imagined, half-science, half-fable, but with a fidelity of their own-are what I do, basically, to keep MY demons of boredom and loneliness and despair away.”
Or, to put it in other terms, the reason his nonfiction read like fiction was because it was, in actuality, fiction. What was billed as a factual accounting of the neurological workings of Sacks’s patients was, in reality, a therapeutic catharsis for the doctor himself... (MORE - details)