🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <SLEATOR.92Jul23121822@SPADE.PC.CS.CMU.EDU> sleator@CS.CMU.EDU (Daniel Sleator) writes:
>I've been skeptical of Oliver Sacks ever since reading "the man who
>mistook his wife for a hat".  It contains a story about a pair of
>twins in an institution who played a game in which they took turns
>naming ever-growing prime numbers.  Sacks neglected to report the
>actual numbers, along with numerous other details, and I don't believe
>the story.
>
>It appears that Sacks takes liberties to make the stories more
>interesting or ironic.  This makes his books more fun to read, but
>useless for scientific interpretation.
>
Talk about unsubstantiated, unreliable claims! "It *appears* that
Sacks takes liberties"? Evidence, please?
And by what leap of logic do you find the failure to include
a list of prime numbers in an essay evidence of dishonesty?

I don't think Sacks is beyond criticism. The essay by Perlmutter
in the New York Review of Books, cited in another post here,
shows that Sacks did not understand nearly enough about sign language.
I too would like to recommend Perlmutter's article; it is informative
and fascinating. (But it is NOT well written! On the contrary,
plodding and repetitious.)

I think one has to understand what kind of writing Sacks does when
he writes for a lay audience. Even a book like AWAKENINGS, which
reports case histories, does not print lists of dates and doses
of L-Dopa for each patient. That would be called for in a paper
in a scientific journal. Papers aim at conveying detailed
reports of methods and findings, plus whatever understanding
can be reasonably (and cautiously) gained from them. Work for
a lay audience stresses the understanding, backed up by simplified
accounts of the research. In some of the fields Sacks has written
about, the understanding is necessarily partly speculative (and
all the _more_ valuable for that). But of course, speculating
on the basis of detailed knowledge (neurology) is one thing;
speculating on the basis of hasty observation, superficial
knowledge, and a fondness for metaphor (Sacks on sign language)
is something else again. I think in the latter case his reach
exceeded his grasp.

It may interest you to compare an article by Sacks (in a recent
NY Review of Books) on phantom pain with an article on the same
topic in Scientific American (May 92, I think). You will note
that both authors have gained a lot simply by _thinking through_
the information available to them. In this case Sacks seems
to be on fairly solid ground; he's within his area of special
competence.
-- 
Roger Greenwald
Greenwald@hf.uib.no (address valid only until 10 August 1992)