So, it's recently come out that Oliver Sacks made up a lot the stuff he wrote. I read parts of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat a few years ago and read Musicophilia and Hallucinations earlier this year. I think I'm generally a skeptical person, one who is not afraid to say "I don't believe this thing that is being presented to me as true." Indeed, I find myself saying that sentence somewhat regularly when presented with incredible information. But for some reason I didn't ask myself if what I was reading was true when reading Oliver Sacks. Why was this? The main reason I can think of is that the particular domain of Sacks, which I'd call neurology or the behavior of brain damaged patients, is one in which I had prior belief that A. incredible stuff does happen and B. we don't really understand. In particular, we have stuff like the behavior of split hemisphere patients and people like Phineas Gage. So my prior is that incredible things really do happen, and nothing Sacks said was any more unbelievable than these phenomena. Also, for Musicophilia, the "domain" could additionally said to be music [...] ---
First published:
December 13th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pnfqgQ5ebpknFqESr/why-did-i-believe-oliver-sacks
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