Oliver sacks put himself into his case studies. What was the cost?

Or more recently Dan Kahneman, Dan Arielly or Stephen Jay Gould have also been caught fabricating details or whole results.

I actually set that book down while reading it and said, “this sounds made up.” Ahh the quiet satisfaction of witnessless vindication.

> When [Sacks] woke up in the middle of the night with an erection, he would cool his penis by putting it in orange jello.

This is a remarkable sentence, and it appears suddenly in the article without context or explanation.

Naturally, there are questions. Was it necessarily orange jello? Does orange refer to the flavor or the color? What property of this particular jello made it preferable to other flavors and colors of jello? Did he prepare the jello for this particular purpose, or did he have other uses for the orange jello? What were they? Did he reuse jello or discard it after one use? Most important though: why would he do this??

The article does not say.

Not shocked.

"Science" of the 1900s was heavily influenced by people willing to do whatever it took to achieve fame or fortune.

The replication crisis is the result.

Maybe a better source, linked in the article: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/12/15/oliver-sacks-p...