A responsible journalist can't say directly that Sacks was a confabulist but they can point out facts and allow the reader to infer. That's what the article does. There are many facts in the article that are relevant to the title in this sense (the prime number twins, the journal entries about Hat, etc.).
I also don't agree with your interpretation of what the article is trying to paint Sacks as, though of course you are entitled to it.
I think the the point of the article is to articulate what Sacks himself said:
> "As Sacks aged, he felt as if he were gazing at people from the outside. But he also noticed a new kind of affection for humans—“homo sap.” “They’re quite complex (little) creatures (I say to myself),” he wrote in his journal. “They suffer, authentically, a good deal. Gifted, too. Brave, resourceful, challenging.”"
As somebody still in my early 20s, I am viscerally aware of these advantages provided to me slipping away year by year. I apologize for being vague but I would be interested in hearing advice from those who felt the same what they wish they would have done in their 20s to minimize future regret.
This was a seminal review in psychiatry that I am fully in agreement with but there are a lot of easy to draw conclusions from this review that are false.
SRRI efficacy for one - The nature of SSRIs is that they are highly effective for some patients and useless/detrimental to others. This does not lend itself well to traditional measures of effect size. For those in the comments pointing out SSRIs low effect size, note that the effect size of morphine for pain is only 0.4 (SSRIs score 0.3). For instance, drugs that significantly improve 60-100% of patients are clinically insignificant under various guidelines. I can expound upon the various methodological reasons this is the case if there is interest.
This is not to say that SSRIs are good. There is no doubt they are overprescribed, have underdiscussed side effects, and are barely understood by their prescribers. I was severely depressed with suicidal ideation since I was 6 years old until I was young adult. I have pored over the psychiatric scientific literature for many years now, and I will say that understanding the sociological reasons for depression was much more effective at helping me than learning about the biological or pharmacological aspects. If you are in a similar position, I cannot recommend enough reading Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche by Ethan Watters as a starting point.
Its unconscionable to me that the author would take $10,000 from his own father who is clearly not only mentally vulnerable but not rich as the author states. The father is very much at fault for what happened here, but something is deeply wrong with American society normalizing the annihilation of what should be sacred familial bonds over political matters. As somebody who generally aligns with the left, the last 10 years of overzealous liberal woke-scolding has done nothing but further increase this alienation of others that results in a complete mental split between families.
The son being an NPR correspondent and the mother moving out of their room on the day after Trump's election is highly indicative of this. To the author's credit, he is somewhat aware of this and mentions it in the article.
It's just a symbolic order, won't actually lead to anything important being released because the agencies have the authority to reject whatever they want. Many of the files have already been destroyed anyways.
See:
Sec. 3. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed
to impair or otherwise affect:
(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency,
or the head thereof; or
(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget
relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and
subject to the availability of appropriations.
> Comparing the two scenarios, we found that about half of the observed decline in US social trust may stem from: i) ever more unemployment experiences, ii) ever less confidence in political institutions, and iii) a slight but systematic decrease in satisfaction with income.
Will a gun protect you when your car accelerates to 150 mph directly into a tree? A couple micrograms of toxin being sprinkled into your coffee? The CIA had a heart attack gun 50 years ago. Not difficult to imagine the capabilities they have today.
To be fair, his credibility is wholly based on his former professional roles. It would be literally impossible for him to provide direct evidence without getting gagged and sent to prison for a very long time.
Wasn’t it also in New York where an on-duty cop watched a guy get stabbed on the subway from a few feet away and actively chose to do nothing without punishment?
As somebody with a degree in economics who did research in this area, I strongly disagree. I cannot stress how important is to not equate poverty data with quality of life. Let me give you an example of how economic statistics can be misleading. In colonial India, economic production and GDP skyrocketed. Forests were razed, waterways were privatized, communal granaries were destroyed, etc. Agricultural production increased massively, yet hundreds of millions of Indian people starved and died.
It is absolutely not clear-cut that poverty has actually decreased on a long term scale. The real wage evidence shows less poverty and higher incomes during precolonial times in several countries. The datasets are woefully incomplete and flawed prior to 1900. Furthermore, the global poverty line is still set at $1.90 (!), and reexaming the decrease in poverty using more realistic costs of living results in very little change. Compounding on that, the vast majority of poverty reduction in the last century has been in China, a non-capitalist country. Removing them from the dataset results in almost no change in global poverty in the last 50 years. I can go on.
The logical conclusion that people don’t like to hear is that there will need to be a fundamental restructuring of the economy. AI will, in the not so distant future, eliminate the vast majority of jobs. The choice will then be between a socialized economy or barbarism.
I also don't agree with your interpretation of what the article is trying to paint Sacks as, though of course you are entitled to it.
I think the the point of the article is to articulate what Sacks himself said:
> "As Sacks aged, he felt as if he were gazing at people from the outside. But he also noticed a new kind of affection for humans—“homo sap.” “They’re quite complex (little) creatures (I say to myself),” he wrote in his journal. “They suffer, authentically, a good deal. Gifted, too. Brave, resourceful, challenging.”"