4 ms·

The Brain That Couldn’t Remember

47 points by chriskanan 10y ago

shmageggy 10y ago
This was wonderfully written. It's clear though that the fine storytelling presents one specific perspective and opinion (which is a good thing, in my opinion). I would, however, like to see another side of the story. Are there others who side with Corkin? What do they have to say about the controversy?
chriskanan 10y ago
As someone who used to study a lot of neuroscience, I was really surprised to learn about the frontal lobe damage. The dogma has been that HM personifies what happens when there is bilateral medial temporal lobe damage.
joshuata 10y ago
I'm very skeptical of scientists who destroy experiment data. Storage space is less of a problem every year, and it is a huge comfort that you can ask a researcher for the data they collected. In this case she was actively destroying data after finding contradictory evidence. It is hard for me to conceive of a situation where that would be appropriate, especially where there other researchers cannot duplicate her experiments.
- ajford 10y ago
  I completely agree. At what point is it EVER ok to destroy scientific research data? I understand that in some fields the experiment products can be MASSIVE and storing that raw data might be impossible or impractical (i.e. baseband radio data that might be terabytes per hour). In this case it's maybe a few tens of gigabytes of data if the files were properly digitized? At most a few tens of terabytes, which is chump change! I agree with the author's comments that this seems like retroactive action taken when it came to light that there might be other factors involved (the other lesion, etc). Or to prevent re-interpretation of her findings that might point out things she ignored/hid.
deleted 10y ago
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nealmueller 10y ago
There's a great video by the VSAUCE guy about this patient: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mvx-mAUJL8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mvx-mAUJL8
throwwit 10y ago
What were the "might not have been good experiments"?

47 points by chriskanan 10y ago

This was wonderfully written. It's clear though that the fine storytelling presents one specific perspective and opinion (which is a good thing, in my opinion). I would, however, like to see another side of the story. Are there others who side with Corkin? What do they have to say about the controversy?

chriskanan 10y ago

As someone who used to study a lot of neuroscience, I was really surprised to learn about the frontal lobe damage. The dogma has been that HM personifies what happens when there is bilateral medial temporal lobe damage.

joshuata 10y ago

I'm very skeptical of scientists who destroy experiment data. Storage space is less of a problem every year, and it is a huge comfort that you can ask a researcher for the data they collected. In this case she was actively destroying data after finding contradictory evidence. It is hard for me to conceive of a situation where that would be appropriate, especially where there other researchers cannot duplicate her experiments.

ajford 10y ago
I completely agree. At what point is it EVER ok to destroy scientific research data? I understand that in some fields the experiment products can be MASSIVE and storing that raw data might be impossible or impractical (i.e. baseband radio data that might be terabytes per hour). In this case it's maybe a few tens of gigabytes of data if the files were properly digitized? At most a few tens of terabytes, which is chump change! I agree with the author's comments that this seems like retroactive action taken when it came to light that there might be other factors involved (the other lesion, etc). Or to prevent re-interpretation of her findings that might point out things she ignored/hid.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

nealmueller 10y ago

There's a great video by the VSAUCE guy about this patient: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mvx-mAUJL8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mvx-mAUJL8

throwwit 10y ago

What were the "might not have been good experiments"?