
The Brain That Couldn’t Remember - chriskanan
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/07/magazine/the-brain-that-couldnt-remember.html
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joshuata
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.

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ajford
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.

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shmageggy
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?

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chriskanan
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.

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nealmueller
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)

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

