The larger point is that she has committed no crime from which she should be let off “easily”, or otherwise. You have been completely sucked in, sorry to say.

Incidentally, I am not the one who claimed it was “odious” of MIT to bring up Dr. Corkin’s illness. I think her illness is quite relevant — nobody that sick should be pestered by some writer — just as you think Henry’s mental status was relevant to his capacity to be “exploited.” And I will continue with my “rabid” defense (Let’s see — odious, exploited, rabid…who’s being the emotional one here, again? My, my!) when I see the gauze of justice unravel before my very eyes and I read ignoramuses accuse some of the best scientists in the world of being sophomorically unscientific: of hiding scientific data, or hoarding scientific data, of trashing scientific data that didn’t support their hypotheses, of making unilateral decisions about what data is worth publishing etc., when science doesn’t work that way. It is a collaborative effort, scientists share their data, share their discoveries, scientists surprise themselves all the time when their findings do not confirm their hypotheses. Do a scientific search for Dr. Corkin and count all the researchers she collaborated with over the years. It’s ludicrous and laughable to claim she hoarded Henry’s data and didn’t publish it or built her career solely off of him​. She shared his data with scientists, she kept his personal information private. Please don’t confuse the two.

And of course Dittrich’s “grandfather’s sin” bothers him. That is manifestly obvious to anyone who’s read the book. It is most likely the root of his entire complex. That is why he is bent on the “undoing” of this damage, but he misdirects it at the scientists who subsequently worked with H.M. with good intentions and who did not mistreat him or abuse him in any way. It is Dittrich’s only hope at a personal sense of redemption, I guess, but Dr. Corkin ends up ​being sacrificed. Henry consented to participate in the research. He was a good man with a pleasant disposition (usually) who liked Dr. Corkin. He was not a vegetable. He was fully capable of consenting. He had outbursts at his group home, but never got angry at MIT. Why do you suppose not? Actually, tell me, in your hyperbolic way: have you even read Dittrich’s book? I would wager that you haven’t, but I’m asking because I think it’s somewhat pointless to continue this discussion unless you have, yet I can’t in good conscience recommend that anyone read it.

He implicates himself​ in the book​. He didn’t want more information about H.M. while he was alive, no. Not good enough— he wanted to meet H.M., I suppose it would have completed the circle of his redemption somehow, or made a nice anecdote — who knows? So he kept pestering Dr. Corkin about it. But for her to have allowed this would have been illegal. He would have had to sign a contract. He refused to sign the contract. He refused to sign the contract! He admits this in the book. Perhaps he believed himself to deserve some sort of special treatment, being the grandson of H.M.’s lobotomist. Of course he deserved no such thing, and Dr. Corkin was quite stringent in protecting Henry and following federal regulations regarding human subjects in research, so Dittricht never did get to meet H.M., and neither did he ever stop pestering Dr. Corkin for access to him. Not to his information or his data, but to him. And after Henry died, Dittrich, who wasn’t a neuroscientist, pestered Dr. Corkin for access to Henry’s data, maybe just to look at it, to touch it, who knows why, perhaps for material for his book, to say that he has seen it, fingered a floppy disk, data to which he felt entitled simply because, again, his grandfather had lobotomized Henry. We do not see him chasing after other amnesic patients or their data, after all. He is no champion of scientific research subjects he believes are being exploited or are not capable of consenting — hell, one wonders if he had even obtained consent from Dr. Corkin to publish an audio recording of their interview when she was in that state, or in any state for that matter, even after she died, and it is highly doubtful that he had obtained consent to publish the private emails of living third parties in the book. I suppose to his mind it was A-okay because they were sent by the “baddies” in his neat little dichotomous narrative, when in reality they were nothing of the sort.

I would much rather recommend Suzanne Corkin’s book: ‘Permanent Present Tense: The Unforgettable Life of Amnesic Patient H.M.’, as well as reading a span of ​about ten of her scientific papers about H.M., including the two 2014 ones, one of which is: * H.M.’s contributions to neuroscience: a review and autopsy studies. Augustinack, JC et al. Hippocampus 2014 Nov;24(11) * wherein, contrary to what Dittrich writes in his book, senior author Corkin mentions a small anatomical finding noticed by co-author Annese, but of uncertain etiology or consequence. (Dittrich’s book claims that there was this huge conspiracy by Corkin to suppress Annese’s finding. He also calls first author Dr. Jean Augustinack a “young postdoc” when she was in fact faculty at Harvard Medical School and had more neuroanatomical expertise than the neuroscientist he pits against Dr. Corkin throughout the book and put forth as the neuroanatomical expert: Annese— sigh. So many “mistakes.” So little objectivity.) But if you do read all these as well as Dittrich’s rendition of H.M.’s life in neuroscience research, maybe then it would be possible for you to have a fair discussion (with someone else, not with me, I’m bored of this topic) and see that Dittrich has been quite biased against Dr. Corkin, and less than honest in his reporting of the facts. There are many more examples in the book. This is why MIT is quite unimpressed with him, and why in my opinion, he is a libellous hack. MIT has already debunked the disgusting lie about the singed/burnt skin. Good luck to Dittrich in what I suspect will be a short-lived career as an “investigative journalist.” I really think it’s unfortunate that he chose the “libel/quick buck” option after pouring so many years of work into this book. It could have been what I hoped it would be: a fresh and interesting perspective on The Man who forever changed the life of Henry Molaison, but scandal and controversy sell more books, so all we get is a shady and falsehood-ridden retelling of H.M.’s story. Sad.

[Update: Aug 22/16 MIT posted their statement refuting Dittrich’s ridiculous claim that Henry’s data was shredded. See: http://bcs.mit.edu/news-events/news/additional-information-august-20-2016-further-rebutting-luke-dittrich%E2%80%99s-allegations. Dittrich conveniently left out Dr. Corkin’s statement,“We kept the H.M. stuff” from the transcript, but it’s at the end of the recording. The level of deceit here is astounding, as is the lack of ethics. But this shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s read what I think is an embarrassment-to-its-publisher book.]