I'd always assumed that the patients in Sacks' books were lightly fictionalized composites that combined interesting features from multiple cases. The purpose being to illustrate conditions and aspects of human psychology for a general readership. Since they weren't presented as rigorous case studies, I didn't take them to be that. I find what Sacks did much less irksome than more recent psychological and social studies books that pretend to be presenting rigorous scientific fact when they are, in fact, tendentious bullshit.

I apply the same criteria to any scientific assent. What is the actual practical / clinical relevance? And is it properly studied without p-hacking, correlation/causation confusion and without signs of bias. Following these criteria, 95% of studies are useless, and strangely these overlap massively with the ones that fail to replicate. Yet I get constantly shit on for having too high standards for scientific rigor.