Frank, and Earnest too.

Dear Colleagues,

Frank AND
Earnest, too.

The idea (when the F&L letter was introduced in the 70's)
was to sort out the amateurs from the pros.

Any faculty position posted those days (Buyers Market &
Slim Pickens) garnered enormous attention -most of which we
knew would be demoralized once applicants actually got the
nitty-gritty (after the original come-on) on how we operated
(not for everyone) and of course the salary. All faculty worked
in the work program those days. Etc. We thought they ought
to know.

So we let them; and if they were STILL persisted, then we knew
we could avoid awkwardness down the road and work sincerly
with the reduced group of amateurs. I have no recollection
of failed search-committee efforts.

(The graduate faculty adviser of one candidate in Biology was
so incensed by the "unprofessional" tone of Frank & Earnest that
he wrote us--relaying his shock and awe, and urging his adviser to
retract. Ask Dean Kahl.)

My uncle was a neurosurgeon specializing in lobotomies during the
50's in Hartford Ct. He developed an elegant instrument called the
Scoville Retractor.

It nipped-off the bothersome parts of any pre-frontal lobe seemingly
responsible for the patient's agony. In med school he named his
cadaver EARNEST so that, frankly--when questioned--he
could claim to be working in earnest.

However: during an operation to cure someone's epilepsy (an
experimental procedure called a bilateral medial temporal lobe
resection)-a slip up occurred [something LIKE a "misspeak" say]
--and the patient was left with "profound aterograde amnesia
and partial retrograde amnesis.

To this day, he has no memory of anything that has happened
since he underwent surgery and cannot acquire new factual
knowledge about the world around him. He is unable to retain
any kind of new information for more than several minutes.
He would be seen re-reading the same magazine over and
over again, without ever remembering that he had read
it before.

And, apart from a subtle speech deficit, which may have
been present prior to his surgery, or was perhaps caused by
some slight damage to the lateral temporal lobe, his capacity
for language, including comprehension, knowledge of grammar
and memory of words, appeared unaffected. He could, for example,
understand the meaning of jokes.

H. M. [how he's identified] is an invaluable source of information
for memory researchers. He is now 80 years old, and suffers from
osteoporosis, a side effect of phenytoin, the anti-convulsive drug
he has been taking. Otherwise, he is in good health. But death is,
of course, inevitable, and arrangements have already been made
for post-mortem examination of his brain.

Undoubtedly, an examination of H. M.’s brain
will reveal a great deal more about the
anatomy of memory!

Neurophilosophy : "Remembering Henry M."
Posted in Epilepsy, History of Neuroscience,
Memory, Neuroscience by MC on May 25th, 2007

See how it is: if we remain frank & earnest, too:
all things--amateurish & professional--can
work together for good.

xxxooo, Sam