Just caught up with the closing essay in last Sunday’s New York Times Book Review. Entitled “The Plot Escapes Me,” the essay, by James Collins, a novelist, is a reflection on why he doesn’t remember the books he reads–and whether they were worth the time it took to read them. “What was the point?” he asks.

Fair enough; he’s entitled to his ruminations. But then he goes one step further: He backs them up with Science! “Those books must have reshaped my brain in ways that affect how I think,” he writes. And he asks Maryanne Wolf (left), director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University.

“I totally believe that you are a different person for having read that book,” she says, in reference to a particular volume Collins mentions. “It’s there,” she tells him. “You are the sum of it all.”

That certainly sounds like science, but it won’t fool the Tracker’s readers. I “totally believe”? Wolf cites nothing in her research or in anybody’s research to back up this claim. Nor did she cite Tennyson, who had the same insight in 1833, when he wrote, in his poem Ulysses, “I am a part of all that I have met.” Tennyson, unlike Wolf, made no scientific claim. It’s just what he thought–and it’s a pleasant thought.

In fairness, Wolf did say this was what she believed, not what she could prove. But readers will reasonably assume that when a scientist says she believes something, she has some scientific basis for saying so.

Further, Collins might have called other researchers, and he might have found some who disagreed. This is what we call, in our business, a one-source story. It’s like asking a Democrat to give us the electoral landscape without asking a Republican. Not fair, and not credible.

So, a weak cheer for Collins for a nod toward science. And a demerit for not doing the reporting properly, even if this is a personal essay. And two demerits for Wolf, for expressing beliefs that can easily be taken as facts, because they come from a Scientist. This is the kind of thing that gets scientists in trouble. (“I totally believe that evolution is correct…”)

- Paul Raeburn

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