Category: credibility

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...