Do we have any feel for the overall impact of at least the thousands that he did? I'm stunned that anybody thought it was a good idea. He tracked them down through like changes of name and job and address because you remember all the women who any woman who got married would change your name back then. It's really quite an impressive bit of detective work to have tracked down as many as he did.
When physician Walter Freeman died in 1972, he still believed that lobotomies were the best treatment for mental illness. A pioneer in the method, he was a deeply confident and charismatic man who eagerly spread the technique in America, long after the rise of alternative treatments that were less destructive. Listen as journalist Megan McArdle and EconTalk's Russ Roberts discuss what McArdle calls the "Oedipus Trap": mistakes that no one can live with, even if they were innocently made, and how admitting such mistakes to ourselves is nearly impossible. They also discuss the complexity of the credo, "follow the science."