letter from Ethan Taub, M.D., a neurosurgeon from Zurich, in the NY Times Editorial section which shortly followed the Einstein brain "news report":
" To the Editor: Re: "So, Is This Why Einstein Was So Brillliant?" (front page, June 18): The study of Einstein's brain revealed no quantitative abnormality whatsoever, except that is was somewhat shrunken, as is common in old men. Of course, if you examine anything closely enough, you can find some feature that makes it unique.
This is what the authors of the study appear to have done, poring over the folds of Einstein's cerebrum until they found the supposedly missing wrinkle. Their notion that this somehow made Einstein smart is nothing more than whimsical. If the absence of cerebral grooves were a mark of intelligence then apes would be smarter than people, and mice even smarter.
It is time to restore a proper respect for the complexity of the human mind and to acknowledge that decades or centuries are likely to pass before we have the tools we need to understand it."