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Constructive Disappointment and Disbelief: Building a Career in Neuroethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 September 2018

JOSEPH J. FINS
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Extract

Sometimes one’s greatest academic disappointments can have unexpected outcomes. This is especially true when one is trying to change career trajectories or do something that others did not take seriously. My path into neuroethics was an unexpected journey catalyzed in part by constructive disappointment and the disbelief of colleagues who thought that the work I was pursuing nearly two decades prior was a fool’s errand. After all, could anyone—in his or her right mind—ever conceive of waking up a person unconscious from brain injury and getting him to speak? 1

Type
The Road Less Traveled
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 27 , Special Issue 4: Clinical Neuroethics , October 2018 , pp. 544 - 553
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

This article is dedicated to Ralph L. Nachman, M.D., former E. Hugh Luckey Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Chair of the Department of Medicine at the New York Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center, whose career advice got better with time. All trainees and faculty members would be fortunate to benefit from such wisdom and guidance. The author acknowledges the support of the Jerold B. Katz Foundation to the Consortium for the Advanced Study of Brain Injury and Weill Cornell Medical College.

In this series of essays, The Road Less Traveled, noted bioethicists share their stories and the personal experiences that prompted them to pursue the field. These memoirs are less professional chronologies and more descriptions of the seminal touchstone events and turning points that led—often unexpectedly—to their career path.

References

Notes

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