I came across this webpage by Sheeva Azma entitled, “Here’s every scientist I have found in the Epstein Files so far.” She’s missing a few big fish:

• Dan Ariely (professor at MIT and Duke, Ted talk star, and teller of a story about a possibly nonexistent paper shredder)
• Donald Rubin (professor at Harvard and one of the most influential statisticians of the twentieth century)
• Stephen Hawking (late physicist and culture hero)
• Henry Rosovsky (professor and dean at Harvard; ok, he’s just an economist, but some would count this in the “scientist” cattgory)
• Gerald Edelman (Nobel prizewinning biologist)
• Stuart Pivar (not an academic but a very successful industrial chemist, so, yes, he counts as a scientist for sure)
• Jessica Banks (“an inventor, designer, entrepreneur, and roboticist with degrees in Engineering from MIT and Physics from the University of Michigan”)
• David Gelertner (computer science professor at Yale, most famous as an unfortunate victim of the Unabomber)
• Roger Schank (cognitive psychologist and all-around asshole who, according to Wikipedia, worked at Stanford University, Yale University, Carnegie Mellon University, and Trump University)

The name that was most interesting to me on Azma’s list was V. S. Ramachandran, listed there as “neuroscientist studying music and the brain.” Many years ago I read a book by Ramachandran, “Phantoms in the Brain,” about his research curing the phantom limb syndrome and related topics. It was really inspirational, but I do remember telling a friend about it at the time and he cautioned me that you can’t always believe what you read in a book, that maybe Ramachandran was exaggerating his successes.

Anyway, Azma links to a news article in the school newspaper of the University of California, San Diego, which reports:

Emails released by the Department of Justice indicate that Jeffrey Epstein provided funding for a UC San Diego lab led by Vilayanur Subramanian Ramachandran, director of UCSD’s department of psychology’s Center for Brain and Cognition and emeritus distinguished professor.

The DOJ released more than 3 million additional pages of the Epstein files on Jan. 30, in which Ramachandran is named by Deepak Chopra, a lifestyle guru with ties to UCSD.

Chopra, a former UCSD family medicine and public health clinical professor, first connected Ramachandran’s lab to Epstein. Chopra told CBS News that he helped Epstein with his struggles with insomnia, including directing him to Ramachandran to learn about ongoing brain research.

OK, fine, nothing wrong so far. A colleague pointed Epstein to this guy’s lab.

But then . . . oh! check this out:

On Sept. 25, 2017, Ramachandran replied to Chopra in an email regarding a study the lab was conducting on an “autistic savant who displays telepathy.” Ramachandran wrote that he does not “have problem with [his] lab being funded by Epstein.”

Ramanchandran further wrote that if Chopra’s “pal [Epstein] is serious about setting in motion a lab for the study of extraordinary brain potential … something like 500,000 to 3 million would get the administrators excited.”

A subsequent email from Epstein to his accountant, Richard Kahn, instructed Kahn to send $25,000 from Epstein’s private foundation, Gratitude America Ltd., to the University of California Board of Regents to fund Ramachandran’s research on savant syndrome. He asked it to be mailed to UCSD’s psychology department’s chief administrative officer, Peter Hinkley, who is still in this position.

Chopra and Epstein’s conversation continues through Oct. 5, 2017, when Chopra updated Epstein on spending the day with Ramachandran to discuss the “pilot study of autistic savants,” confirming their relationship.

This combines several Epstein science themes:
– Junk science (“telepathy”)
– Exploitation of vulnerable people (that “autistic savant” who Ramachandran is using as funding bait)
– Greed (“something like 500,000 to 3 million”)
– Epstein being cagey (he only actually gives $25,000)
– The science-media industrial complex (Deepak Chopra)

The only satisfying thing in all of this is seeing these academic bigshots degrade themselves for so little. According to this website, Ramachandran’s salary was a mere $288,557.00 in the year 2020. I’m actually surprised it’s so low, but, looking it up, I see the source of my confusion. He has medical training and I’d imagined he was in the medical school, but he’s actually just in the psychology department, which doesn’t have the budget to pay med-school-level salaries. But even with his meager under-$300K salary, I’m pretty sure Ramachandran could’ve funded the $25,000 out of his own pocket. But, ohhhhh, that greed . . . he wanted millions!