7 ms·
Research/academia can certainly be kind of screwed up, but I doubt that any ethics board in a developed country is going to okay a study that involves tricking
by Cass 9y ago
Research/academia can certainly be kind of screwed up, but I doubt that any ethics board in a developed country is going to okay a study that involves tricking people into a spinal tap. And all the consent forms patients are asked to sign before agreeing to a procedure, the ones that tell you about the procedure and the risks in excruciating detail, are as much for the protection of the doctor as the patient. That way, if the patient ends up paralyzed, at least they can't claim you didn't warn them when the case goes to court.
So unless you were dealing with a single rogue Mad Scientist, I'd assume that was an error.
- nonbel 9y agoI dunno, csf samples (and corresponding data) can be quite valuable. For example, I know someone who had a spinal cyst removed and learned that to this day they do not understand if the fluid is coming from inside or outside the cyst. We lack basic mechanistic information about these issues because there is so little data (then again the papers I looked at that did have such data only checked averages and otherwise weak/incorrect analysis).