Comments on: Academic Horror Story (UC Berkeley)

by: seth

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 19:51:49 +0000

Thanks, Emily, that’s good to know.

by: Emily M

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 04:36:47 +0000

A friend of mine participated in an MRI experiment at Minnesota about a dozen years ago. When the researchers saw his scan, which showed a large tumor, they IMMEDIATELY referred him to a neurologist. His tumor also proved benign although it was large enough to be quite threatening (despite having up till then produced no symptoms he’d noticed).. There has been no recurrence. Happy ending. I find it really shocking that researchers would withhold information like that from a volunteer about their scan.

by: Stephen M (Ethesis)

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 18:43:52 +0000

btw, for a funny post on salt (and the sodium lack most people have):

http://www.t-nation.com/article/most_recent/sodium_your_secret_weapon

by: CD

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:27:25 +0000

Why not tell us the experimenters’ names?

by: Chris

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:07:42 +0000

Privacy rules have proliferated so much in recent years that I expect many institutions have developed a culture of not releasing any information to anyone, ever, common sense or humanity be damned. In this case, there may be some mindless spillover from experiment protocols that obsess over double-blindness. Not that that there’s a logical case for it - compare it to the reporter’s reflex to scatter “alleged” throughout any crime story, even where the risk of libel is laughably absent: e.g., “The alleged assassin felled the long-time dictator with one shot to head.”

Needless to say, the experimenters’ behaviour was inexcusable.

by: NE1

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 18:27:21 +0000

When I have done those experiments in the past, the grad students running it have offered to give them the MRI’s for free. They’d do anything to get people to just show up.