Spoofs by any other name

Editor—The letter by Attia and Nair on abandoning ties and avoiding nose rings reminds me of an event many years ago when as a medical registrar I engineered a deliberate spoof at a hospital medical meeting that was otherwise serious, with the knowledge and consent of my then chief.¹

It consisted of a tape in which I acted as a central European doctor responding in accented English to questions put to me by a pharmaceutical representative about a new drug that had just been released. Not only were the indications for prescribing the drug not clearly identified but a series of bizarre side effects were given, including loss of scalp hair, priapism, and a left sided abdominal rash.

What was rather disturbing was the discussion and questions that followed, in which it became quite apparent that the medical audience had not recognised the tape as being nonsense. The situation was such that I did not feel able to let the audience know that the whole thing was fictional.

Many years later when as a regional adviser in general practice, I was studying for a Master's degree in general education, I read a published paper in which an academic had lectured to an academic audience, deliberately talking what proved to be nonsense but articulating it in such a way as to make it credible.²,³ The academic was trying to demonstrate that given the right circumstances, people, even knowledgeable ones, can be fooled into accepting and believing what is rubbish.