Scientifically Blonde | The sickening truth about dishonesty

Planning on faking sick to get out of your midterm this week? Go ahead and try. The truth is, your doctor won’t be able to tell.

Everyone lies, and everyone thinks that they can spot a liar. But research finds that customs officers, FBI agents, doctors and undergraduates all have basically the same success rates when it comes to catching a lie — and it’s about 50 percent, which is no better than guessing.

In an unofficial poll on WebMD.com, 13 percent of people confessed that they’ve lied to their doctor, and 32 percent admitted to stretching the truth (and keep in mind that these are just the liars that were honest enough to tell the truth about it … ) The same poll found that younger adults (yes, you) are more likely to lie to their physicians than older patients.

I thought that at an Ivy League school, educated students might be above the general trend seen in society. But after talking to students, it turns out that we’re just like everyone else. This has me a little concerned.

It seems that patients lie across the board. We lie about our bad habits, we lie about sticking to our treatment plans and we lie to get the medicines we want.

One student, who wished to remain anonymous to avoid being reprimanded by Student Health Service, said she’s feigned symptoms to get medication she thought she needed without a second thought.

“There was a contagious infection going around my house, and I just knew that I had to say whatever I could to get the medication to protect myself,” she said. She explained that it was easy to fool the doctors, and when asked if she felt guilty about her less than candid behavior, she simply replied, “No. Not at all.”

Doctors know that they get lied to, even if they can’t tell who exactly is a Big Fat Liar.

Even Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine who lived 2,500 years ago, knew that his patients didn’t always tell the whole truth. It’s said that he would take his patients’ pulse while collecting their history to help him separate the truth from the lies.

Today, most doctors would never act so outright suspicious of their patients. This is because the nature of their job, helping those in need, requires them to adopt what is known as a truth bias. In order to provide care, doctors by default assume that their patient is truthful (just imagine if your doctor assumed you were lying every time you went in for appointment).

At SHS we’re lucky to have some pretty compassionate and trusting doctors. SHS Director Evelyn Wiener wrote in an e-mail that “it’s important for a clinician to be non-judgmental.”

She went on to explain that although “there are occasions — rarely — when a student’s complaints don’t jibe with the objective findings,” (a.k.a. a student seems to be lying), she doesn’t think that intentional deception or personal gain is a significant reason why liars lie.

But although I’m glad to know that we’ve got the full trust of our doctors down at SHS, I personally know a handful of students who have faked sick, lied about their drinking habits or feigned symptoms to get the medication they think they need.

So, it’s great that our doctors, in general and here at SHS, have our backs — and not because I plan on lying to my doctor anytime soon, but because, as Wiener made clear, trust is crucial in the workings of the doctor-patient relationship.

That said, it looks like here at Penn we’re part of the rule, not the exception. Student patients (like other patients) are lying to our doctors and our doctors (like other doctors) are eating it up.

Sally Engelhart is a College junior from Toronto. Her e-mail address is engelhart@theDP.com. Scientifically Blonde appears on alternate Thursdays.

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