I remember in secondary school our psych teacher told us he was going to conduct an experiment. Without going into the full setup, it was a simple experiment where 3 of the 4 participants were &quot;in&quot; on it and had canned responses to see if there was any influence on the behavior of the actual single subject.<p>We were all brought into the classroom one by one so that each person would be deceived, then debriefed, and then would take part in deceiving the next person brought in.<p>The absolute raw feeling of being deceived is quite an intense emotion... Even when you know everyone prior to you was also deceived.<p>So to think a doctor who maintains a confidentiality agreement with their patient, someone who is trusted completely by their patient, might deceive them. Ethical considerations aside: it is just a shitty thing to do.