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free_rip comments on The Apologist and the Revolutionary - Less Wrong
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When this test is done to patients in a hospital, the patient is lying in bed on his back facing upward towards the ceiling. Ice cold water, 60 ml total, is introduced into one ear canal using a syringe. This is repeated in the other ear canal. The water runs out into a basin placed outside the ear to keep the bed dry. Severely brain damaged patients do not have any reaction to this test. This is a test used in examining patients undergoing brain death evaluation, so they are already on a ventilator.
Ouch - you lost me my motivation to follow this example at 'syringe'. I guess I'm more of a rationalist than a scientist - my desire to know whether this works (on me, in an unprofessional home-test anyway) is rated a lot lower value than my desire to not have a syringe of ice-cold water injected into my ears.
"Syringe", not "needle". It's just the plastic bit being used to squirt water into your ear, rather than a needle being used to pierce the eardrum.
Why, when I was a kid my mum, a doctor, used to give me and my brother (unused) syringes as water guns and it was great fun.