"Cellist's scrotum syndrome", rooted in medical science, for the sake of laughter invented a female doctor

The British female doctor Helen Murphy, sitting in the House of Lords, admitted that 30 years ago she fooled one of the leading medical magazines, inventing the "Syndrome of the Moshonki cellist", which allegedly causes men from playing the cello. In the publication, a story about a new ailment was taken for a clean coin and introduced a “illness” into a scientific circulation, BBC reports.

In the mid -1970s, Helene Murphy, now Baroness Murphy, wrote a letter on behalf of her husband to the editorial office of British Medical Journal with complaints of pain in the scrotum associated with the game of cello. She decided to reveal the fraud after she met a re -mention of the "cellist scrotum syndrome" in one of the articles printed in the December issue of BMJ for 2008.

Murphy prompted the idea of ​​the Murphy drawing about the “guitarist’s nipples” - irritation that occurs due to the pressing of the acute rib of the guitar to the chest. “We thought it was very similar to a draw, and decided to support it by inventing a similar syndrome for the cellists,” Murphy and her husband write in a letter published in the January magazine.

“Anyone who has once seen with their own eyes how they play cello, understands that complaints about such pains are simply physically impossible,” the spouses say. Indeed, the performer usually holds the cello between his knees, so the tool does not cause any harm to the perineum. However, the letter was published.

"Moshonki syndrome" left a mark in science

The spouses assure that for many years they kept the draw secret, but decided to admit when they saw a new mention of the invented syndrome in a serious article. Over the past 30 years, the "cellist scrotum syndrome" has been remembered in a number of medical journals. One of the authors even reflected on whether the true cause of irritation is not the actual contact with the instrument, but an uncomfortable pose when sitting on a chair.

The BMJ representative said that none of the journal employees was fired for not managing to recognize the impossible syndrome. According to him, a letter from another doctor who noted an extremely low degree of probability of irritation of this kind came to the magazine.

“Now we, apparently, will somehow have to publish a refutation. The fact is that such things, even being mentioned in the scientific literature, are forever entering the history of science. However, in a sense, it even adds the joy of life, making it more fun,” the representative of the magazine curled.