I tried to fool the doctor when he examined my eyes. Can he tell?

Question

I tried to fool the doctor when he examined my eyes. Can he tell?

Answer 1

why'd you even go see him then

Answer 2

You can't fool the eye doctor. The machines they use to measure your eyes can actually tell them your prescription with 90% accuracy. When they slap the goggles on they are just fine tuning what they already know from the preliminary exam.

Answer 3

yes we can tell,  there are some things we can do without you knowing what they really mean to tell if you are lying.  

Answer 4

Probably...

They don't hire an average guy to be a doctor.

Answer 5

It depends on how you tried to fool him.

If you have perfect eyes but you want glasses because a lot of people nowadays do and you don't want to be left out, then pretending to have one "bad" eye might fool him. Just say "blurry," a few times while he fiddles with the measuring device, and then say "yeah, that's good" when an unusually clear, far-away looking lens comes around.

Do it for both eyes and he's more likely to catch on.

If you have bad eyes and don't want glasses - well, first of all, you're just going to make your eyes worse, second, they have contact lenses now that don't suck, and third, you're more likely to get caught because it's hard to judge when you're supposed to be looking at a "normal" 20/20 lens.

If you were trying to get glasses and didn't, then you failed to fool him. If you were trying to avoid getting glasses and he didn't assign any to you, then you apparently succeeded at fooling him.

I would like to add as an afterthought that there's really no particular shame or benefit to glasses or contacts. I mean, there are idiots in middle and high school who use "four eyes," but they are - in fact - idiots; real people in the real world don't care. (And by real world, I mean everything outside the dreariness of high school. Y'know, jobs and sports and such.)

Answer 6

Yes.

Answer 7

fool him how?

Answer 8

Almost always.  It's very rare for someone to be consistent about what they can or can't see, if it's not what they're actually seeing.

Many's the child or teenager I've caught , whose vision suddenly improved with a combination of lenses adding up to... zero.

Or didn't improve through a pinhole aperture.

I don't necessarily call them on it: it's not always productive.

In 28 years of practice, I've only had a handful where I wasn't sure:

somebody faking, or a rare and unusual disease?

One turned out to be pseudotumor cerebri.  And two previous people had thought she was making it up.