We Offered To Pay For 11 Eye Exams. Ten People Never Replied.
After our blind ophthalmology study, the newspaper wrote to eleven of the forty-one filmed subjects offering an independent examination at our expense, at a clinic of their choosing. Ten did not reply.
LONDON, United Kingdom — An anatomical claim can be settled in eleven minutes with a slit lamp. This newspaper offered to pay for it.
Eleven letters went out on 14 August, each to a person whose filmed eye appears in the forty-one sequences described in our study. Each offered an examination by a clinician of the recipient's own choosing, at our cost, with the result published whatever it showed — including a result that made this newspaper look foolish.
Ten did not reply.
The eleventh declined in three lines, courteously, on the grounds that the request was absurd and that the writer did not wish to dignify it. That reply is printed in full on our right-of-reply page at the writer's request, and we thank them for answering at all.
Henrike Oyelowo-Vasquez, who ran the blind review, asked us to record her own position clearly.
"I would rather examine one person than argue about three hundred videos," she said. "I still would. The offer is open and it does not expire."
We note, because it cuts against us, that declining to be examined by a newspaper is an entirely reasonable thing to do, and proves nothing whatever.
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Sources & Method
Who we spoke to
- Henrike Oyelowo-Vasquez, Consultant ophthalmologist. Interviewed after the study was unblinded 2026
How was this story?
We publish the result, whatever it is. Reader verdicts appear on the front page and in our newsroom metrics.
Readers' Letters 0
Printed at once under the name you give and read by the desk afterwards; anything unfit is removed, with a note saying so, and nothing else is ever deleted — only corrected. Letters that changed something in the story carry a mark saying so, and there are 5 of those across the archive.