title: Empirical fallacies in the debate on substituted judgment.
abstract: According to the Substituted Judgment Standard a surrogate decision maker ought to make the decision that the incompetent patient would have made, had he or she been competent. This standard has received a fair amount of criticism, but the objections raised are often wide of the mark. In this article we discuss three objections based on empirical research, and explain why these do not give us reason to abandon the Substituted Judgment Standard.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Ethics, Lund University, BMC I12, 221 84, Lund, Sweden, mats.johansson@med.lu.se.
authors.forename: Mats
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Johansson
authors.forename: Linus
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Broström
mesh_terms: D016223:Advance Directives; D003657:Decision Making / Q000941:ethics*; D036262:Empirical Research; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment / Q000941:ethics*; D016743:Mental Competency; D026684:Personal Autonomy; D019727:Proxy / Q000523:psychology*; D020458:Third-Party Consent / Q000941:ethics*