This is deeply unethical,
I feel like maybe we've gone too far on research ethics restrictions.
We couldn't do the Milgram experiment today under modern ethical guidelines. I think that it was important that it was performed, even at the cost of the stress that participants experienced. And I doubt that it is the last experiment for which that is true.
If we want to mandate some kind of careful scrutiny of such experiments and some after-the-fact compensation be paid to participants in experiments in which trauma-producing deception is imposed, maybe that'd be reasonable.
That doesn't mean every study that violates present ethics standards should be greenlighted, but I do think that the present bar is too high.