Quote Originally Posted by Amphetryon View Post
So you're entirely dismissing the study. Good to know.
The thing is, previous studies have shown that given the correct social setup, and a suitable amount of peer pressure and misdirection, people can be pursuaded to say quite outrageous things. I did an experiement where I convinced people to give a series of quiz answers which they knew or strongly suspected were entirely wrong, (e.g. The US has 52 states) simply by leaving a fake set of previous answers on the test paper. Even when the answers were annonymous, and the questions trivial, you could get remarkable conformity just by pretending other people had consistently given a different answer. In the study you quote, with experts giving their opinion in front of their peers, in an unfamiliar enviroment, for social scientists, with only the experimental conditions giving them any clue, and being asked for an essentially subjective opinion, and of course the normative pressures would be enormous.

It's an interesting set up, but it's a reprise of a known psychological phenomenon, and I don't think it says anything useful about wine per se.