That's a good question, and one that has come up several time in discussion of this research. Since they explained the trick to people after, I think that possibility might have been minimized, as the subjects might then say "oh, I thought something was amiss, but was embarrassed to ask" and then they could be discounted, or assigned to the 'not changing opinions' group. But that's a guess on my part. In hindsight, I should have asked it myself when editing the story, and gotten Zoe to find out for sure!
Despite the best efforts of a few of us on the online team here, Nature is still pretty 'old media'. So if someone wants credit for an idea, they have to get it touch with us directly!
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That's a good question, and one that has come up several time in discussion of this research. Since they explained the trick to people after, I think that possibility might have been minimized, as the subjects might then say "oh, I thought something was amiss, but was embarrassed to ask" and then they could be discounted, or assigned to the 'not changing opinions' group. But that's a guess on my part. In hindsight, I should have asked it myself when editing the story, and gotten Zoe to find out for sure!
Despite the best efforts of a few of us on the online team here, Nature is still pretty 'old media'. So if someone wants credit for an idea, they have to get it touch with us directly!