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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   2874 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 17, 2023

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and sometimes can't even tell the difference between red and white wine in a blinded taste test

Scott himself wrote an article about that exact thing: Is Wine Fake?, and yes, the study where people were tricked with colored wine was as garbage as one might expect – they tested undergraduates and not experts, and the test consisted of affixing descriptors to two wines, which resulted in them affixing the red-wine associated ones to red-colored wines more often than chance. Going from this to "people can't tell red and white wines apart" is a Grand Canyon-sized leap.

they tested undergraduates and not experts

Why would they necessarily want experts? If all they setting out to prove is that ordinary people can't tell the difference between better and worse wines, then obviously they wouldn't test experts or enthusiasts.

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