I just downloaded and read this article and found it fascinating. It
leaves a lot of questions unanswered, and I'm not sure that the
effect described is merely a statistical phenomenon with input by
unintentionally biased observers. Maybe it is, but the experiments he
described to try to show this were not terribly convincing, IMO.
But since most of his examples involved the life sciences, I wonder
if there are examples of this sort of thing in the physical sciences.
Could this effect have been operating in the slow drift of the
measured value of the electron charge from Millikan's value to the
present day value, for example? He talks about some differences
measured in a few rather obscure phenomena, but in a way that is less
than convincing to me that they are examples of the effect he is
expounding upon. Simply finding a different value of a known
phenomenon could be due to any number of things that, if I read the
article correctly, don't really fall within its limits.
But it would seem that the climate change measurements are prime
candidates for examination to see if the effects he talks about exist
there. These are measurements that almost by definition cannot be
done as "double-blind" studies and so could be rife with the
prejudices that have been found as a result of Schooler's work. On
the other hand, I was always under the impression that double-blind
testing was at least partial insurance against the sort of thing
Lehrer talks about.
In spite of the questions I have about the article, I has certainly
gotten my attention. I plan to bring it to the attention of some
friends who work in both the medical field and in drug testing to see
what they think of it.
It would have been nice if he had included some sources to look up,
but I know that the "New Yorker" doesn't do that sort of stuff.
I would be interested in any comments from other readers of the article.