Quem será o Asch que os estará a industriar?

Os títulos dos jornais, como este:
"Medidas de austeridade na Europa devem-se a erro de Excel"
.
Ou como o célebre:
"O FMI já não vem"
.
Ou, ainda como este:
"Fava volta a sair à função pública"
.
Faz-me acreditar que os jornais estão cheios de "confederates"... quem será o Asch que os estará a industriar?

"One of the classic experiments of social psychology bears on the buddy system. In 1951, Solomon Asch, then at Swarthmore College, published a study of group pressure on decisions. The subjects of his experiment, all undergraduate men, sat at a table with eight others whom they believed to be fellow subjects. These others were confederates playing along with Asch. The experimenter presented a “vision test” consisting of a series of eighteen simple diagrams. The figure below is a facsimile, reproduced at the actual size Asch used. Take a good look at the line on the far left. Now, which of the three lines on the right is the same length as the line on the left?

The group of confederates unanimously agreed the correct answer was . . . line number 1. The experiment was to test whether the lone subject would go along with the outrageously wrong crowd. The confederates were told to give the correct answers to the first two diagrams, then to alternate wrong and right answers to the following diagrams. The true subject was seated so that he would be one of the last to answer. In the crucial cases, the subject spoke after hearing a number of the ringers give the same wrong answer. Overall, subjects gave a wrong answer 32 percent of the time. Seventy-four percent gave the wrong answer at least once, and a sizable minority caved in to peer pressure three-quarters of the time. That’s amazing when you consider how simple the exercise was. In a control group, without confederates, virtually everyone gave the right answer all the time. Asch tried to uncover what the subjects deferring to group opinion believed. He heard three categories of explanation. Some said the group’s bogus answers did look wrong, but they reasoned that the group was likely to be right. Another set of subjects told Asch they knew they were right and the group was wrong; they just didn’t want to make waves. Finally, there was a minority of the truly brainwashed. Even after Asch explained the experiment, they insisted they saw the lines the way the group reported them to be."

.
Trecho retirado de "Priceless The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It)" de William Poundstone.