 Why are the experimental results somewhat irrelevant?
The point of the second test was not to find the difference between cheap and expensive beers but instead to compare a variety of top-of-the-line beers. Since the tasting panel had left the first round grumbling that cheap lagers were not a fair test of their abilities, this second round of testing was advertised to the panel as a reward. One aspect of the reward was that they would presumably enjoy the actual testing more--fewer rueful beer descriptions along the lines of "urine" or "get it away!" were expected than in the first round. The other aspect of anticipated reward was the panelists' unspoken but obvious assumption that this time they would "do better" on the test. Intellectual vanity being what it is, people who had fought for and won jobs at Microsoft and who still must fight every six months for primacy on the employee-ranking scale (which determines--gasp!--how many new stock options they receive) would assume that their skill as tasters was on trial, just as much as the beer was. Here is what happened and what it meant: 1. Procedure. This was similar in most ways to the experimental approach of Round 1. The missing three dropped out with excuses of "my wife is sick" (one person) and "meeting is running long" (two). The A-to-J labeling scheme was the same for all testers. Descriptions of and comments about each beer's taste--"smooth and nutty," "too strong," etc.
 Part of what matters is the label itself
 The experimenters were unqualified  The experiment subjects were unqualified  The sample size was too small  Part of what matters is the label itself