An Experiment in Beer-tasting*

Abstract

An experiment in beer tasting among 18 first year pre-clinical students showed that only two appeared to be able to discriminate light from bitter ale correctly. As a whole the group did worse than would be expected by guessing at random on each tasting trial. Some psychological biases, one possibly as a result of the design, are indicated by the results and a possible remedy suggested. The danger of acceptance of ‘views’ in clinical medicine without confirmatory experimental evidence was brought out by the students own failure to confirm a hypothesis (or ‘view’) that they believed before hand to be beyond question.