Oh come on. Come on. Who can’t taste the difference between Coke and Pepsi? Coke is drier and chocolatey…er. Pepsi is sweeter and… fizz…ier? For real, there is a complete and total difference between the two soft drinks, one that developers at Double Fine failed to recognise with any consistency. Come on.
Apparently bored with counting money from their landmark Kickstarter funding, Double Fine (Psychonauts, Brütal Legend) ran its own Coke/Pepsi taste test last week, documenting the results on its official website.
“Participant convictions towards their capacity for soda differentiation will be consistently strong,” hypothesized the study’s lead investigators, “but will not be borne out by empirical trials. In layman’s terms, everyone is full of crap.” Oh shut up. Who can’t tell this blindfolded? Coke tastes like Coke and Pepsi tastes like Pepsi. Duh.
Nine study participants were served five samples each, poured at random according to a coin flip. The best anyone did was Gabe Miller, who got four out of five correct. Three others got three out of four (though one of them put question marks after every answer, indicating low confidence.)
My favourite aspect of this, aside from the super serious scientificky formatting and language of the whole thing, is this particular observation
“[N]o participant incorrectly guessed every cup’s contents. This result would correlate with the ability to effectively distinguish between the products, despite an ability to correctly assign differentiated tastes, which would have been evidence in opposition to the hypothesis. That is to say, a participant who incorrectly guessed every single cup’s contents would still have consistently identified a difference between the two products.”
Coke vs Pepsi vs Humans at Double Fine [Double Fine]
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