[xg15]

> This feels like a huge stretch. Forgetting a step at one point or reading something out loud too early isn't a "complete breakdown of the supposedly legitimate scientific environment" -- a "scientific environment" that is completely fictional to begin with.

I found the idea pretty reasonable: Yes, the "scientific environment" was fake, but the "teachers" (i.e. actual subjects) didn't know that, so it should have appeared real to them.

The study tried to analyze the events strictly from the subjects' POV.

The point was that those mistakes would have broken the (fictional) experimental setup, and in a way that was obvious for the subjects too.

If they were really delivering the shocks only because "they were following procedure", then it's strange that they did so many mistakes that in fact broke the procedure. (and resulted in an even more aggressive shock regime than the procedure would demand)