Following the Great Fish Fraud, Edward Dolnick wrote an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times today, Fish or Foul?, which is a reminder that our minds play great tricks on us. The point is simple. Even when we think we know something, we are often wrong. And experts are just as bad as novices—maybe even worse!
Consider the following:
Wine connoisseurs get duped by (red colored) white wine!
In 2002, for instance, a French wine researcher named Frédéric Brochet gave 54 experts an array of red wines to evaluate. Some of the glasses contained white wine that Mr. Brochet had doctored to look red, by adding a tasteless, odorless additive. Not a single taster noticed the switch.
When expecting strawberry, even chocolate yogurt tastes like fruit.
In one recent test, psychologists asked 32 volunteers to sample strawberry yogurt. To make sure the testers made their judgments purely on the basis of taste, the researchers said, they needed to turn out the lights. Then they gave their subjects chocolate yogurt. Nineteen of the 32 praised the strawberry flavor. One said that strawberry was her favorite flavor and she planned to switch to this new brand.
What’s happening is that people’s expectations are overriding their perceptions! Red food coloring didn’t change the taste of the white wine, and the chocolate yogurt was very much chocolately. But our expectations, possibly leading to ignorance, carelessness, or overconfidence, created the illusion of something else. Literally mind over matter.
As the article points out, this is nothing new. But it can be shocking when the forgery takes place under your nose and you are the victim! With the Great Fish Fraud, those students discovered that this has happened yet again. Sushi chefs in New York City (and surely elsewhere), have been substituting cheap fish for luxury fish, charging for the luxury, and no one can tell the difference!
What to do about this? Don’t fret it. True, our minds are a powerful, but they must have evolved that way for a reason. Instead, focus on the positive and enjoy the moment! If you think you have strawberry but you really have chocolate, just be glad that you have anything at all 
