Isn't it? The answer wasn't that judges were making decisions based on their hunger, it was that judges arrange their schedules for some reason other than random. If a biologist working with samples gets a reading that can't be explained by a natural process but can be explained by a miscalibrated piece of equipment or a test tube that wasn't properly washed, it absolutely is how science works for the problem to be identified and the labwork to be run correctly, rather than publishing a result based on bad data. It's the same here; if the magnitude of the effect you find is at least an order of magnitude higher than any other study of similar effects, before publishing the finding you should have an airtight case that what you found is the effect you're measuring, not a data quality problem. They couldn't have an airtight case because their findings weren't driven by what they thought they were measuring.