Could be undergraduate research which is usually unpaid. Or it could be paid research and they were using Skrillex’s music as input stimulus for the control group and it just so happened to work much better than the test stimulus that they intended to investigate.
In fact the exact type of thing actually happened before! Researchers were studying which chemical worked as the best mosquito repellent, and they used Victoria’s Secret perfume for the control group’s input, and it turned out that the perfume was the second most effective!
Could be undergraduate research which is usually unpaid. Or it could be paid research and they were using Skrillex’s music as input stimulus for the control group and it just so happened to work much better than the test stimulus that they intended to investigate.
In fact the exact type of thing actually happened before! Researchers were studying which chemical worked as the best mosquito repellent, and they used Victoria’s Secret perfume for the control group’s input, and it turned out that the perfume was the second most effective!
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/victorias-secret-perfume-works-great-mosquito-repellent-180957270/