The abstract [1] says:

"We asked 21 experienced violinists to compare violins by Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesu with high-quality new instruments. The resulting preferences were …"

It then goes on about preferences and says nothing about identifying them.

So it's the abstract of the study, written (I assume) by the researchers, and one of the participants vs a journalist "quoting" one of the researchers.

[1] http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/01/02/1114999109.abst...

The abstract you linked does say something about identifying them: "most players seemed unable to tell whether their most-preferred instrument was new or old."

And in the full text of the study: "Asked about the making-school of their take-home instruments, 17 subjects responded: 7 said they had no idea, 7 guessed wrongly (i.e., that a new violin was old or vice-versa), and just 3 guessed correctly"

edit: the link to the full study is http://www.pnas.org/content/109/3/760.full in case anyone was having trouble finding it from the abstract.

Yup. Maybe what happened is, since only 17 of 21 responded to that question, perhaps she was one of the 4 that didn't.

It is a pretty damning study: Few could identify the old, expensive violins AND most preferred newer, cheaper violins. It means that the tradition of loaning Strats to top violinists may actually make for (slightly) worse performances.

I love blind studies.

Most of the criticisms of the study are inaccurate, but I would like to see this redone with the old violins receiving the same tuning/treatment as the new ones. Depending on the condition the old violins were received in, not being allowed to tune them could have had a big impact on preference. I know I'd rather play a $50 guitar that's in tune than a $5000 one that's out of tune.

Maybe the instructions to the participants were so unclear that they didn't know whether they were supposed to be picking the strad, or their favorite.