That reply is to someone who is saying, "I don't think that would work" - and I don't know what to say other than, "Why not give it a try?" I'm advocating change in phrasing based on real world observations of what's effective. If someone disagrees but has no data of trying it, I don't know what else to say...

I understand the difficulty in finding more evidence for this sort of thing. Once could do a study, and that's not a bad idea, but right now I can't think of any. I suspect what you need to do is not say "for a month." These types of things tend to give immediate feedback if you're interacting in person and paying attention, so trying it "the next time you're dealing with non-nerds." I know that most of my social experiments get a sample size of one and I suspect that is typical.