In this case no, the blue was the original you are right that this might have screwed with the results. HotOrNot internal algorithms were also a bit opaque.
But to be fair the setup of the original study wasn't natural either. The color in those studies has the color of the border of the photo.
If I wanted to repeat the experiment I would like to it on Amazon Mechanical turk. At the moment I don't really have the spare money for projects like that but maybe someone else on LW cares enough to dress in an attractive way and wants to optimize and has the money.
The whole thing might also work good for a blogger willing to a bit of cash to write an interesting post.
Especially for online dating like Tinder, photo optimisation through empiric measurement of photos can increase success rates a bit.
Conflating whether or not you could do something to stop them with finding truth makes it harder to have an accurate view of whether or not the result is true. Accepting reality for what it is helps to have an accurate perception of reality.
I'm not certain where you see conflation. I have separate storage areas for things to think about, evidence, actions, and risk/reward evaluations. They interact as described here. Things I hear about go into the "things to think about" list.
...Only once you understand the territory should you go out and try
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
Notes for future OT posters:
1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.
2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one.
3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.
4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.