I agree there are circumstances where experience appears to run contrary to known theory, and upon further examination, there turns out to be some previous unknown phenonema at work.

This case is not one of those situations. The phenomena at work here is well understood and there is a body of knowledge that extends well beyond the the musings of a cycling legend. This is also not "rocket science".
We don't make ball bearings out of aluminum and we don't make roller chain out of aluminum FOR A REASON.
I don't need to perform the experiment, because the theory is so iron clad in this case. Stainless trumps aluminum with regard to wear.

I do agree with electrik's earlier post. Because chainrings have more links engaged, the the wear is distributed and we can get by with aluminum chainrings (and save a little weight in the process). But I must confess that I am looking at a worn big ring on my Scott CR-1 after 3 years of use. It's not cheap to replace this ring gear.
I'd rather replace chain than ring gears.

The small chainring looks fine, not because of some mysterious effect, but because I am more often in the big ring! I wonder if Barry made a similiar observation and concluded wrongly! Who knows, maybe the steel rings he was using back in the 50's was inferior.

Rest assured that a stainless ring will out endure an aluminum ring hands down, I'd bet my life on it.

The original poster indicated that this is a single speed/fixed application. Part of the beauty of these bikes is that the simple chain setups are low maintinence. Putting a stainless ring on makes them even more so, and this is one reason why they make stainless chainrings availible for these bikes.