Oh absolutely. It's really hard to do a double-blind test when riding a bike unless the bike is disguised by a third party, not the tester and not test personnel. It is really tricky with subtle differences.

That university study on bicycle dynamics that I've referenced in the past, I was so impressed with the computer model they created, that when input with values, provided graph outputs of stability curves. That was with a greatly simplified two wheel vehicle for test purposes alone, not resembling a typical bicycle. But I think by now they have gotten to the point of high-fidelity simulations, I think driven most by the motorcycle industry, but the same sim models should apply to bicycles, although bikes are so much lighter, they can have more subtle differences, so I don't know for sure, I'm not in the 2-wheel industry. The industry does dynamic simulation programs, then compares with actual tests, refines the sims, etc, and year by year, things get closer and closer. It's really amazing. But (for cars, at least) they still do a couple weeks of final ride and handling tuning with at least 3 different variables of each part (target, higher, lower) at the test track before final production sign-off. Sometimes that takes a couple months because it's in a nice warm and sunny location versus the winter in Detroit.