A lot of people want to demonstrate that market failure [edit: does or] does not exist, hence there are many more attempts to show the inferiority [edit: or superiority] of Dvorak than you would expect to see in a politically neutral context.
You should be aware the the Dvorak vs Qwerty debate is politically charged. If it turned out that Dvorak were superior, this would be evidence for market failure.
A lot of people want to demonstrate that market failure does exist, hence there are many more attempts to show the superiority of Dvorak than you would expect to see in a politically neutral context.
Disclaimer: I'm very happy with Dvorak, since it feels more comfortable to me than Qwerty and I have no doubt it helped me recover from repetitive strain injury. Other than that, I have no horse in this race.
Edit: also, why is tome (grandparent) being downvoted? He makes a good point.
I don't understand why anyone would see this as something that can never happened. The market is made up of people and people are often going to be ignorant about the details of what they're buying. Often they choose purchase price above all even though total cost of ownership is a lot more expensive for the "cheap" product. Then you have to add market hype, incorrect perception, on and on.
I don't believe in market failures, and I think Dvorak is superior and have been using it for a few years.
This doesn't contradict what you said, though, because, whether or not it would be a market failure, these people you mention certainly think it would be.