While the Hawthorne Effect is widely cited, even after many years the results have not been reliably reproduced so it should be invoked cautiously.
(N.B., since on re-reading this is less than clear from my original post: I did not intend to give a definitive answer to any of the items raised in the article. I do not possess the knowledge to do so. I merely intended to point out trivial starting points for research for this article)