Thanks for the context, I was going to ask. You'd think they'd make it as well known as possible to avoid crap like this and also filter the group as hard as possible. I'm guessing they tried though and there were too many dropouts relative to recruits, so they had to keep it quiet again. Also, you'd be surprised how easy it is to forget you're allowed to leave somewhere. Ever heard of the stanford prison experiment? A psychology professor recruited several students to pretend to be prisoners and guards in a classroom. After a week he had to shut down the experiment because of how hard the guards were psychologically abusing the prisoners and the fact that the prisoners seemed to have lost awareness they could just walk out.