Our street experiment was to demonstrate just how easily people can be manipulated into offering up information without realising it.

BBC: Inside Out reveals mind readers' techniques

But mostly without realising it, the UK shopper has become more comfortable with haggling by asking stores to match the prices they have found online.

BBC: 'I'll give you a tenner for that'

They typically shoulder the costs without realising it.

ECONOMIST: Companies try to make health-care costs transparent

Any shipping, whether on the surface or under it, which passes near a glider can be detected, identified and pinpointed without it realising it has been spotted.

ECONOMIST: Fleets of robot submarines will change oceanography

The Treasury source told the BBC the chancellor had got into the car and left the scene without realising that it had been parked in the bay.

BBC: George Osborne 'unaware' his car was parked in disabled bay

Yet, taking these (extremely common) measures raises the probability that what the researcher finds in his data is due to sheer chance from the conventional 5% to a whopping 60.7%, without the researcher realising it.

FORBES: Publication Bias (or, Why You Can't Trust Any of the Research You Read)

Although often quite harmless (yet seldom really useful), some of them can actually be quite detrimental, without the adopting firms realising it.

FORBES: Management myths

Those infected do not develop symptoms for up to 20 years and spread it to others without realising.

BBC: Spread of hepatitis C pinpointed