Comment by rlpb
The trouble with these kinds of games is that they put the more diligent students at a disadvantage. For example, someone might compare their experimental result against the textbook constant, realise it's wrong, and spend much more time trying to identify their "mistake", not realising they've been sabotaged. This puts further pressure on their other work.
One cannot argue that this is fair on the basis that it's the "real world", because all that does is reward the sloppier (middle) approach. It filters the very lazy from the average, but at the expense of the excellent.
Given that the labs were with TAs present, at that point, you'd just go to the TA and they'd tell you to write down the number even if it didn't match.