a bizarre social experiment, designed to disorientate and make everyone doubt what they thought they knew to be true.
I can't stand the story because it is often used, inappropriately, to deprecate others...
That said, that scenario always reminds me of Kornbluth's scifi story, Marching Morons because it succeeds by undermining people's memories and certainties.
mysite.du.edu/~treddell/3780/Kornbluth_The-Marching-Morons.pdf
One of the characters, Mrs Garvy, remembers that rockets crash so she is sceptical when she sees references to trips to Venus as a desirable vacation destination. Nonetheless, well-planted media propaganda undermines her certainty. As does her husband's certainty that she's wrong because women are unlikely to pay appropriate attention to current events.
Start quotation
Well, I thought ya couldn't get to Venus. I thought they just had that
one rocket thing that crashed on the Moon."
"Aah, women don't keep up with the news," said Garvy righteously,
subsiding again.
"Oh," said his wife uncertainly.
And the next day, on Henry's Other Mistress, there was a new character who had just breezed in: Buzz Rentshaw, Master Rocket Pilot of the Venus run.
On Henry's Other Mistress, "the broadcast drama about you and your
neighbors, folksy people,ordinary people, real people." Mrs. Garvy listened with amazement over a cooling cup of coffee as Buzz made hay of her hazy convictions.
...
She was a stubborn woman, but it occurred to her that she
was very sick indeed. She didn't want to worry her husband. The next day she quietly made an appointment with the family freud.
In the waiting-room she picked up a fresh new copy of Readers
Pablum and put it down with a faint palpitation. The lead article, according to the table of contents on the cover, was titled "The Most Memorable Venusian I Ever Met."
...
Like many cures of mental disorders, Mrs. Garvy's was achieved largely by self-treatment. She disciplined herself sternly out of the crazy notion that there had been only one rocket ship and that one a failure. She could join without wincing, eventually, in any conversation on the desirability of Venus as a place to retire, on its fabulous floral profusion. Finally she went to Venus.
End quotation
She was, of course, by participating in the trip, also participating in the propaganda programme (the travellers didn't know the trip hadn't left Earth. And, it's used to persuade people to compete for space on Venus colonisation transports that are the cover for an extreme eugenics and depopulation programme.