In the lyceum where I studied, there was one lab on Physics, where the book that accompanied the lab was deliberately wrong. We were told to perform an experiment that "should" support a certain conclusion, but actually neither the "correct" conclusion nor its opposite could be done because of the flawed setup which measured something slightly different. A lot of students (in some groups, all students) fell into this trap and submitted paperwork with the "correct" conclusion according to the book.
A CS-specific analogy might be to give the students a compiler that has a bug in it, such that the students' code is deliberately mis-compiled. The standard of evidence to believe that the compiler is buggy is much higher than the standard to believe that my code is buggy.
A lab exercise like that could really just be selecting for chutzpah (feeling charitable) or arrogance (less charitable).
Well, that's more evil than my lab. A more direct equivalent in the CS would be an algorithm description in the booklet with one subtly wrong (e.g. proven using some well-hidden circular reasoning) and uncorrectable step. The expectation would be that a good student finds the mistake instead of submitting the implementation of the flawed algorithm, or, for even better matching with my case, proves that the supposed output cannot be obtained from the inputs at all.
I had an appendectomy just before the final first-year Modern Physics lab and had to come back in to do a make-up lab. Sure enough it was the slightly-messed-up lab where the results should in theory look exponential but come out linear. I, naturally, drew an exponential curve through the points. Lab instructor decided to grade it right there before I left and tore a strip off me.
Very valuable lesson, although it sure did suck at the time.
