How is that science?
Tell you what, I'm going to study the Hindenburg disaster, but I'm not going to use Hydrogen when I build a scale model. It's too dangerous. Instead, I will use some other gas so that I can precisely measure exactly what happened during the explosion. You know, it;'s this kind of "science" that provides Global Warming nonsense.
By the way, back to Molasses in 1919, I've been told that you could smell molasses in Boston's North End for decades during warm weather.
Chemically, molasses and corn syrup are very similar in terms of composition and viscosity.
Molasses would be sucrose; corn syrup would be glucose + fructose. Sucrose is made of one fructose + one glucose, covalently bonded. The viscosity is dependent on the water content.
In the case of the students, the decision to use corn syrup instead of molasses could have been for a number of reasons: the cost, the smell, or the potential of molasses to stain things could all have been factors.
It is not unusual in science to use something that is similar to the substance actually being studied. As long as the proxy is validated to behave like the actual substance in the conditions being studied, the results are completely valid.
We use all kinds of proxies to stand in for human beings in medical research.
The hydrogen flamed are pretty much invisible. It was the fabric of the blimp that was highly flammable. Bad combination there.