Hardly relevant to BTC, but an interesting topic IMO.
(snip)
How hard were they trying though? I recall reading a paper from one of the Ivy League universities that concluded that perfect pitch could not be learned in adulthood. And the argumentation, as well as the experiment itself, was lackluster to say the least.
Really hard. As in everything that can possibly be done within legal and ethical means. This is study time on google if that's not enough.
Perfect pitch appears to be dependent on both a genetic trait and a development window. Nature and nurture. The genetic trait is probably present in something like 20% of the population. The window of opportunity for actually having perfect pitch during adulthood roughly coincides with the window for native language learning.
Native speakers of tone languages (Chinese language/dialects, Thai etc) have a higher than average percentage of adults with perfect pitch. This is probably due to children being exposed to more-or-less fixed pitch sillables while that part of the brain is developing.
There are several studies that come to similar conclusions. I've read a few (say, at least a couple). I can't be bothered to look them up, but big G can help.