Trimming the plane for neutral stick force is part of safely trying to get back to the ground. This is a fundamental airplane flying concept since the 172 presolo days. Literally lesson one.
A lot of "progress" happened since the 172... Modern Pilots rely a lot on Autotrim, all Airbus FBW aircraft can be flown completely ignoring the trim. Maybe this even is a good idea, as it makes the life easier for the pilot and eliminates sources for error. Until some systems fail, and all of a sudden the pilot has to deal with another very powerful flight control element (actually much more powerful than the elevator for most aircraft) he completely had forgotten about...
To decouple pilot controls from aircraft control surfaces may after all not be a very clever idea.
After reading through all 12 of the AF 447 threads, I came away with the impression that some people felt that the A in BEA stood for Airbus.
Probably those people have not read all 420 pages (including the appendices). There are some subtle but very clear points which BEA addresses, that could be understood as Airbus design deficiencies. For example the missing speed stability of the airbus FBW logic or the stall warning inhibit function.
Most probably the Boeing MCAS will also be mentioned as "not so clever idea" in the final reports, without identifying it as cause or contributing factor... So those reading only that part of the report will probably claim that the B in NTSB stands for Beoeing...
Need to be specific about what you mean by "duplicate the problem".
Boeing test pilots will never be able to duplicate the problem, that the pilots do not 100% understand the MCAS logic, and are taken by surprise.
If you know what will hapen and why it happens, if you are prepared, it is a totally different scenarion.