I'm reminded of the experiment I saw in which an airline pilot with tens of thousands of hours was blindfolded during a flight while another pilot put the aircraft through a few simple, harmless maneuvers. The airline pilot was then asked to describe the movements of the airplane. Of course, he was completely wrong—sensations cannot be trusted in flight. But he seemed very surprised by that.
I call BS, given that this demo is carried out as part of basic IF training. It makes as much sense as saying that a professional pilot would be surprised that the control column could be used to control attitude.
Either you aren't remembering it correctly, or the program makers were being disingenuous, or the 'pilot' was deliberately being misleading, or in fact had at most a few hours flying experience. Either way its crap.
pb