You realize an escrow agent with one of the higher reputations on bitrated.com was in charge of the btc distribution right? The poor lad didn't get near as much as he probably should have for the headache this produced. I highly doubt he would risk his entire reputation (in this instance escrow career) for a portion of a BTC. Plus, like I said before, I verified each and every address in his excel sheet. They were all good.
To answer your second question, @newb1 is someone who participated in the experiment and was supposed to be paid 0.00000620, but as you can see in the comments section tuck-fheman donated his portion to @newb1 so he got an additional 0.09404528. I don't personally know @newb1, or anyone else for that matter, who participated in the experiment. All I can say as that they all treated me nicely, before, during, and after the flames :)