[Spiwux]

At the risk of sounding like a complete idiot, isn't the hypothesis of the original paper still true? Let's assume self assessment score is perfectly random between 0% and 100%, so on average every group will always estimate themselves to be 50% correct

Then by definition that means people who are unskilled and often incorrect will overestimate themselves, while people who are often correct will underestimate themselves. Take a complete idiot for example. You always get 0% test score. Yet your self-assessment is random between 0% and 100%. Hence you overestimate yourself much more often than people who always get 100% test score.

In fact, if the two are uncorrelated, then that still means that

1) Idiots don't recognize they're idiots

2) Skilled people don't recognize they're skilled