You're not going to out-pedant me, damnit! :P Given the original comment, yes, I think it's more likely he just didn't understand why a A/A test might sometime

You're not going to out-pedant me, damnit! :P Given the original comment, yes, I think it's more likely he just didn't understand why a A/A test might sometimes show a false positive. Even if the system were misconfigured, there's no reason to think it would manifest as a false positive in an A/A test. There are lots of ways it could manifest.