Found this article on Stan H's blog pretty interesting regarding FWH:
http://appellationbeer.com/blog/we-might-have-been-wrong-about-first-wort-hopping/
I'm withholding judgement for now, until the work is peer reviewed and published. It certainly seems plausible, but not much to say until their is a formal paper or a broader distribution of the poster.
(As an aside related to a comment earlier in this thread, I did some of my best and most widely cited scientific work as a graduate student; students tend to have more time to explore a topic in depth and breadth, a luxury that's not always possible later in one's career.)
(and as another aside, is this poster or at least an abstract available anywhere?)
(and as a final aside, in some fields p=0.067 as referenced in one of the comments at the original post would be good enough for considering results worthy! p=0.05 is an arbitrary, if convenient, cut-off)