I would really like to see this study. That doesnt sound right to me though. The biggest problem with going over 5-10K on an oil change is not the loss of lubrication, but the gaining of contaminants in the oil. Gas, carbon, heavy metals, all that by products of combustion seep there way into the oil. Gasoline for example turn oil acidic, this will eat away at other parts of the internal engine when left exposed for a long time. I am willing to bet the 95,000 mile Corvette was done inside on a dyno over the course of a week or two, not the normal 10 years it would take an average person to put that many miles on the car. Leaving corrosive oil sitting in your engine for 10 years is going to destroy a lot of ****.
I also have a theory on the easy break in period from manufacturers and I think its more so to cover their own ass and stupid people. So lets say you are a 45 year old man, mid life crisis and you decide you always wanted that brand spanking new corvette. No real experience with fast cars or hard driving, but **** it youve waited long enough. You read the manual and it tells you to do a hard break in for best performance. You get in your new corvette, find a nice stretch or road and punch it. OOOPS! You dont know how to drive this car and you arent familiar with its handling or performance and you just roasted the rear tires shifting into 2nd gear at 60MPH spinning you out into a ditch and possibly killing yourself or someone else. Now whos fault is to blame for that? Sure most of the fault rest on the driver, however the manufacturer still told the guy he had to do it for best performance. Instead they tell people to go easy on the break ins, so that new inexperienced drivers arent killing themselves at the advice of the manufacturer. They take it slow, work their way up in power and performance so they are better at driving the 700HP car before they unleash all those extra HP.
Along with that theory is my liability theory. So lets say the dealership is putting the cars final touches on it and the tech screws up. Only puts in half the oil, doesnt tighten a lug nut all the way, forgets to properly seal a drain plug/cap. You take your new car out, punch it and something goes wrong because of that. A wheel falls off, engine blows from all the oil shooting out the drain plug, overheats and seizes up. By telling customers to drive slow, they are less likely to damage the car if such a situation happened and less likely to get into an accident at the same time.
So they tell people to do an easy break in period. The car probably gets a few less HP, nothing the average joe would notice anyways and maybe the engine only last to 200K instead of 300K. No one who owns the car would ever suspect or know better. The science behind a hard break in has been proven, its proven every day on the race tracks by the people who build and race engines for the highest performance. So far Ive never seen a single piece of evidence to support an easy break in besides the manufacturer telling you to do so.