In my personal experience (which is too limited to be of any statistical value) I have seen *less* retaliatory secondary screening. I always decline to remove my shoes and my shoes don't trigger the alarm. In the past few months I have refused about six requests to remove my shoes (out of about 30 trips) and I was *not* sent to secondary on about 1/2 of those.

I have recently decided on a new tactic. I am going to include a 1" thick piece of wood in my luggage. When a screener claims that my sole "appeared to be 1" thick" (they are actually less than 1/2") I will produce the sample board and suggest to the supervisors that they obviously need substantial additional training.