No, I think there are some significant bugs in the faction simulation.It seems like most of the "experiments" had hundreds of players all working together to move the needle, and it barely moved. Do you think there were hundreds of players working for the other side cancelling out their work? It seems unlikely, doesn't it.
Because while my group has gotten stalled out in some of our efforts, others have worked great, and we've even seen faction influence changes in systems where only a few of us are doing trading as well. It seems like the lower population the system is the easier it is to move that needle, as it were, but that's just my impression from messing about with things since launch.