1/ You start with a navigational view in "icon view"
2/ Click on the combo list on the Nautilus main menu, and choose "list view"

Result: If your computer is slow enough, you'd see the view switch to list, but do a in-between, there is a temporary switch to the previous view and it goes back to the chosen view.

I did see this problem since few release (2.24 at least but never take time to report).