Rutherford's gold foil experiment: can alphas be deflected by electrons vs. nucleus? In this experiment, is it possible that some of the alpha particles are deflected by the electrons?  Gold, after all, usually also has ~79 of them in each atom.
Since the alpha particles want electrons, couldn't some of them steal electrons on their way through, creating Helium+ ions (or atoms)? 
Update: @pwf found some good quotes below from Rutherford's report that seem to confirm that he assumed the effects of the electrons on the alpha beam would be low, but he did not measure them nor account for them in his measurements.  So this question is updated to recognize that there seems to be general agreement that the deflection by electrons would happen, but that the frequency and angle of deflection would be low. One question remains: If Rutherford didn't bother to measure this effect experimentally, has anyone?
Found this detailed "thought experiment" where he seems to lay out all the calculations very well.  Perhaps he or others have conducted the actual experiment:
http://www.med.harvard.edu/JPNM/physics/didactics/physics/charged/lect.html
 A: Rutherford modeled the atom as an extremely compact positive nucleus surrounded by a uniform ball of negative charge the "size" of the atom.  He included the effect of scattering by the electrons under the assumption that they acted like such a diffuse cloud of negative charge, and showed that such a cloud had negligible probability of scattering the alpha particles by more than a degree.  That's not because it lacks mass, but because it is diffuse, or rather, composed of many small charges rather than one compact point of high charge, so the alpha particle trajectory would be composed of multiple small deflections ("deflexions" in his spelling!) from the negative charges rather than a single large one.  So yes, the electrons could scatter the alpha particles, but for a diffuse electron cloud the effect is negligible.  (Actually, as far as I can tell the data would also be consistent with a compact negative nucleus surrounded by a diffuse positive cloud.  How Rutherford justified the conclusion that the nucleus was the positive part is mysterious to me.)

Edit: From Rutherford, Philosophical Magazine 21, 669-688 (1911), penultimate paragraph:  "The deductions from the theory so far considered are independent of the sign of the central charge, and it has not so far been found possible to obtain definite evidence to determine whether it be positive or negative."  He goes on to explain why a positive nucleus might make more sense in terms of $\beta$ absorption and $\alpha$ emission (e.g. why $\alpha$ particles are emitted with such high velocity).

From the same article:  Rutherford explains that J. J. Thomson's model of distributed positive and negative charges involves multiple small scattering events, and predicts only small overall "deflexions" (pp 669-670).  
After laying out his own model of the compact central charge surrounded by a uniformly dense negative charge, he writes (pp. 671-2), "Since R [the radius of the ball of negative charge] is supposed to be of the order of the radius of the atom, viz. $10^{-8}$ cm., it is obvious that the $\alpha$ particle before being turned back penetrates so close to the central charge, that the field due to the uniform distribution of negative electricity may be neglected.  In general, a simple calculation shows that for all deflexions greater than a degree, we may without sensible error suppose the deflexion due to the field of the central charge alone.  Possible single deviations due to the negative electricity, if distributed in the form of corpuscles, are not taken into account at this stage of the theory.  It will be shown later that its effect is in general small compared with that due to the central field."
He gets around to that discussion near the end, which may be most relevant to your question (p. 686): "In comparing the theory outlined in this paper with the experimental results, it has been supposed that the atom consists of a central charge supposed concentrated at a point, and that the large single deflexions of the $\alpha$ and $\beta$ particles are mainly due to their passage through the strong central field.  The effect of the equal and opposite compensating charge supposed distributed uniformly throughout a sphere has been neglected.  Some of the evidence in support of these assumptions will now be briefly considered.  For concreteness, consider the passage of a high speed $\alpha$ particle through an atom having a positive central charge Ne, and surrounded by a compensating charge of N electrons.  Remembering that the mass, momentum, and kinetic energy of the $\alpha$ particle are very large compared with the corresponding values for an electron in rapid motion, it does not seem possible from dynamic considerations that an $\alpha$ particle can be deflected through a large angle by a close approach to an electron, even if the latter be in rapid motion and constrained by strong electrical forces.  It seems reasonable to suppose that the chance of single deflexions through a large angle due to this cause, if not zero, must be exceedingly small compared with that due to the central charge."
BTW, I highly recommend reading the original article.  Once you decipher the somewhat archaic notation, it's extremely readable.
A: The key difference is that the alpha particle is several thousand times heavier than the electron. It would be like you rolled a bowling ball at a marble and it bounced backward. As Rutherford said: 

"It was quite the most incredible event that has ever happened to me in my life. It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you. On consideration, I realized that this scattering backward must be the result of a single collision, and when I made calculations I saw that it was impossible to get anything of that order of magnitude unless you took a system in which the greater part of the mass of the atom was concentrated in a minute nucleus. It was then that I had the idea of an atom with a minute massive centre, carrying a charge."

A: Electrons can deflect a heavy alpha-particle backward if they are sufficiently energetic. There are such electrons indeed, but their concentration is very small, I guess.
A: Note that there is an effect on the electrons that is much larger than caused by direct interaction with the alpha particle. If the alpha partcle collides with the nucleus then the nucleus will change its momentum. To a good approximation this is an instanteneous change and then the so-called "sudden approximation" applies to the electron state. So, the electrons find themselves in a new moving potential well relative to the old potential well. Because this change happens almost instantenously, the wavefunction stays the same. But the old wavefunction is not an energy eigenstate, this leads to a finite probability that the electron configuration will not be the ground state configuration. 
A: Exept that alpha particles are much heavier than electrons and it wouldn't make sense for them to change the direction when in contact with electrons, the point of the experiment was that, because of the deflected alpha particles ONLY in a very tiny, central area of the atom, most of the atom space is EMPTY. This conclusion wouldn't been made if alpha particles and electrons would somehow interact.
A: Backscattering requires a repulsive force while an electron would attract the alpha particle. Furthermore, the electron is lighter than the alpha particle : in a collision between a truck and a mosquito, the truck doesn't rebound at all.
EDIT : unidimensionnal motion (ie. the particle moving back and forth on the same line) requires a repulsive force, but dmckee argued that an attractive force could produce a result that would be experimentally undistinguishable. To rule out the possibility of scattering by an electron, only the difference in mass in necessary : for a negative charge to backscatter an alpha particle, it would need to be much heavier than an electron. Now, the mass of the electron was known to be very small at the time of Rutherford's experiment. Even if ALL the electrons in the gold atom would gatter in a small nucleus, it would not be enough : by Newton's third law, an equal force would be exerted on the alpha particle and on the negative charge, therefore the latter would have 80 times more acceleration. The negative charge would be scattered, not the alpha particle.
