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[email protected] outsor@city-net.com is offline
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Default Panacea or Snake Oil

The subject line is the title of an entry in the current online
stereophile.

The author makes the now tired defense that if someone has a subjective
experience that some wooden block etc. can cause a sound difference then
it has to be considered valid.

What really brings the message home is that he says his training was in
experimental psychology. That field has as a first core directive that
everything must be demonstrated with a proper expermintal research
program.

Exept when it comes to the "sound" of wooden blocks etc. in audio gear it
appears. He also sets up statements evoking scientific audio folk that
are strawmen and red herring nonsense.

Is it too late for the school granting his degree to take it back?

But of course we are here dealing with marketing not science.

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Audio Empire Audio Empire is offline
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Default Panacea or Snake Oil

On Mon, 2 Jan 2012 16:36:47 -0800, wrote
(in article ):

The subject line is the title of an entry in the current online
stereophile.

The author makes the now tired defense that if someone has a subjective
experience that some wooden block etc. can cause a sound difference then
it has to be considered valid.

What really brings the message home is that he says his training was in
experimental psychology. That field has as a first core directive that
everything must be demonstrated with a proper expermintal research
program.

Exept when it comes to the "sound" of wooden blocks etc. in audio gear it
appears. He also sets up statements evoking scientific audio folk that
are strawmen and red herring nonsense.

Is it too late for the school granting his degree to take it back?

But of course we are here dealing with marketing not science.


Basically, we are talking about a "buff" magazine who has people like Cardas
(who sell the wooden blocks, among other things, BTW) as advertisers. They
certainly aren't tell their readership that one of their advertisers is
selling snake oil! Would you in that position? What I would do, is say
nothing. I wouldn't want to lose my advertiser, but I wouldn't want my more
knowledgeable and experienced readership to think that I believed this
nonsense either.

The guy who wrote the article is clearly towing the party line here.
Subjective results of that type are simply not reliable because the human
ear/mind is too easily fooled by looks and expectations.
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