Audiophiles should learn from people who created audio

The sky is falling! The sky is falling! 🐥

Below is a quote from the late Gordon Holt:

Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand. As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me - Gordon Holt

A procedure for critical evaluation; a means of determining the presence, quality, or truth of something;

IMO audio hobby is stronger than ever with companies routinely offering higher and higher price components, wider selection of quality products, to my EAR superior SQ ...  This is not a sign of dying but growing industry.

Years ago we had companies like Western Electric, Bell Labs, RCA and others that invested considerably in R & D. I know some of the high end companies are now owned by large conglomerates, but I doubt research into auditory phenomena is the same today. It seems like much of the innovation is in the hands of smaller shops, cottage industry style or scientists who have migrated from other fields into audio because of their personal interest. Separating the wheat from the chaff isn't possible based on marketing or reviews. The handful of components that are enduring is relatively small. And, interestingly, many rely on modern implementations of  old technologies or are themselves old components.
The notion that science stays in place is, I think, contrary to the very notion of discovery and advancing learning. 

It seems the lawyers have a better understanding of science than the engineers around here

Good one, Todd. And funny. What should one make of the engineers who became lawyers? : )