The science of opinion ...

@atdavid, Thanks for the opening link.
I think I’ll stay in neutral, and watch the traffic on the freeway. ;)

@geo, even better link, and more to the point. *G* 

@swanlee597

You pretty much cannot go on an audio forum these days without a vocal group yelling "snake oil" "ABX before you can share your opinions" about EVERY single thing in audio.

It’s gotten to the point I think these people get offended if people EVER listen to their system for pleasure anymore.

Just gotta ignore them as those cries add nothing to any audio discussion. To them every piece of equipment and every cable sounds the same, nothing makes a difference besides speakers and we are all wasting our time.

That mentality never leads to anything worthwhile as far as audio discussion

So true. What always amazes me is the question as to what motivates these people? Why do so many people want to spend their short life telling people that they are buying snake oil and telling them to do double blind tests and repeating this ad infinitum. It is pointless. Why do they do it?
@atdavid is at least trying to do it in an original way here, but it still amounts to the same absolute waste of time. Just...why?

Let me try to help the OP out. 

• Keep an arsenal of scientistic buzzwords at the tip of your tongue. So armed, you can effortlessly explain away even the most firmly acknowledged mysteries with a few impressive phrases and a wave of your hand. For example, the undeniable but incomprehensible facts of animal migration may be definitively ascribed to a "biological spatio-temporal vector-navigation program." Likewise, you may call upon such quasi-substantial conceptual conveniences as "biological clock," "self-organization" and "cellular memory" to deflate any suggestion that orthodox science may lack satisfactory explanations for intractably puzzling phenomena.

• Establish a crusading "Scientific Truth Foundation" staffed and funded by a hive of fawning acolytes. Then purport to offer a million-dollar reward to anyone who can repeatably demonstrate a paranormal phenomenon.  Set the bar for paranormality nowhere in particular. Set the bar for repeatability at a "generous" 98%, safely ensuring that even normal scientific studies that demand a mere preponderance of evidence, or average results above chance, would fail to qualify for the prize. Should someone actually meet or exceed your criteria you can effortlessly dismiss their claim by pointing out that they'd just proven the phenomenon to be perfectly normal!

There are a great many audiophile devices that will surely test the suspicious and intractable mind of the skeptic we haven’t touched on too much here. Dare I even broach the subject? You know what I’m talking about. Things that go bump in the night. Things that absolutely drive skeptics right up the wall.

Mpingo discs and fancy fuses can’t hold a candle to the Icons of Tweakery. Let me give you a few examples. Silver Rainbow Foil. 😛 Red x Pen. 😬 The Intelligent Chip. 😩 Quantum Temple Bell 🤪 Morphic Message Labels. 😲 The Clever Little Clock. New Dark Matter. The Mystery Tweak which, by the way, I’ve decided not to offer for sale because then it wouldn’t be a secret anymore, would it? Lock four physics PhDs 🤓 🤓 🤓 🤓 in a room for a week and they would not be able to figure them out.

Ethan would be like kryptonite to you geoff, he knows almost everything about a subject to which you know almost nothing :-) .... serious side: he can be dogmatic and jumps to conclusions without considering all variables, and will fight you, but he does listen. Speaking purely of acoustics at this point.

Ethan is true pseudo expert. A pencil twiddler of the worst and blind kind. Reminds me of someone here....

His product is crap, his knowledge base is crap. He has threatened to sue people before (individuals, forums, magazines, editorial staff, and experts among them) and been kicked off forums for such behavior. He’s been kicked off more than one forum, for sure.

I and others have gone ’round and ’round with him before, and we have encountered his limited depth to such a large degree that his pattern is well known and well understood. To a point well past nausea. Reminds me of something.....it does....

Are these the marks and talents of a person whom you respect?

Ethan is good with spinning numbers on a calculator or whatnot, but even a dog or horse can be trained to do that.

But knowledgeable about acoustics? yes, maybe... at the generic base level. The rubber stamp simplistic textbook ’by the numbers’ level. Sure. Sort of.

Can he fix REAL problems outside of a simplistic textbook formula?

No.

This means there is little to no mind of capacity or intellect - behind the facade.

Normally, as in the vast number of situations... I would leave this sort of thing alone. But Ethan has surely managed to drum up his own enemies by attacking that which he does not understand, with relentless fervor. And damaging the other given business and people, in the process. Kicking him to the curb is a moment of sanity and reason.