The Truth About Power Cords and there "Real" Price to Performance

geoffkait18,508 posts11-26-2019 12:53pmthyname
But maybe someone is brave enough to step forward...

>>>>You’re too late. Someone already stepped forward. 🚶🏻

Not what he asked

He asked the wrong question. Hel-loo! 

atdavid

While ideally the test would be double blind, that is not always a viable thing to do.

Quite so! Conducting a controlled test with the goal that it will be scientifically valid is a tricky business. It’s time-consuming, tedious and cumbersome, so not likely to be fun for most audiophiles. I’m sure that’s one reason such tests are uncommon in our community.

There are two biases, subject bias and observation bias. Single blind removes subject bias, which is usually the dominant bias. While double blind is the "gold standard", single bias is still used as it eliminate subject bias, and provides significantly more statistically relevant results. To suggest this is no more valuable than sighted tests shows a gross ignorance w.r.t. this type of testing.

Sorry, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. You can’t allow potential bias to creep into a test, and then excuse the bias by proclaiming that isn’t the "dominant" bias, whatever that is. The test you describe is a sighted test, and subject to whatever flaws such tests might include.

That’s especially so in this instance, where you’ve acknowledged that the tester will have to "lie" to the subject about whether he might be hearing the A or B component. The tester’s bias - or even his personality traits - can poison the test. For example, the tester may reveal a "tell" (as a poker player would call it) that could be even unconsciously detected by the test subject, thereby influencing his responses. And that’s why I said that your partially-sighted test has no advantage over a fully sighted test - bias can affect results either way.

If you want to conduct a scientific test, you have to control for as many variables as possible. This is science 101; there’s no disputing this basic stuff. I think it’s rather odd that some of those who clamor most loudly for scientific listening tests have such poor understanding of what’s involved. Perhaps that’s why they are so confounded that controlled tests are so rare: They think such testing is simple and straightforward, while nothing could be further from the truth.

Cleeds,
You are a broken record. Prof and I have schooled you on this many times and clearly showed how you are wrong. You keep coming back with the same tired and wrong answers.

1) We are not trying to implement a study or test that applies to every case, i.e. whether JoeBlowCablesInc model 2112 is the worlds best cable.   We are only, repeat Only trying to implement a study that either proves or disproves One persons claim, and under the conditions They make. Therefore, one only needs to repeat the conditions of their claim and use them (or who they designate) to prove or disprove their claim.

2) That you even attempt to argue that a blind test is not far superior to a sighted test removes any credibility you had or have. Your argument is akin to "Well even people who use parachutes sometimes die, so we should never use parachutes". That you repeatedly do this combined with your repeated attempts to refute (1) by describing something completely unrelated drops, at least in my mind, your credibility to 0.


Single blind testing is used regularly where tester bias is deemed to have overall limited impact on the results.  You really need some new material as these tired wrong arguments are stale.

atdavid

Single blind testing is used regularly where tester bias is deemed to have overall limited impact on the results.

What you’re saying is that your sighted test is better than other sighted tests. That’s just nonsense.

If you want to conduct a scientific test - of any sort - you need to eliminate as many potential sources of bias as possible. That’s a fundamental scientific principle, whether it suits your belief system or not.