"Don Pearce" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 12:27:54 +0000 (UTC), Gareth Magennis wrote:

"Don Pearce" wrote in message
.. .
On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 11:45:53 +0000 (UTC), Gareth Magennis wrote:

And that is exactly Sciences problem. If the "evidence" it insists is
required is unreportable (and there is such a thing as unreportable
evidence) than Science assumes it doesn't exist.

But the evidence in this case is not unreportable - it is merely absent.
There is a difference, you know.

d



OK, try this one. You know when you've been driving on the motorway and
you
realise that you have no recollection of the last 5 minutes? What was
happening then, were you in a trance, or is it just that none of that
time
actually got stored in your memory? Were you concious at all? Lots of
possibilities. So you decide to conduct an experiment. The next time
this
happens you will check out your conciousness and see what is happening.
Only you can't because the very act of attempting to carry out this test
alters your conciousness and the test in invalid and impossible.

Listening to music at home during a long term test may at first be
altered
by you being concious that it is a test and you are listening for
results.
Eventually you will tire of this and forget about the test, and over a
long
period, say several days with the same CD player, you may be able to say
something like "I don't know why, but with the Philips CD player, I just
wanted to dance all the time, whereas 3 days with the Naim puts me in a
really peaceful mood and classical music sounds better than on the
Philips.
But as soon as you start to analyse the sound system, something changes
and
you are back to your test scenario, invalidating the test.


There is no reportable evidence here, or even any tangible evidence at
all,
other than the Subjective experiential evidence the scientists don't
count.




Gareth.

OK try this one: Somebody says that two cables (for instance) sound
different. He swaps them around and says "can't you hear the difference?
It
is really obvious". You say "no, I can't". So you tell him to turn his
back
while you choose the cable, and ask him which he is hearing. He can no
longer hear the difference. There is no trance, no memory loss, no
difference to the previous circumstance - just an absence of advance
knowledge of which cable he is listening to.

That is reportable, and a clear absence of evidence for *audible* effects.

d


Actually I don't think that these types of short term tests are valid at
all. There is an enormous propensity for bias, even Audiophiles must admit
that, surely. But I think, and hope, that most Audiophiles are really
talking about long term testing in their own homes. I don't think there is
much in common between the two situations so you can't use one to prove or
disprove the other, which I believe the scientific community is trying to
do.


Gareth.