"dave weil" wrote in message

On Sun, 5 Sep 2004 05:08:52 -0400, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:

"Robert Morein" wrote in message

"John Atkinson" wrote in message
om...
"Michael McKelvy" wrote in message
link.net...
This is excerpted from a thread on the diyaudio.com website
I thought Arny might wish to weigh in either here or there on
the matter.

You didn't include the link to the Stereophile article on
double-blind testing. It is
http://www.stereophile.com/features/141 .

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

John,
Good article.

It's a biased misleading POS designed to appeal to people who want to
believe in magic, not science.

From the article:

The ABX Comparator system, which I helped develop, has been refined
during the 10 years of its existence by the suggestions of many
audiophiles and scientists. Some hardware improvements of this system
can even be traced to the pages of this magazine (Vol.5 No.5). Other
inputs have resulted in the development of double-blind listening
tests which require no switching. The reason for perfecting listening
tests is to develop the ability to hear sonic improvements when they
exist as sound, rather than as mere claims. To quote the esteemed J.
Gordon Holt on the subject of double-blind testing, "The losers will
be the dissemblers, the frauds, and those skilled in the art of
autohype. The winners, ultimately, will be music and the rest of us
who are interested in the maximal fidelity of reproduced music."-David
Clark

--------------------
Does Mr. Clark now consider you a turncoat, since you've in essence
called him a POS?

The logical flaw here is that the presence of one or even a few true facts
and well-considered opinions in an article does not prevent the entire
article from still being on balance, a POS. I suspect that Weil would be
able to detect this flaw in someone else's writing, but being highly
challenged in the self-awareness department, he missed this critical point
in his own writing.

Note that neither Weil nor Atkinson quoted the following paragraph from the
Stereophile aritcle on RAO:

"Les Leventhal's critique of the statistical analysis commonly used in blind
subjective testing is misleading, erroneous, and borders on the incompetent.
His letter is written in a style that prompts the casual reader to think
"Someone has finally figured out what's wrong with all those blind tests
where they don't hear anything." Not only has Leventhal failed to prove his
case; he has demonstrated his own lack of understanding of how the
audiophile benefits from double-blind testing. "

Dave was being a gentleman at this point and didn't call Leventhal's
weirdness a POS. But he pretty well communicated the same basic idea.

Apparently, the absence of a snapply comeback from Atkinson means that he
reread page 5 of his own article.