"Paul Stamler" wrote in message


Some of you may be old enough to remember the "deltoid test" flap. In
the early days of digital recording, a clinical psychologist (was his
name Diamond?) claimed that digital recordings agitated his patients,
while analog recordings calmed them. He proved that by employing the
"deltoid test", borrowed from chiropractic.

Very close. Dr. Diamond was a chiropractic doctor. The deltoid test is
apparently a pretty standard Chiropractic test

http://www.chiroweb.com/archives/16/14/31.html


In that test, the subject stands with arms outstretched; the
experimenter suddenly presses downward. Whether or not the subject
can resist tells the experimenter something about his/her muscle
tone, and presumably other things like stress level. The good doctor
found that when subjects listened to digital recordings, they showed
much lower muscle tone than when they listened to analog recordings.

The essence of the of Clark's retest was to perform the Deltoid test under
double blind conditions. This was printed as part of the notes from a
section meeting in Detroit.

Now, it's not entirely outside of the realm of possibility that
digital recordings might have subtle physiological effects. And it's
certainly possible that the deltoid test might be detecting real
physiological effects, whether or not they might be connected to what
the subject was listening to.

Under double blind testing conditions, the results were random guessing.

But when the doctor cautioned that it was well-known in the world of
chiropractic that the effects of the deltoid test would be skewed if
there was refined sugar anywhere in the room, that's when it was time
for the horselaugh.

Welcome to chiropractic. Nice people but you have to check your mind at the
door.