Are there actually any Scientists in the Sound SCIENCE forum?????/

[Shark_Jump]

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Originally Posted by ert /img/forum/go_quote.gif As far as government regulation, I doubt it would have any effect. Despite the fact that I would be opposed to it on ideological grounds (gov affecting free trade),

Is it not illegal in the US to make misleading or false statements in an advertisement? Im sure if one or two manufacturers were made an example of if their claims didn't stand up to examination it would put the entire industry on notice.

Apologies going off thread but although I agree with most of the things you say I disagree in this instance. Wasn't the Global Financial Crisis caused by total lack of government regulation - until it was too late.

The following statement is made by a high end cable manufacturer. (BTW Smellygas I think this guy may be a PHD in natural science):

'Not all light is visible, and most of it is in bandwidths which we cannot see, but when you add it all together, the spectrum and energy is enormous and has profound influence on the quality of the resulting audio signal.'
This is good stuff .... 'http://www.lessloss.com/page.html?id=60'

As a scientist don't you feel the slightest sense of wanting to question statements like this?

 

[Clutz]

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Originally Posted by SmellyGas /img/forum/go_quote.gif I haven't seen any. I'm just curious. Are there actually any SCIENTISTS or RESEARCHERS here that: a) hold either a Ph.D. in a natural science discipline (i.e. NOT engineering and NOT in an applied science) or an M.D.

Yes, PhD in Biology.


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b) regularly design or interpret scientific experiments and/or papers designed to test hypotheses and draw conclusions

Yes, two chapters of (my six chapter) PhD theses involved statistical analyses of my experiments that I designed. Another two chapters of my PhD involved with developing novel randomization and simulation statistical techniques for analyzing data which is difficult to analyze with standard parametric and non-parametric techniques. A fifth chapter is pure mathematical biology, and the sixth is a straight up simulation biology, analyzed using traditional statistical methods.

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c) are personally comfortable with statistical analysis

Yes. My PhD supervisor has written a statistics textbook The Analysis of Biological Data, and included a discussion of at least two of my methods in this book.

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If so, what do you think about the published papers and experiments related to blinded, controlled listening tests of amps/cables/dac's?

Being a biologist, I've never bothered reading any published papers using blinded, controlled listening tests of amps/dacs/cables, I'd rather read biology (ecology, evolution, molecular biology, biochemistry, genetics) papers. If you care to point out a few (two to three) that you'd like an opinion on, then suggest them to me and I'll read them and provide a comment on them directly. I think wavoman would also provide an interesting commentary on them, too.

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(but there will be a lot of hateful and not-terribly-useful replies).

I usually avoid this particular sub-forum because of this exact reason. There is almost no point in spending any time discussing any of the above issues, because most people have no real interest in discussing science or statistics, unless the answers reaffirm their already held views, and there are a lot of people who claim non-existent technical expertise. As wavoman has pointed out, doing statistics correctly is hard and takes a lot of experience to be done correctly. A great deal of knowledge is required, and there is a lot of subtlety involved which is not obvious upon first pass. So in the end, all I can reliably expect for my efforts is to be attacked personally by people who don't know what they're talking about.

 

[wavoman]

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Originally Posted by Clutz /img/forum/go_quote.gif ... My PhD supervisor has written a statistics textbook The Analysis of Biological Data, and included a discussion of at least two of my methods in this book...

Right on 'bro! Looks like a great book, I'm ordering it. Congrats on the cites.

Added: yep, $55 incl. shipping, used, on Ammy. 1-clicked it and it's on its way.

 

[ert]

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Originally Posted by Shark_Jump /img/forum/go_quote.gif Is it not illegal in the US to make misleading or false statements in an advertisement? Im sure if one or two manufacturers were made an example of if their claims didn't stand up to examination it would put the entire industry on notice.

I'm not that familiar with US law to really reply to this, although I suspect that these types of cases would be heard in civil courts against the manufacturer in the case where a customer received a product that was not as advertised. In the defense of most of the high end equipment, they do provide fairly liberal return purchases so I don't see many oppurtunities for civil claims.

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Originally Posted by Shark_Jump /img/forum/go_quote.gif Apologies going off thread but although I agree with most of the things you say I disagree in this instance. Wasn't the Global Financial Crisis caused by total lack of government regulation - until it was too late.

No comment

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Originally Posted by Shark_Jump /img/forum/go_quote.gif As a scientist don't you feel the slightest sense of wanting to question statements like this?

True, but I quite frankly see similar stuff ten times a day in other advertising. I'm a chemical (control systems) engineer - Each time I see an add that says "...no chemicals added!!!" I cringe.