Ok everybody, this is stupid. There is so much stupid here that my brains threatening to fall out. If it isn't already painfully obvious that this is getting no where and that both sides are being equally pissy, then you are beyond help. I don't understand the other side of this issue very well, so I won't speak for you all, but to try and help everybody here understand the skeptics (the proper ones, anyway), here goes.
I understand that you (that is, the not-skeptics) like to believe whatever suits you. It seems that most Americans are like that (a study published shortly before the election showed that something like 50% of self-proclaimed Conservatives believed that WMDs had been found in Iraq). I'm not like that. I enjoy learning about new things, so that I can understand them. That's what science is about: understanding. The statement "I hear a difference, despite the fact that all other knowledge would suggest that this is not possible" is, in part, difficult to defend because there is no understanding; there isn't even a hint of where to start looking. [It's not the current, since I've got $10 extension cords at home that can carry 15 A; and it's not the noise, since that's stuff we can filter.] Now if it were something obvious, like, "Rubbing cat fur on a glass rod charges the rod, but I don't get why" is different, since that's easily verifiable and I know where to start: friction. Brains are complicated though. They like to play tricks. Psychologists are very familiar with this and they know how to deal with it, though audiophiles seem to lack this facility.
Chief in the success of science is the idea of peer review. Nothing anyone says is (or at least should be) accepted without review. Things that cannot be reproduced are summarily ignored. Experiments that do not account for systematic errors are ignored. This isn't new. It allows for the correction of errors. So skepticism is healthy.
There is also this issue of plausibility. It's sort of a filter, to sift out all the cruft. I don't know about other disiplines, but in Physics, if you cannot explain why an effect has any right to exist, then you had better have some serious data to back it up. I've stated before that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". That means the evidence has to go above and beyond. No, it can't barely clear the bar. It can't even handily hop over it. It has to destroy the bar. This makes sure that we don't throw away perfectly good science because some shmuck thinks he saw something weird.
Now, I have already argued left and right about what constitutes a good measurement. I will say just one thing more about it. Several years ago when I was still a little green, I was trying to choose a music player. I was torn between Sonique (version 1.8 or so) and Winamp (~ v 2.7). I didn't expect there to be a difference, certainly not an audible one, but it costs nothing to check, right? So I checked, and I heard a difference. I touted in various forums: "I think Sonique sounds better, but I can see why you'd like the sound signature Winamp more. The difference must have been real, because I wasn't expecting it! I mean, that's anti-placebo, isn't it?"
What an idiot. If you don't feel the need to account for placebo, that's fine. But that's Bad Science. In any case, this is how I've been trained. I am naturally skeptical of anything that doesn't make sense. If there is enough data that is sufficiently good, then that would be fine too. I wouldn't need an explanation; I wouldn't even need to take the data myself. I think I'm being very generous here. But I don't see any data. Challenging me to waste my time is a waste of time itself. As in the scientific community, the onus is on the bucker to buck the system. The system isn't going to do it for you. That said, I think that in the future we should all be able to get along just fine thinking exactly as we do right now provided that we agree to disagree. I don't expect you to satisfy me, and you shouldn't expect me to satisfy you. Great, so now we can be friends again, right?