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In Reply to: RE: Variability and context--Key point posted by Joe Roberts on September 29, 2015 at 05:58:08:
"Chris,
I follow your well-thought out argument and agree with most of it, but my next question would be is why does the outside world want to know and to what use does this information serve?"
Joe, I think there are plenty of reasons why one would like to know whether alleged phenomena are genuine or not. The specific example that was being discussed, namely the audibility of directionality of wires, is itself a rather trivial one, and I personally am perfectly happy to dismiss it as almost certainly a delusion in the ears of the beholder. But the more general question about the verifiability of alleged audio perceptions is of rather wider interest.
On the face of it, double-blind testing is just about the only way that one could attempt to make an objective test of whether someone's alleged ability to discriminate between two different configurations is genuine or not. Now, you counter by telling us that research in the "social sciences" of human subjects reveals that perceptions are context-dependent, and so on. And that in that field, the notion of double-blind testing has been discredited.
I presume by that you mean that it has been demonstrated to lead to incorrect conclusions? But that, surely, must mean that the researchers in the field must have come up with some other procedures for determining whether the human subject can or cannot hear the difference between the two configurations of the system? The researchers are, one would certainly hope, not simply taking the person's word for it that he can hear a difference, despite not being able to demonstrate that ability in some sort of tests?
If you can cite research on alternative procedures, as opposed to double-blind testing, that have demonstrated a human subject's ability to discriminate between the two configurations of the system even when double-blind testing failed, then that would certainly be very interesting. I would have no problem at all with learning that some other objectively-administered test procedure was demonstrably more reliable at correlating a test-subject's claims with the outcomes of the experiments.
If, on the other hand, you are saying that *any* method at all of trying to verify a person's claim to hear differences between two configurations of the system is necessarily invalid and worthless, then it begins to sound more like a descent into a metaphysical morass, where words and statements no longer have meaning, everything is relative, and everyone's beliefs and claims were all of equal validity.
It seems to me that the default assumption, i.e. the most natural interpretation, of a failure of a double-blind test to confirm a person's alleged ability to discriminate between two configurations of the system, would be that the person really cannot in fact discriminate between them, and the alleged differences are all in their mind. Any other conclusion is, I feel, an "extraordinary claim" that requires extraordinary evidence.
Now, maybe you will tell us about other objectively-administered tests that do a better job than double-blind testing. But in the absence of such evidence, I don't see any reason to be unsatisfied with the "natural interpretation," namely that double-blind tests are a reliable way of testing people's claims. Of course, I am well aware that some people, such as those in the high-end audio business, will have a very strong vested interest in debunking the conclusions reached by double-blind testing. But is there any objective evidence that double-blind testing is unreliable?
Chris
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Follow Ups
- RE: Variability and context--Key point - cpotl 07:21:08 10/02/15 (2)
- RE: Variability and context--Key point - Joe Roberts 08:06:20 10/02/15 (1)
- RE: Variability and context--Key point - cpotl 08:49:53 10/02/15 (0)
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