scientific double blinded cable test

geoffkait

No, it means the results must be repeatable. Remember Cold Fusion. They had rigged the rest or whatever.

Are you referring to Pons & Fleischmann? If so, you are the first to suggest that they rigged anything. Indeed, the opposite was the case, and they freely shared their test procedure.

As fate would have it, others couldn’t duplicate their results. But, as I said, that’s how science works. Thank goodness.

@cleeds  No, this is how science works:

Many scientists tried to replicate the experiment with the few details available. Hopes faded due to the large number of negative replications, the withdrawal of many reported positive replications, the discovery of flaws and sources of experimental error in the original experiment, and finally the discovery that Fleischmann and Pons had not actually detected nuclear reaction byproducts.[5] By late 1989, most scientists considered cold fusion claims dead,[6][7] and cold fusion subsequently gained a reputation as pathological science.[8][9] In 1989 the United States Department of Energy (DOE) concluded that the reported results of excess heat did not present convincing evidence of a useful source of energy and decided against allocating funding specifically for cold fusion. A second DOE review in 2004, which looked at new research, reached similar conclusions and did not result in DOE funding of cold fusion.[10]

Your friend and humble scribe

By the way, this thread is not ugly. The truth is sometimes ugly. 

geoffkait

@cleeds  No, this is how science works:

Many scientists tried to replicate the experiment with the few details available. Hopes faded due to the large number of negative replications, the withdrawal of many reported positive replications ...

We are not really in disagreement here. The results obtained through scientific research are not always as hoped, and not every experimenter finds himself able to duplicate the results reported by another. The point I was trying to make is that from the beginning of a supposedly scientific test, the methodology must be something others can duplicate in an effort to confirm the result. That a result cannot be confirmed - as was clearly the case with Pons & Fleischmann - isn't "anti-science," but science at work. And to make trying to replicate a result worthwhile, the experimenter should be assured that the test itself was scientific.
 

All the more reason not to accept blind tests, uh, blindly. There is no reason why ANY blind test protocol should be considered above all others as being infallible. That’s because there are too many things that can go wrong with ANY test protocol, at least for audio related tests. The difference with the Cold Fusion Test was that results were POSITIVE. What Uber Skeptics are saying is that a blind test will prove some audiophile claim to be false, I.e., test results will be NEGATIVE. Which means nothing, as I’ve said.