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DBT Proponents --- Where do they get their confidence?

On a quick visit to the Boston Audio Society ... to see if they've published a test on Red Book vs. HiRez that they have pre-announced ... I noted they are proudly displaying one of the Mid-80's ABX Trophies, an article on some ABX test results involving Ivor Tiefenbrun (as result of challenge by Stanley Lipshitz); http://www.bostonaudiosociety.org/bas_speaker/abx_testing2.htm

That caused me to take a little romp down memory lane myself and I happened across the painful lesson that David Clark, one of the then (still?) prominent ABXers, was delivered by statician Les Leventhal.

The crux of the matter was Clark's crude attempt to dismiss the inconvenient consequences, based elemental statistical analysis, of the low-N (trials) tests that characterized the bulk of the ABX published test reports; in a nutshell that such tests generally carry a very high risk of Type-2 Error (see the article for explanation).

Now as the current practice of serious controlled blind testing (DBT, ABX, etc.) is near non-existent one cannot underestimate the importance that the (ancient) ABX documented history of tests holds for DBT proponents, i.e. that and the infrequent report from the audio press over the years is just about all that exists!; amateur tests asside, not that there's any great number of credible samples of those in any event!

Consequently one has to wonder at the confidence one sees being regularly displayed by the fanatical DBT proponents? ... from what source do they derive such confidence?

...

To be fair I beleive we can take Leventhal at his word as having gained no pleasure in delivering the firm spanking, and perhaps we should chide JA for expressed too great a pleasure at the spectacle (see "The Double-Blind & the Not-So-Blind", pg. 5), yet where the statistics is concerned to borrow from Leventhal " ... it doesn't matter!" Let's only hope that Clark learned the lesson!



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Topic - DBT Proponents --- Where do they get their confidence? - bjh 11:15:45 12/09/06 (353)
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