CompuServe Messages

#3DS stars

    10-Dec-93 00:13:59
Sb: #70656-#3DS stars
Fm: Don Landis 71673,3612
To: John Tissavary 71054,15
>> Why is this? And if it's a subjective thing, why is it unanimous? A few years back I attended a one year program to learn how to do scientific data evaluation, setting up statistical arrays and such. It was for marine science but the principals apply universally. I later became an instructor in this program. Many times when I hear reports (results) such as yours the first thing I question is the test methods that were in place because it is just about impossible to get unanimous results in a truly scientificly conducted test no matter how ridiculously obvious the comparison is. How many placebos? What were the controls? How many samples were done? How many trials per sample? A simple test like this is generally objective if the test was done with test instruments monitoring certain attributes of the two signals against a measured scale. If no scale was used then it was probably subjective. If it was subjective then how were the opinions suaded? Were the individuals isolated from each other so as not to allow peer persuasion? Were the individuals allowed to know what they were looking at? ie which monitor was LVR and which was D1 at the time of decision. I assume the program was identical on each and the monitors were identical or the same with a switch. The point I'm trying to make is that a true test is really difficult to set up properly and if no attempt was made to do so the results are meaningless. Finally, outside of what I learned in this program, if something is just plain obvious then unanimous results would be possible, but I doubt the difference in LVR and D1 is that obvious. Many times we see what we want and hope to see.