Well some of the past threads got me thinking about the differences between sighted vs. blind testing, and there was an interesting point made about taste buds et al. I think that the parallels of taste(stimulus of taste buds)/flavour(interpretation of the stimulus) and sound(stimulus of ear apparatus)/hearing(interpretation of the stimulus) are remarkable.

Anyways, we had a party last Saturday with 13 guests. I thought that this might be an interesting time to try out a sighted test. Here's the methodology: The night before, I prepared, as one large batch, an excellent salsa whose recipe I obtained in Mexico. On Saturday, I divided the batch into two separate containers.

When our guests arrived, I eventually steered them around to trying this salsa that I had made. I said that one container had a milder salsa, but that for the other container I had put TWICE the amount of chilies in - thus making it a lot hotter. I asked each guest after they tried both salsas if they liked them and if they found the one salsa too hot. For 6 guests, I let them try the "mild" salsa first; for the other 7 guests, I let them try the "hot" salsa first.

Guess what the results were??








All 13 guests or 100% of the sample said that the "hot" salsa was indeed hotter (they also said that they liked it, but that's beside the point). The range of replies to the "hotter" salsa was from "yeah, it's a bit hotter, but I like to eat spicy food," to "WOW, this is way hotter than the other one," - with most comments somewhere in between. Nobody said they tasted the same and nobody said that the "hot" salsa was milder. The guest who said the last comment was even warning other people that the "hot" salsa was indeed much spicier than the other container for part of the night.

I guess this proves that basic scientific methodology is incorrect with regards to blind vs. sighted testing. I can now see how sighted testing is truly the king of testing methodologies. I lament all those years of toil in school - all wasted working under false assumptions. What was I thinking?!

I read recently how a new medical procedure to help severe migraine sufferers had passed the ethics board. Basically what they want to do is to patch a little hole in the heart. Previously, people had said that when they had undergone this operation that as a side effect, the severity, intervals between, and duration of their migraines diminished substantially. In order to patch the hole, a small incision is made in the thigh to gain access to the femoral artery. The surgery is accomplished through this little incision. There's going to be 2 testing groups of 100 people each. The one group will actually have this surgery done; the other group will have the same incision cut into their legs but no actual surgery. The apparent reason being that the researchers want to eliminate any possibility of the results being attributed to psychosomatic effects.

Now as we've seen above in my simple kitchen example, we don't need to do this. IN FACT, what happened to the Hippocratic oath? I mean they're cutting up 100 people for no good reason. I think that they should just simply tell everybody who's getting the surgery that they've had the surgery and be done with it. If it's as good as they say, then everything is going to work out fine. I think that after I open this thread, that I'm going to write to those researchers and their ethics board to tell them that they're going about this "research" in entirely the wrong fashion.

So there you have it. Blind testing is for the BIRDS. Sighted testing is KING!!!!