Around here a lot of gear gets measured. I am always mystified how some bit of gear or other (particularly electronics) will measure poorly but get raves from the subjective crowd. One great example is the Schitt Yaggi. Maybe it's BS or maybe there is something really there. I kind of think it's BS and clever marketing.
With speakers we have the Toole & Olive research. Also with speakers we have the room which may be EQ'ed away, but often isn't by most "paid" reviewers. Remember, the preference is usually established by 60 to 65% of the listeners. That is statistically significant, but leaves lots of room for differing opinions. When the LS50 debuted it wowed many listeners. It doesn't have a great preference score and it's weak on bass. I suspect what most listeners liked is in the measurements, but perhaps interpreting the data isn't so easy.
I think bit more work on baselines for what really matters needs to be done. A teardown of an excellent active speaker revealed a 48 khz DSP and an amplifier in the 75-80 sb SINAD range. That's about the same as a relatively cheap Crown XLS1502 which has crazy amounts of power, built in high pass (and other filters) and drives 2 ohm loads.