Because different people balance priorities differently. For some, having a good looking, well made speaker from a small business adds value. Salk also has a reputation for providing excellent support, and that's important too.
Not to mention that the only real problem this design has, the dip from 500-700Hz, is readily EQable. The rest, at least in terms of FR and directivity is actually very good. Horizontal directivity is excellent, and the listening window is very flat, especially for a passive design, and especially above 2K or so where I tend to feel linearity is more important.
From a reviewer's perspective, I very much agree that a passive speaker should not require EQ to fix major errors. But from a consumer perspective, I wouldn't really care. Same way I don't really care if a burger comes with yucky pickles if I can just take them off.
This also isn't directed just towards you, but I'm also of the opinion the ASR community is suffering a bit from a sort of compression of what constitutes a "good" speaker. Let's face it, were kind of snobs.
This is partly because most what has been reviewed are 'good' speakers from companies known to take a Harmanesque approach and likely not representative of the market as whole. Look at all the Revels, KEFs, JBLs, ELACs, Pioneers, Infinitys, and studio monitors.
Compare that to the number of B&Ws, Klipsch's, Martin Logans, Zus, Monitors, Paradigms. And yet, these brands are plenty popular and people still enjoy them a bunch!
I get it, we're a picky a bunch. But whenever a speaker doesn't measure in the top 10 or something, people seem to assume it's 'bad.' If a speaker scores below a 7 and Amir didn't like it, the default reactions seem to be either "this speaker is an awful deal" or to insinuate it's silly to spend money on that speaker when you can get something that scores better/seems to be preferred by amir. Imo that's too narrow a perspective.
Personally, I think there are just a lot of good speakers these days. I've enjoyed speakers that measure less than perfect. Over a large average, the preference score is likely a good indicator of preference over a few decimal points but for individual, sighted preference, I feel I need a solid 2 point difference to feel completely confident in my preference of one over the other.
This is a faulty assumption, imo.
When it comes to the basics of directivity and frequency response, you really don't need all that much fancy equipment. An anechoic chamber makes certain things easier but even then chances are you'll have to do some 'DIY' measurements anyway, because chambers aren't anechoic all the way down to 20Hz. That's why even Neumann and Dutch and Dutch use ground plane measurements. (By the way, if I recall correctly, the D&D 8C started as a project on DIYAudio).
And frankly, measuring speakers, especially bookshelf speakers, isn't really all that hard. Time consuming, yes, but not difficult.
If having access to resources were so important, we'd see much better speakers from a lot of the giants.