Honestly, I really don't think that would be a better use of resources! I'll explain:
Customer Segments for Snake-Oil Products:
We all know there are many products out there, for which multiple published articles exist (written by competent scientists/engineers) debunking these products as bogus 'snake-oil'. Yet people still buy them.
Why? Among those who buy snake-oil or low-performance-per-dollar products
despite the existence of credible evidence debunking them, there are a few important categories:
1. Those that buy them due to a priority on social value and/or aesthetic preference (fashionable items, popular items, aesthetic decorative value) overpowering interest in the actual functional performance of the product. The prevalence of this segment is due to personal value systems and priorities. Additional objective scientific material will not (alone) reduce the population of this category.
2. Those that buy them due to (mistaken) belief in superior functional performance, where this belief is due to lack of awareness of the scientific stance on the product. The prevalence of this segment is due to persuasive marketing, and lack of education. Additional objective scientific material will not (alone) reduce the population of this category.
3. Those that buy them due to (mistaken) belief in superior functional performance, where this belief is due to intentional rejection of the scientific stance on the product. The prevalence of this segment is due to stubborn opinions and willful science-denial. Additional objective scientific material will not (alone) reduce the population of this category.
To those in segment (3),
no amount of further scientific evidence is even remotely likely to change their opinion. They have already consumed a great deal of scientific evidence and theory but have chosen to dispute/reject it all anyway, simply because it disagrees with what they
want to believe. There's a famous old quote that's very relevant here:
"You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into."
Conclusions:
Across all of the customer segments identified above for snake-oil products, I've explained why
adding more scientific evidence to the pile would not significantly reduce their sales. In contrast, third-party scientific effort in the audiophile world will yield the greatest 'return on investment' (to consumers) if focused such that it most benefits those who are
aware of and
do not largely deny the value of the science on this topic. To this segment of 'informed objectivists', the
greatest ROI is yielded by maximizing our ability to find the best sounding speaker at a given price point [1].
On the other hand: If your ultimate goal is to convince the extreme science-deniers of the audiophile world over to even the moderate science-accepting camp, this would not only be an extraordinarily difficult and potentially expensive task, but would have to be approached
very differently than this site's current mission (as I understand it) of gathering objective scientific data on audiophile products
. Such a goal would be much more of an educational outreach and de-radicalization mission, than a scientific one.
For example, you
will not succeed in such a mission if you start with scientific measurements like SINAD or spinoramas. Those are only valuable to people who already believe in the scientific methods and theories underpinning them. Many subjectivists aren't even convinced in the value of most blind tests, so you'd have to start there. But even there, it's not clear that you'd even be able to make
any progress here (no matter the amount of time, effort, and money invested in such an endeavor), due to the stubborn stance of many in this camp. Do you really want to go down that road?
In contrast, we do know that if the same effort was invested in generating high quality standardized measurements of a wide variety of speakers from an unbiased third party, the benefit to the audiophile community (and consumers of speakers in general) would be
immense. This would be historically unprecedented, and IMO would offer more value and benefit to consumers than the sum total of all subjective reviews from audiophile journalism across history
[1] This is actually of the few points of nearly universal consensus in high quality audio: Per dollar invested in a sound system, speaker choice is the single largest influence and return on investment (where "returns" are in terms of the resulting sound quality). This is followed by room treatment and correction (equalization), followed by amplifiers and DACs, followed lastly by everything else.