Gould,

Since you used the movie metaphor, lets follow the thread a little farther.

If you read a movie critic who thinks every movie he sees is wonderful, you
would begin to question the critic's ability to provide a review one can
believe in. When one reads "boat reviews", the "reviewer" always loves the
boat. There are movie critics who can be bought. The distributors give
them a airline ticket to Hollywood, put them up in a 5 star hotel and the
distributor is guaranteed a 5 star review. These movie "critics" are
whores, who sell themselves for the price of an airline ticket and hotel.

The difference between these unreliable movie critics and Boat reviewers are
the price they charge to sell out. Boat Reviewers use ad dollars as the
price to give a great review, they might also be persuaded by perks offered
by the mfg. There are many reliable movie critics who are not whores, the
same came not be said about boat reviewers.

You boat review provided a valuable service, because it highlighted the need
for boat buyers to take what they read in boat mags with a grain of salt.






wrote in message
oups.com...
Nonsense.

To do a truly objective test, you not only need to run the compared
boats on the same day under the same conditions, you need to do like
Consumer Reports does and actually buy the products, anonymously, at
retail, from a dealer. Otherwise, how can you be certain that somebody
hasn't "tweaked" something just a bit? In Herring's example, we would
spend what, a quarter million bucks? To make sure we got undoctored
boats for a single article?

I know this is a hard concept for many of you to understand, and the
posts of some here certainly support my observations, but it is
possible to comment on Thing A without running down Thing B or Thing C
at the same time.

Most of the items a shopper will consider are subjective, and subject
to individual preference.

You guys seem to expect an objective comparison between top sirloin,
lamb, and lobster and some definitive answer about which meal is
"best". When you read a restaurant review, do you fault the reviewer
for failing to comment on every other Chinese joint in town?

How about movie critics? Can a critic say anything useful about "Lord
of the Rings" without discussing "Ray", "The Titanic", and "Glory"?

Boat reviews point out the highlights, and any glaring deficiencies in
a boat. You don't read that many with glaring deficiencies because by
the time a builder gets to major mfg status, the market weeds out the
guys building true crap.

I've never seen a major mfg. boat that is totally unsuited for safe and
appropriate use by somebody, under the right conditions. Two equally
knowledgeable boaters will evaluate the same boat, and one might rule
it out immediately and go on to buy something else, while the other
likes it so much he writes a check on the spot. Which one was "right"?
(Hint: most likely both, they simply prioritized different needs).