"Frank Krygowski" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:
I think Consumer Reports has very limited usefulness.
Yup. You would. You already have proven with your attitude toward helmets
that you chose to rely upon your eyes and ignore scientific measurements.
Quoted message said:In essence, their
staff has to dream up a way of distinguishing between brands of
essentially identical goods. In many cases, the tests they dream up are
of questionable validity, because their engineers are not experts
regarding the product at hand.
Consumer's Union is very good at what they do. Their record of defending
against law suits is nearly perfect. They have been responsible for
getting many bad products off the market and have been very successful at
debunking numerous "claims" by manufacturers and by psuedo-scientific
luddites like those that oppose helmets.
Quoted message said:
For example, they're liable to downgrade a particular hammer, saying
"The Whack-O brand hammer is not recommended, because it makes a lousy
doorstop."
No, but they might say that the Whack-O Brand Hammer is not recommended
because after pounding in 3000 nails the head can loosen and fly off
striking the user. And those are important tests.
Quoted message said:I remember one of their first tests of bicycles, in the early 1970s.
(Yeah, I'm old.) Anyway, that was during the "bike boom," at a time
when high pressure tires were just coming onto the market.
To test the coasting ability of the bikes, they ran them down a ramp and
measured how far they coasted. The results were supposedly an
indication of the bike's quality - but they never noticed that the bikes
with the new "high-pressure" 90 psi tires all won that test, and that
essentially identical bikes with then-standard 70 psi tires lost.
I believe that they did not this. And, of course, coasting ability was far
from the only thing that was tested.
Quoted message said:Regarding helmets, IIRC the buckle failures they talk about happen when
the strap is held (as if by a hook) and a weight is dropped into the
helmet, or something equivalent. It seems an unlikely load situation in
real life. (AFAIK, the CPSC has never mentioned a real-life buckle
failure.) And they admit that some helmets with identical buckles pass,
while others fail, and they don't know why. It makes me wonder if their
test is well-designed.
But of course the reason that you wonder is because they engaged in full
disclosure. Which is a good thing.
