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Re: Xerox transfer et al

> Wait just a minute. That's what Dave insinuated, but I didn't say
>  anything of the sort; in fact I said my reading of the same material
>  didn't give me any reason to doubt the credibility of Wilhelm's research
>  reports.

It is hard to describe how I view the reports or other reports of the same 
type. I don't doubt the credibility in a sense that I don't think there is 
any lie or untruth in them, but I just wanted to point out that in reading 
these kind of reports (those with some publicity and marketing intended), one 
must read with almost extreme literal sense (with no additional feeling 
added) because they are not simply technical reports that contain only bare 
facts;  they also contain carefully crafted and placed wording to give a lot 
of impression and feeling.

Or using the "100% orange juice" example, I would say these reports do 
"contain facts."

If I go out to the arts supply store today and buy a piece of each kind of 
paper that they carry, print out an image with my Epson color printed, under 
put in under sunlight for 32 days (must be 32 since that is over a month, and 
by English grammar  since it is more than one month, I can now say "months" 
of testing), I can see different fading. I can also measure the difference in 
densities of each print and compare the before and after of all and between 
one another. The information that I have gathered will be close to completely 
useless because by normal variation of normal process (in manufacturing of 
paper, ink, printing process, etc), almost no conclusion can be made.

But I can also write a report saying that "after months of testing using 
different papers from famous manufacturers all over the world, Dave Soemarko 
has found a paper and ink combination that show great improvement of 
permanence over all other combinations that have been commonly used. The 
densitometric comparison of fading show that this combination is 700% better 
than other combinations in the highlight densities, .... (add some colorful 
charts of before and after, colorful bar graph comparing each comparison, 
some images of before and after, etc. etc.)

And I still have not lie, and my report above still contains facts and should 
be considered very "credible," but the facts and information are almost 
useless (although unfortunately many consider this kind of information very 
useful!)

I am using the above only as an example. I am not implying that company tests 
or reports are that bad. They do have better test equipments and test 
procedures, but they also have more incentive to make their product or 
service stand out, and they also have more lawyers and marketing directors 
and writers to put the words just right for publicity. So unless you know the 
data collection procedures, test procedures, assumptions, and other 
parameters associated with the test, you can draw very little, if at all, 
information from many of the so-called tests.

It's not that they are wrong either. Let's just accept the fact that they are 
not salvation army. They do not owe us to perform tests for us. They do tests 
either for publicity or to improve a product or service, but either one is 
profit related. With such in mind, sometimes any test (if you put the number 
in a right way) can be used for publicity.

Of course this is just my opinion, and it is off topic, so I won't talk 
further on this. Thanks for your patience and for listening.


Dave Soemarko

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