Thread: Cotis v Japanese Naturals v. Guangxi: A single-blind, repeated measures experiment

Very cool post , thanks for sharing.
My suggestion is to try the Jnats with slurry and see how they work.
My personal experience, no slurry gives very sharp edges, slurry gives more comfortable edges.
Honing is fun.

Before anyone states the obvious, I know this was not a rigorous, "scientific" analysis. I subtitled the original post with my tongue more than halfway in my cheek. It was meant to spoof the kind of journal article I read all the time, but that may have not been obvious.

Calling this an "experiment" is somewhat akin to calling a pork chop a "cutlet de cochon" and charging double for it. It is more a naturalistic study, maybe only some careful observations. As I said in the OP, it was an attempt to get some data as objectively as I possibly could, but I realize the limitations.

Originally Posted by gssixgun

Here let me summarize it for you,,,,

No matters the steps you might take to make it as scientific as possible, it actually never can be...

So in the venerable words of the Founder of this forum "Have Fun"

I also look forward to your results... all these types of experimentations help the overall knowledge base...

Shave On !!!!

Since shaving is so subjective and personal this method
seems as fine a way to systematically explore honing
as one can devise. Yes there are others....

As far as "scientific" goes the scientific method mandates that
others be able to reproduce the results. That is problematic.
Subjective and personal combined with natural hones
is not an easy context to reproduce results in.

However a quantitative/ qualitative approach where an individual
can reproduce results has great value in a subjective
and personal sport like shaving.

A statistic text I once read talked about the challenge
of ordering a preference list like this. This approach
is a good one.

You're quite right. This is not a rigorous experiment because results from such should be reproducible by others, and in some sense universal to the variable being controlled for. I would not expect my results to automatically be reproduced by another shaver; the results I did get cannot be applied to all cotis, J-Nats, etc.; and there were critical variables I could not control.

Having said all that, even the most rigorous trials have limitations and can be proved wrong. Drug testing by the FDA is thorough -- even burdensome, according to some Pharma companies. Thousands of patients, multiple studies, etc. Yet how often do we find out that all this rigorous safety and efficacy data is just plain wrong.

When I was in med school, we were taught to correct certain arrhythmias (irregular heartbeats) with medication. We thought it saved lives. Years later, when someone bothered to look at longitudinal data, it became evident we were killing more people than we were saving.

Unfortunately, there is more of this that goes in in medicine than most people suspect.

Originally Posted by pcb01

You're quite right. This is not a rigorous experiment because results from such should be reproducible by others,
...snip...
Unfortunately, there is more of this that goes in in medicine than most people suspect.

Yet it is worth doing!

Such experiments i.e. quality notes
do set the stage for more rigorous
efforts.

It is the deliberate note keeping that makes it work, shaving or medicine.

Originally Posted by pcb01

Just PM me if you need any help with either...

Thanks, but I'm good.....