[foldingmoney]

>I worry that the takeaway for people that only read clickbait headlines about the 2012 Stradivarius study was: expert violinists can't tell the difference between cheap and expensive violins.

A key point that's omitted in most of the reporting is that the Strads were loaned to the organisers on the condition that they not alter their setup in any way, whereas all the modern violins were adjusted and given new strings immediately before the test. It's also not true that the testers couldn't tell the difference between the new and old violins; they weren't asked whether they could tell, they were only asked which they preferred.