top | item 44814334

(no title)

jesol | 6 months ago

I don't have hard data, but I own 3 air gradients and they've been going strong for years. I don't think it's unreasonable to think they just got unlucky

discuss

order

ratelimitsteve|6 months ago

>they just got unlucky

then let me ask you: as an ethical person trying to write a review, how do you handle that situation? It seems like that's an angle to this that we're not exploring, and that's whether the review is epistemologically justified rather than whether it's objectively correct. The way I see it, as a reviewer I get a product that fails well sooner than I expected it to and I have three choices:

1) Don't report the failure

2) Report the failure

3) Report the failure but try to contextualize it (basically, trying to solve for sure whether they got unlucky or not)

1 is obviously unethical, and 3 seems like it's well outside the scope of a reviewer's duty (and could be seen as carrying water for a particular brand. after all, do you think the person who wrote the OP would be okay with it if his product's failure was considered typical but another product's failure was determined to be atypical, regardless of the truth?). The only ethical approach is to report what happened, and not speculate as to cause.

thmsths|6 months ago

Your 2nd option is what I would like to see. And I do agree that it is not perfect, but as you pointed out, it is the least bad option.

BizarroLand|6 months ago

Do what Linus Tech Tips has done (when they're doing it right): report that they got the device, tested it for a while, and it broke, so what they currently know about it is not the full picture, and that they might revisit the product when they have confirmed that they've worked out the kinks with the device in question.

Easy