Originally Posted By: carock
Originally Posted By: Doublehaul
I think much of what the oil companies and auto makers say is based on marketing and the ever increasing pressure for extended drains to reduce ownership costs etc.
Absolutely no doubt you are 100% right. The problem for a lot of people seems to be that there is no independent source of information free from sort of financial incentive to get the consumer to behave a certain way. There actually are some military and government studies for diesel engines which seem to have no financial incentive to force a conclusion for or against synthetics.
In general, new science/engineering research is being pushed away from the traditional university style independent peer reviewed publishing and being pushed into more commercially based and results oriented funding. I think it is important for BITOG readers to understand that there will never be double blind,large statistical study with correct isolation of duty cycles and controlled variables to prove that Amsoil or Red Line will be cost effective over 200,000 miles for their Toyota Corolla. But because many people on this site are college educated technical types they are combing through everything to get this sort of absolutely conclusive undeniable peer reviewed result from a completely neutral independent source. It just doesn't exist. Instead you have to look at a lot of imperfect commercial data and make a decision.
This whole thing with the statistical analysis of Blackstone Labs UOA results had me thrown off balance for years until I finally figured out the UOA wear metal data was being misused. It is a very compelling argument that lots of UOA wear metal data should be able to tell you what oils are performing better, but it doesn't seem to correlate well to to other observations.
I think you're right, but your rightness is rather odd.
Although it seems reasonable to assume (and is stated as a fact above) that the oil companies have loads of data conclusively proving, for example, the absolute superiority of synthetic oil, somehow we never seem to see it.
There doesn't seem to be any inherent reason why an oil company couldn't set up a large scale field trial, say by sponsoring the DHL delivery fleet, but if its happened, I havn't heard of it.
A while ago I looked for comparative data on Castrol synthetic oil (implausibly alleged to have caused terminal sludging in a Nissan March) and the best I could find were some very limited and inconsistently reported Amsoil bench tests. (You get oil discussions on other forums, just not quite so repetitively)
http://www.forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic...art=20#p1398311
Maybe science and marketing just don't mix.