Outside of extended OCIs with ideal usage (all highway), what is the use case for boutique oils?

[kschachn]

I see your point, however, in your example, the data wasn’t bad, the erroneous conclusion was. It simply needed a larger dataset to further develop an educated conclusion.

No, the problem is much deeper than that.

 

[Panda87]

With a spectrographic analysis you're not seeing additives, you're seeing atoms from decomposed compounds. Additives are compounds, not atoms. Some additive compounds contain some of the same atoms but are more, or less effective at different treat levels.

Plus you're only looking at certain atoms and they are mostly metallic. There are additives that do not contain atoms which are visible in a spectrographic analysis.

In a fully formulated motor oil the attempt to predict future performance through a VOA or UOA is a fool's errand. The tests that actually do measure performance are much more complicated and it's where licenses, specifications and approvals are obtained. None of those utilize a cheap UOA.

That’s a fair point. I appreciate your effort in your post. My point was that we see people use analyses constantly on this site to determine oil makeup and performance in given engines of given workloads.

 

[kschachn]

So you would argue that the bad data that a Soviet sub commander refused to act on, which would have caused World War III, during the Cold War was in fact "good data" because it was data?

This is more like imaginary data rather than good or bad data.

 

[Panda87]

So you would argue that the bad data that a Soviet sub commander refused to act on, which would have caused World War III, during the Cold War was in fact "good data" because it was data?

The data was just data. The interpretation was the intelligent part of this particular equation.

 

[OVERKILL]

The data was just data. The interpretation was the intelligent part of this particular equation.

I mean, there are so many examples of wrong data, like the valve position data (which was wrong) at TMI, which is what caused the core melt for example. No data (which would have prompted an investigation and avoided the melt) would have been better than the wrong data.

 

[tired]

Playing Devil’s advocate: I would argue that any data is good data, much like publicity. It’s what one does with the data that can become problematic.

Nah. Garbage in, garbage out.

 

[tired]

So you would argue that the bad data that a Soviet sub commander refused to act on, which would have caused World War III, during the Cold War was in fact "good data" because it was data?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

For those who don't know.

I'm happy others know about the man who saved the world by using deductive reasoning. (i.e. if the US was launching a nuclear strike on us, they wouldn't have just sent 1-2 missiles.)