Background:
Equilibrium Tuning advertises the Blaze Performance intake using the following series of claims:
A concern I have raised is that EQT did not substantiate the claims they made when they started selling the product over seven months ago, despite stating that they have evidence that supports the claims:
Previously I discussed how EQT is likely violating Federal and State advertising laws in connection with these unsubstantiated claims.
At the time of this post, EQT still has not published evidence in support of the claims the company uses to sell the product.
In Part I of this post series comments from Matt At Equilibrium Tuning were reviewed and found to contain numerous examples of misleading information. There was such a large amount of misleading information that I decided to break up the comments into two separate posts to keep the length of the individual posts from being too long.
In this post, I will continue to review Matt At EQT’s comments. The entire response from Matt is located at the bottom of this post.
Comment Review Continued:
Caution logical fallacies ahead
Comment one:
These statements from Matt are an example of the Red Herring logical fallacy.
A red herring is an irrelevant idea used to divert an argument away from its resolution.
The subject matter Matt introduces, how EQT came to be selling the Blaze intake, is irrelevant to the question of why EQT has not substantiated the product performance claims.
Noteworthy about this statement is that it reveals that Matt believes it is appropriate to describe the product performance as “verified by independent testing” while failing to tell consumers that EQT performed the supposedly “independent test“.
“an ad is deceptive if it contains a statement – or omits information – that is likely to mislead consumers acting reasonably under the circumstances; and is “material” – that is, important to a consumer’s decision to buy or use the product.”
Federal Trade Commission – Deception Policy Statement
Comment two:
Matt continues by repeating the EQT owner’s false statement:
The ignorance of the personnel at Equilibrium Tuning on the subject of the use of a flow bench, specifically one capable of 600 CFM @ 28″ of H2O, in support of testing automotive parts is both astonishing and telling.
Note: I will use a future post to investigate what information EQT has about the magnitude of the vacuum inside the intake to learn if Matt’s claims about low and high vacuum are accurate.
Comment three:
Matt continues with a statement of fact about how the PTS Design flow bench performs:
Note: This is an excellent statement to analyze in a future post assessing Matt’s knowledge on the subject of measuring airflow.
Following Matt’s next statement I will address why this claim by Matt is likely to be incorrect.
Comment four:
Matt’s next statement, in the form of a question, indicates he does not know if his previous claim was true or false.
There could be several reasons. 1) The subset of available aftermarket intakes that I have tested may perform similarly. 2) As the number of intakes tested increases, now up to 22, differences amongst any consecutive grouping of 10 will become smaller as more products are tested. 3) The turbo inlet elbow and the turbocharger compressor inlet, being the smallest components of the intake, have been shown to constrain the overall system flow rate.
That I’m pointing out these things to people at EQT is not a good sign that the business’s people have skill in researching how parts perform.
Observation: Matt has the benefit of being able to quote actual measurements I’ve made as examples in the questions he poses about the products I have tested and the methods I have used. His company which is profiting by selling a product to consumers based on performance claims does not provide any evidence in support of its purported tests. This is a paradox that the members of Equilibrium Tuning fail to recognize.
Comment five:
Matt returns to making a logically unsound statement:
Matt is introducing a false premise to the ongoing logical fallacy. Matt implies that I have never thought about how I perform a test and states his question as though the false premise were true.
Note: Matt again references the performance of the flow bench as a limitation and his knowledge of the subject will be evaluated in the future.
Comment six:
Matt continues with another false premise:
Matt is continuing building upon the red herring, he then repeats the false premise and then introduces a strawman argument.
The strawman fallacy occurs when one misrepresents an argument so that it becomes easier to attack.
Matt claims that it is a “wild accusation” to point out that the claim EQT is making for the intake is unsubstantiated. Based on the evidence available from the EQT website this is not a “wild accusation“, it is a true statement.
At the top of this page is the screenshot of the claim EQT makes for the intake, below is a screenshot from the same page on their website showing the substantiation for the claim.
I have added a box around the substantiation to make it easier to identify from the white background of this page.
The effort by Matt to feign kumbaya with other “vendors in the community” is touching, if a bit hypocritical, given examples of EQT publicly disparaging other “vendors in the community“, such as the comments about Unitronic below:
Conclusion:
Matt from Equilibrium Tuning INC has presented a lengthy response to my post where he repeatedly fails to address the issue the post introduced.
Matt also makes several false statements, uses logical fallacies, and demonstrates that EQT’s claims in support of the product exaggerate the rigor they suggest took place when testing the product.
Matt at EQTs use of evasive techniques and false statements follows a similar pattern observed with Equilibrium Tuning’s owner, Ed Susman.
Matt makes several statements that are technical and are worthy of investigation in a future post where the technical acumen of the personnel at Equilibrium Tuning on the topics of testing and airflow are investigated.
Matt at Equilibrium Tuning comments
