Background:
A discussion in a Mk8 Facebook Group about the Blaze intake was brought to my attention. It presents a good opportunity to examine the spread of misinformation on social media and how fallacious reasoning can mislead people about the products they may be considering buying.
Original Post:
In this instance, someone had posted stating that they had installed the Blaze intake in their Mk8.5 and that it fit fine.
This innocuous comment about fitment led to an unrelated response that lent validation to this comment by George Carlin:
Response:
Readers of this blog will spot the conspicuous absence of a link to “jeffs results” supporting this claim. This suggests that Coty is not referencing results from this site. This is known as false attribution.
Additionally, Coty makes a false statement about the test results I have recorded (misrepresentation/strawman).
I’ve conducted a flow test with the OEM (stock) airbox and the stock TIP, and it is the lowest-flowing setup of ALL the intakes that’ve been tested. (See chart below.)
The originally referenced Blaze ATOM ranks at the 50th percentile among intakes tested, which is higher than the stock intake.
As the chart above illustrates, Coty’s statement is demonstrably false.
What follows is an example of the perils of not thinking critically about information derived from social media.
Fact Check:
A logical person might have made the effort to confirm that what Coty attributed to somebody else was what the other party had actually stated. But then Carlin would have had less justification for his observation if that were the case.
The first to pass on applying critical thinking, Nick Helmer states, “who hurt Jeff’s feelings?”
Whether one intake flows more than another has nothing to do with feelings, but Nick’s first step should have been to determine whether I had concluded what Coty falsely attributed to me.
Next, we have an individual who begins by stating he doesn’t know what’s going on, but he’s going to draw a conclusion anyway.
Note: The issue I have is that the members of a company, primarily Ed Susman of EQT, engage in misleading and deceptive behavior toward consumers. See references at the end of this post for numerous examples of this.
As if on cue to validate this point, the next commenter incorrectly attributes reduced turbocharger wastegate duty cycle (WGDC) to the Blaze intake. As has been pointed out on several occasions, the mismatching of a stock-size inlet elbow with a larger turbocharger has been a source of differences in WGDC.
This is something that EQT admitted recently, as discussed in the post on the history of the Blaze intake. But here we find Ed Susman reinforcing Andrew’s misunderstanding by giving his comments a thumbs up “Like.”
The next commentator is Luis at LT Motorsports, a company that sells a FMIC for the Mk7 built around the Treadstone TR8L IC. Luis begins with a fallacy known as ‘poisoning the well‘ – a tactic that involves presenting adverse information about the other party from the outset.
The LTMotorsports FMIC was one of the first intercoolers that I had tested. Although it flows well, the tradeoff that high airflow can have was evident with the TR8L, having a greater temperature increase than any aftermarket intercooler I have used on my GTI.
Treadstone states that the IC is made for low boost applications, which an IS38-equipped GTI is not.
More suited for the V6 applications, were boost pressure is kept low, with higher flow rates.
Presumably, reporting the mediocre performance of his product has not gone down well with Luis.
The next commenter brings some thought to the discussion, but Coty doubles down on his misinformation in his response.
just saying what I heard from Jeff’s test. Not my data.
Coty Halkola
Coty continues to exhibit the problems seen on social media, where people make statements without regard for the truth. Coty even references ‘data‘ while failing to make it available for Devon to see for himself. Of course, this is because Coty’s claims are false, and no data supports the assertions he attributes to me.
Finally, Ginsburg has fallen victim to the same misunderstanding that propelled the Blaze ATOM to popularity, failing to recognize that a mismatch between the inlet elbow and the turbo causes reductions in wastegate duty cycle.
Conclusions:
This post highlights how one person is disseminating false information in a social media group and spreading misinformation through the echo-chamber effect.
What is remarkable about this exchange is that, despite having easy access to the evidence that would reveal the truth of the matter, none of the participants in the debate bothered to check if Coty Halkola was making a true statement about ‘test data.’
References:
The following links provide an analysis of evidence showing how Ed Susman and EQT utilize misleading and deceptive information as part of their marketing strategy.
- Equilibrium Tuning unsubstantiated claims about product performance
- Equilibrium Tuning misleading claims for independent product testing
- Ed Susman’s false statements about the flow bench that I use
- Ed Susman’s false statements about my consideration of data
- Ed Susman’s false statements about the testing I’ve done being flawed
- Ed Susman’s false statements about the testing that I perform being limited
- Ed Susman’s false statements about me being a hack
- Ed Susman’s false statements about questions I emailed to the business containing “demands”
- Ed Susman’s false statements to another consumer who commented on my review
- Ed Susman’s statements about professionalism being optional
- Ed Susman’s false statements to a performance shop employee who questioned Ed’s claims
- Ed Susman makes threats to suppress a consumer review
- Ed Susman bullshits a consumer on social media
- Equilibrium Tuning unsubstantiated claim about tune reliability being OEM-like.
- Ed Susman’s false statements to consumers about a tune reliability post.
- Equilibrium Tuning false advertising of independent testing.
- Ed Susman’s bullshitting has consequences for consumers.
- Ed Susman’s bullshitting a consumer about the ARM Motorsport intercooler.