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Comment by rickdale | Hacker News Reader

Theres a fundamental flaw in this type of review. For all of us reading this article we assume this jack ripper strain is the bomb, but really it just happens that the grower he got it from grew some good jack the ripper or whatever. I work in the industry, and mostly people will be like, Oh I tried this strain and its no good, but its just because they got it from a mediocre grower and indeed it wasn't as good as the real deal. Also, there are hundreds of seed companies selling similar strains under various names and thus one persons og kush isn't the same as another.

The problem with this is, outside of places like Colorado, Oregon, and Washington, under the guise of medical marijuana its now more important for the specific review of a flower that can be reproduced by the grower. Ugh, I am just saying, these reviews are specifically of the nug that guy smoked not of the overall strain but they pretend it is of the overall strain.

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The article states that he's trying out a specific strain from a specific dispensary and mentioning it in the article. Also mentioned is that every dispensary tends to have their own specific names for every strain.

The reviews most certainly are not about a strain (in the horticultural sense) but a strain and the grower.

I guess there are magazines that make reviews about a certain strain from a certain seed bank but this one says that it's not excluding the effect of the grower. Ie. this one is comparing the product from a specific vendor to another.

Another interesting issue is that it's not only assessing the taste but the effects too. That's certainly not the case in e.g. wine tasting but perhaps more so in evaluating coffee (or tea).

It seems like the current methodology is, to use wine analogies, to compare grapes instead of harvests. Charles Shaw has a Cabernet, but it's a very different beast from Joseph Phelps', and they will both have variations from harvest to harvest.

Perhaps in the future we'll see the marijuana landscape settle down into a few widely recognized and harvested strains, with different growers touting their harvests and growing techniques over those of others.

But wine tasting is mostly bullshit. Double-blinding means even expert wine tasters fail to agree on good wines or to identify years or makers.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-tas...

> Hodgson approached the organisers of the California State Fair wine competition, the oldest contest of its kind in North America, and proposed an experiment for their annual June tasting sessions.

> Each panel of four judges would be presented with their usual "flight" of samples to sniff, sip and slurp. But some wines would be presented to the panel three times, poured from the same bottle each time. The results would be compiled and analysed to see whether wine testing really is scientific.

> The first experiment took place in 2005. The last was in Sacramento earlier this month. Hodgson's findings have stunned the wine industry. Over the years he has shown again and again that even trained, professional palates are terrible at judging wine.

Yeah, but then there is this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBi9PfZve84

(I had to dig around to find out where I found this; it turned out to be a link entry on Daring Fireball, May 2013.)

I could see this. From my experience with weed, it sounds a lot like the winery business, with the bullshit and all. What I usually tell people is that marijuana is like art. I can get you a van gogh printed off my computer. Or you can spend a ton and get a real van gogh. Marijuana maybe doesn't go to that extreme, but it definitely relates.

I assume it also has to do with his mental state at the time &c &c. All in all this a double-blind randomised control experiment isn't.

The article likened the job to food critics, none of which is double-blind, randomized, or performed with the scientific method.

For a local newspaper in Denver, an article that says "Go down to ye ol mary pub, and get this nug its the bomb" will be relevant for most who read it.

If you read it online from Flordia, and then buy the "same" Lemon Skunk from your street dealer in Orlando, of course you are going to end up with a different product...

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