PC Perspective accused of violating journalistic ethics *Update 2 with PCPer reply*

[Enderman]

Just now, Notional said:

Is there a point to that whataboutism? Does it make it better that others haven't disclosed similar things?

 

Yet the testing and opinion were done by the same person. That is a conflict of interest. Why would you defend something like that?

Read the rest of my post which I was editing.

[Notional]

On 1/25/2018 at 9:47 PM, jman629 said:

I value both PC Per and Adored highly. I never thought of them as being bias. To be frank I always thought PC Per were more AMD supportive than Nvidia or Intel or at least Josh. Seems like every week they are brining up at least one AMD topic in their weekly show and not in a negative way. With the whole Freesynce thing I think that was just a bit sloppy and lazy on their part and I believe they later concluded it was indeed cause of overdrive as said in the video. Yes they probably could of been more forthcoming and helpful there. As far as them covering the whole RX 480 power debacle, it was them that discovered it the issue first so I feel like they felt obligated and energized to do extensive analysis and updates on the issue with all the attention they were getting. Not because they were eager to show an AMD flaw but that they were the first journalists to find something somewhat significant.

Josh and Jeremy generally has lots of interesting things to say about AMD, so I agree with that. I also think the entire 480 debacle was completely justified, and good work by PCPer for finding that. My problem is purely with the lack of disclosure and the lack of owning up to mistakes. I'm sure AMD isn't the only company to suffer from that. I mean it happens to everyone. Jayztwocents is pretty good at owning up to mistakes, and I respect him for that. Even if drilling through a motherboard should have been an obvious no no 

 

On 1/25/2018 at 9:51 PM, Enderman said:

Read the rest of my post which I was editing.

There are questions about optanes durability. Something that was just parroted in the white paper and review from official numbers. Sure I don't expect a reviewer to write petabytes on SSD's for a review, but faulty optane drives seem to be a real issue (didn't one of LTT's drives crap out too?).

 

Either way, whether they lied on their review or not (I doubt), it's a conflict of interest, and that is literally a violation of journalistic ethics. And as stated, it could even be illegal if disclosure is mandated.

[Enderman]

10 minutes ago, Notional said:

There are questions about optanes durability. Something that was just parroted in the white paper and review from official numbers. Sure I don't expect a reviewer to write petabytes on SSD's for a review, but faulty optane drives seem to be a real issue (didn't one of LTT's drives crap out too?).

 

Either way, whether they lied on their review or not (I doubt), it's a conflict of interest, and that is literally a violation of journalistic ethics. And as stated, it could even be illegal if disclosure is mandated.

1) When did linus say that they had a problem with an optane drive? Link?

 

2) To test endurance it would take over a month of constant writing at 2000MBps to reach the rated capacity. And on top of that there is a huge safety margin on SSD endurance ratings as was discovered in a test many years ago that found regular sata SSDs rated for only a few hundred terabytes and they actually endured over 1PB of writes. https://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead

Keep in mind this was back when SSDs were fairly new and not anywhere near as durable as sata SSDs are today.

So assuming that it would last 5-10 times longer than the advertised rating, testing the 900p would take at least 6-12 months, potentially more. Not something you will ever see in a normal review that needs to be released within a few days or weeks.

 

3) Please link me the journalistic code of ethics which you keep referring to, I'm interested to see what section says it is illegal for an article to reference data from tests performed by a sponsored entity.

[Taf the Ghost]

49 minutes ago, Notional said:

He generally has good methodology, admits his mistakes and has been spot on on his market forecasts. He's criticized AMD plenty of times and has concluded NVidia has won the GPU "war", so I don't see him treating any of the three differently.

I do love the "Adored is an AMD shill!" stuff, when he's clearly been pointing out for a while that Nvidia has won the GPU war. He's got a really good head for the actual market dynamics and strong opinions that go with that. In this case, he's pointed out something PcPer needs to be careful about. 

[Notional]

9 minutes ago, Enderman said:

1) When did linus say that they had a problem with an optane drive? Link?

 

2) To test endurance it would take over a month of constant writing at 2000MBps to reach the rated capacity. And on top of that there is a huge safety margin on SSD endurance ratings as was discovered in a test many years ago that found regular sata SSDs rated for only a few hundred terabytes and they actually endured over 1PB of writes. https://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead

So assuming that it would last 5-10 times longer than the advertised rating, testing the 900p would take at least 6-12 months, potentially more. Not something you will ever see in a normal review that needs to be released within a few days or weeks.

 

3) Please link me the journalistic code of ethics which you keep referring to, I'm interested to see what section says it is illegal for an article to reference data from tests performed by a sponsored entity.

1. Might have been someone else. It was one of the bigger reviewers.

 

2. Agreed. I don't assume they would, nor require it either. But if there have been massive reliability issues mentioned, maybe don't blatantly use the vendors own numbers, when they could he extremely misleading.

 

3. The source is in Jim's video. Breaking the code of ethics in journalism is not (necessarily) a crime. It is a violation of the basics of journalism though and destroys credibility in general.

[ApolloFury]

Seeing people Liked someone else's post which are posts that clearly did not watch the video. Sad.

[Notional]

3 minutes ago, ApolloFury said:

Seeing people Liked someone else's post which are posts that clearly did not watch the video.

It's astounding to see consumers work so hard against their own interests. Quite bizarre really.

[Enderman]

16 minutes ago, Notional said:

It's astounding to see consumers work so hard against their own interests. Quite bizarre really.

It's astounding to see people on a forum watch one youtube video and believe everything they hear without doing any critical thinking for themselves.

[79wjd]

4 minutes ago, Enderman said:

critical thinking

What's that? Is that a new game, it sounds like a game...

[Derangel]

5 minutes ago, Enderman said:

It's astounding to see people on a forum watch one youtube video and believe everything they hear without doing any critical thinking for themselves.

Without even watching the video I can tell you that this is a pretty clear cut issue. PCPer should have disclosed their relationship with Intel regarding the SSD. Anything that might give the perception of a conflict of interest should be disclosed. Shrout owning the company the did the white paper should have been disclosed, as should the fact that Allyn also works for Shrout Research and likely had a hand in the whitepaper. The fact that Allyn was likely paid to do work for Intel on the product he is reviewing is a huge potential conflict of interest and should have been made clear to readers of the review.

[NumLock21]

2 hours ago, Notional said:

Because he has a point. If you don't agree, I'd love to hear your reasoning as to why?

There are many who have learn about computers way before him, just because he can build a PC doesn't mean he's above all others. Want to be successful tech youtuber, then just make videos with the correct information, instead of bashing other tech channels as a desperate attempt to get views and subscribers. It's like that other channel for bashing LTT's RED camera video, both equally pathetic.

[Enderman]

20 minutes ago, Derangel said:

Without even watching the video I can tell you that this is a pretty clear cut issue. PCPer should have disclosed their relationship with Intel regarding the SSD. Anything that might give the perception of a conflict of interest should be disclosed. Shrout owning the company the did the white paper should have been disclosed, as should the fact that Allyn also works for Shrout Research and likely had a hand in the whitepaper. The fact that Allyn was likely paid to do work for Intel on the product he is reviewing is a huge potential conflict of interest and should have been made clear to readers of the review.

Without even watching the video I can tell you that a bunch of people here are just jumping on the hate train without even thinking for themselves.

 

"Intel paid Shrout Research to make a white paper for, concluded in a favourable review on PCPer"

There is literally 0 evidence that the payment was the cause of the favourable review.

In fact, pretty much all other unpaid reviews of the 900p come to the same conclusion as pcper.

On top of that, intel paid for tests, not the review. Tests are not subjective unless they are manupulated or falsified.

Again there is 0 evidence of falsified tests.

 

Maybe try leaving your emotions out of this and look at the facts from an objective point of view.

[Deus Voltage]

I find it rather peculiar when commentators, regardless of the platform, accuse AdoredtTV of being biased towards AMD. Interestingly enough however, he posted a plethora of videos criticizing AMD (the Radeon division) to ad-nauseam.

 

Sources? Well here ya' go, I saved you the trouble:

 

Fallout: New Vega:

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

 

Vega Clarification - How bad is it?:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4BUb6wSSXk

 

Innovation vs Rebranding:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPUTa8_L8L0

 

Volta and Vega - AMD Has a Mountain to Climb:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drbk91rZijI

 

Poor Vega:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iaUjU-2Jmc

 

Something Wrong At Radeon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AavuWT17X48

 

The GPU war is over:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uN7i1bViOkU

 

 

Cooler heads must prevail. Let's dissect every argument rather than using ad hominems to get free and easy wins.

[Taf the Ghost]

On 1/25/2018 at 11:04 PM, Derangel said:

Without even watching the video I can tell you that this is a pretty clear cut issue. PCPer should have disclosed their relationship with Intel regarding the SSD. Anything that might give the perception of a conflict of interest should be disclosed. Shrout owning the company the did the white paper should have been disclosed, as should the fact that Allyn also works for Shrout Research and likely had a hand in the whitepaper. The fact that Allyn was likely paid to do work for Intel on the product he is reviewing is a huge potential conflict of interest and should have been made clear to readers of the review.

Allyn actually wrote the White Paper. Something Jim mentioned in the video. (I've had a chance to watch the whole thing now.)

 

A few people must have known this video was coming because I saw someone point out Shrout Research the other day on Twitter, which adds some interesting side aspects to this discussion. Jim's carved out a "Keep People Honest" niche within the Tech Press.

 

As to the Video & PcPer, Ryan simply needs to pick his direction and adjust around that. That's all Jim is actually calling out directly, though there's a clear implication, from their work, of favoritism with possible compensation. Though Adored is harshest on... AMD's Marketing Department. He straight out call them, at least, for being stupid. (Which he's correct about. Don't try to pay people under the table, do it straight up. It just works better that way.)

 

Ryan & Allyn were paid to do a White Paper for Intel, and also posted a positive review of the product. These facts are not in dispute. It's likely that PcPer's review of the Intel product is similar to others, as it's a solid product with potential problems that'll take a lot more testing. (Which is true with a lot of new tech.) The issue is not what was in the review. The issue, unless you're just being daft, is the nature of a paid White Paper and a separate "review". If you can't see the Ethics Warning sign flashing everywhere with this, I'm not sure what to tell you.

 

There's a reason LTT has those big, bold text for Sponsored videos. It has actual legal ramifications, which is much of the nature of Jim's video. This is a warning shot that PcPer needs to take seriously, as you start to run into serious FTC issues if someone pushes it.

[Enderman]

9 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Ryan & Allyn were paid to do a White Paper for Intel, and also posted a positive review of the product. These facts are not in dispute. It's likely that PcPer's review of the Intel product is similar to others, as it's a solid product with potential problems that'll take a lot more testing. (Which is true with a lot of new tech.) The issue is not what was in the review. The issue, unless you're just being daft, is the nature of a paid White Paper and a separate "review". If you can't see the Ethics Warning sign flashing everywhere with this, I'm not sure what to tell you.

 

There's a reason LTT has those big, bold text for Sponsored videos. It has actual legal ramifications, which is much of the nature of Jim's video. This is a warning shot that PcPer needs to take seriously, as you start to run into serious FTC issues if someone pushes it.

"Disclosure: This paper was commissioned by Intel. All testing, evaluation, and analysis was performed inhouse by Shrout Research and its contractors. Shrout Research provides consulting and research services for many companies in the technology field, other of which are mentioned in this work."

 

The review included links and information about where the data came from. The review itself was not commissioned at all.

Maybe you are having trouble telling the difference between a commissioned review and a review using data from tests which happened to be commissioned.

 

PS- the FTC is for Americans only. Maybe you didn't realize that.

[Derangel]

2 minutes ago, Enderman said:

"Disclosure: This paper was commissioned by Intel. All testing, evaluation, and analysis was performed inhouse by Shrout Research and its contractors. Shrout Research provides consulting and research services for many companies in the technology field, other of which are mentioned in this work."

 

The review included links and information about where the data came from. The review itself was not commissioned at all.

Maybe you are having trouble telling the difference between a commissioned review and a review using data from tests which happened to be commissioned.

 

PS- the FTC is for Americans only. Maybe you didn't realize that.

Allyn, the reviewer, is an employee of Shrout Research and wrote the whitepaper. That was not disclosed. It's irrelevant if Intel actually paid for a good review or not. Anything that even remotely appears like it could cause a conflict of interest should be disclosed. Period. I don't believe Intel paid for the review nor do I believe that Allyn writing the whitepaper unfairly biased him towards the product. However, that doesn't matter. All relevant information relating to potential conflicts of interest should be disclosed so that readers are able to make an informed decision on their own. Journalist ethics are VERY clear on this matter. Even accepting products for review is skating on thin ice as far as ethics go and not disclosing that is very much in violation of them.

 

Here is the code of ethics: https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp

 

Specifically look at "Act Independently"

 

Allyn writing the whitepaper would fall under the first part of the category. Him being paid to write and whitepaper and then paid to write the review is a clear conflict and should be disclosed.

[Taf the Ghost]

5 minutes ago, Enderman said:

"Disclosure: This paper was commissioned by Intel. All testing, evaluation, and analysis was performed inhouse by Shrout Research and its contractors. Shrout Research provides consulting and research services for many companies in the technology field, other of which are mentioned in this work."

 

The review included links and information about where the data came from. The review itself was not commissioned at all.

Maybe you are having trouble telling the difference between a commissioned review and a review using data from tests which happened to be commissioned.

 

PS- the FTC is for Americans only. Maybe you didn't realize that.

Okay, so you don't understand the issue. Np.

 

Any review PcPer put out is "tainted": no viewer can reasonably make a decision upon the information because Ryan & Allyn have a direct financial relationship that's undisclosed. Further, even if the review itself was not paid for, by getting access to more testing devices than anyone else, PcPer got an "in-kind" advantage over all other reviewers, since no other review site was given even 2 modules upon which to test.

 

This starts as an Ethics issue, but it can quickly devolve into a Legal one. PcPer are based in the States, so they're under FTC jurisdiction.

 

LTT operates by similar FTC principles because their main audience (and most of the companies) are in the USA. It is in their best interest to hold to the USA's rules, right along with Canada's.

[Enderman]

On 1/26/2018 at 12:06 AM, Derangel said:

Allyn, the reviewer, is an employee of Shrout Research and wrote the whitepaper. That was not disclosed. It's irrelevant if Intel actually paid for a good review or not. Anything that even remotely appears like it could cause a conflict of interest should be disclosed. Period. I don't believe Intel paid for the review nor do I believe that Allyn writing the whitepaper unfairly biased him towards the product. However, that doesn't matter. All relevant information relating to potential conflicts of interest should be disclosed so that readers are able to make an informed decision on their own. Journalist ethics are VERY clear on this matter. Even accepting products for review is skating on thin ice as far as ethics go and not disclosing that is very much in violation of them.

 

Here is the code of ethics: https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp

 

Specifically look at "Act Independently"

 

Allyn writing the whitepaper would fall under the first part of the category. Him being paid to write and whitepaper and then paid to write the review is a clear conflict and should be disclosed.

By that definition of "act independently" then every tech reviewer ever is violating the ethics by accepting review samples.

Same when they use graphs and data released by the company such as nvidia or AMD, since that data was made by someone who was being paid.

As I said before this is literally nothing new, there is nothing surprising or even remotely "illegal" about it.

Just another journalist making a living by doing the same thing as everyone else.

 

There is no evidence of falsified data in the paper.

There is no evidence that the review was paid, only the research paper was.

There is no indication that that person would gain any kind of advantage by writing a favourable review just because they were paid to do some tests unrelated to the review.

TL;DR You're reading too far into this.

 

On 1/26/2018 at 12:14 AM, Taf the Ghost said:

Okay, so you don't understand the issue. Np.

 

Any review PcPer put out is "tainted": no viewer can reasonably make a decision upon the information because Ryan & Allyn have a direct financial relationship that's undisclosed. Further, even if the review itself was not paid for, by getting access to more testing devices than anyone else, PcPer got an "in-kind" advantage over all other reviewers, since no other review site was given even 2 modules upon which to test.

 

This starts as an Ethics issue, but it can quickly devolve into a Legal one. PcPer are based in the States, so they're under FTC jurisdiction.

 

LTT operates by similar FTC principles because their main audience (and most of the companies) are in the USA. It is in their best interest to hold to the USA's rules, right along with Canada's.

1) it was disclosed at the bottom of the paper, as it should be. Did you not read what I pasted a few posts ago? That was literally straight form the paper.

 

2) as I said, there are always some reviewers that get testing samples while others do not. Otherwise every 12 year old "reviewer" on youtube would get a free one. They are usually reserved for specific people with large audiences, and sometimes not even then. For example Unbox Therapy not getting an iphone X while other reviewers did. It's a decision for the company to make and obviously some reviewers are unhappy if they don't get what they want.

 

3) I will just assume you have no idea how ethics works, based on what you have said so far.

[Enderman]

2 minutes ago, Derangel said:

 

You're trying too hard.

Take a step back and try to understand the situation without letting your emotions get in the way of judgement.

You might realize that there actually isn't anything "unethical" or "illegal" between that commissioned paper and that independent review.

[Derangel]

21 minutes ago, Enderman said:

You're trying too hard.

Take a step back and try to understand the situation without letting your emotions get in the way of judgement.

You might realize that there actually isn't anything "unethical" or "illegal" between that commissioned paper and that independent review.

Why do you keep mentioning illegal to me? I never said anything was illegal. Do not put words in my mouth.

 

And yes it is unethical. Not clearly disclosing potential conflicts of interest is a clear violation of journalistic ethics.

 

Also ,you need to stop telling me things I already said. I clearly stated that I do not believe the review was paid for or that Allyn writing the whitepaper unfairly biased his opinion. That is also irreverent. The lack of disclosure is the serious problem, not some bullshit conspiracy theory you're trying to accuse me of believing.

 

The fact that the tech industry is so shit at disclosure does not excuse this breach of ethics. I have already stated that I believe all reviewers should disclose where they got a product from at the start of their review. Even saying it at the end would be acceptable, though not ideal. It's not exactly a hard task to write "Product supplied for review by the manufacturer" or "Product purchased for review" and doing so lends a huge amount of credit to the reviewer as they are being honest and open about potential conflicts.

 

Disclosure is vital to any form of journalism. It lets the audience know that the reporter (or reviewer) is trustworthy and trusts their audience to come to their own conclusions. It is impossible for the audience to form a conclusion without presenting all relevant information. It is the duty of the reporter (or reviewer) to provide that information. Not doing so is, in fact, a lie of omission. In effect, you could say that Allyn is lying about his work by omitting mention of it. And this is a far more serious omission than not revealing the source of a reviewed product. It does effect the trustworthiness of PCPer's content. Whether or not the review was accurate and unbiased this is a major black mark on their credibility. It will force people to have to question every article or review they post from here on out until they address and fix this problem.

 

I think they're a good site and they have good people there. This is likely an honest mistake, something they simply didn't consider. Mistakes happen, but they need to be addressed. Another important element of journalistic ethics is acknowledging and fixing mistakes. 

 

As for my emotions: I'm not remotely emotional about the situation. I took the time to look into it, to read the review, to skim through Allyn's comments in the comments section, and to think over the situation before replying. Prior to that last one my replies have been entirely free of emotion and have relied entirely on logical reasoning. This reply is the same. There is no level of strong emotion involved in any of my points. So, kindly, do not try to add them to my words as that would be false.

 

PS: Stop saying "everyone does it". That is not a valid excuse. I stopped trying to use that as an excuse in grade school.

[Enderman]

8 minutes ago, Derangel said:

Why do you keep mentioning illegal to me? I never said anything was illegal. Do not put words in my mouth.

1) Try again and read the OP

 

8 minutes ago, Derangel said:

And yes it is unethical. Not clearly disclosing potential conflicts of interest is a clear violation of journalistic ethics.

2) It was disclosed, as I pointed out 7 times already.

 

8 minutes ago, Derangel said:

The lack of disclosure is the serious problem, not some bullshit conspiracy theory you're trying to accuse me of believing.

3) The review links and references the paper. The paper did disclose the commission.

 

8 minutes ago, Derangel said:

The fact that the tech industry is so shit at disclosure does not excuse this breach of ethics.

4) You still haven't explained how referencing a commissioned yet unbiased test is breaching any ethics.

 

8 minutes ago, Derangel said:

Disclosure is vital to any form of journalism. It lets the audience know that the reporter (or reviewer) is trustworthy and trusts their audience to come to their own conclusions.

5) Yet again, it was disclosed in the source document of the tests, which you clearly have not read.

 

 

8 minutes ago, Derangel said:

PS: Stop saying "everyone does it"

I never said it was an excuse. Just pointing out how wrong OP is in thinking that this is new or special.

Maybe instead of being hypocritical you should be calling out literally all reviewers on youtube for accepting sponsorship and other forms of payment and free products.

Oh wait, you won't because you don't actually care, you're just trying to jump on a bandwagon that some guy on youtube started instead of making decisions for yourself

 

 

Hopefully you will look back on this in a few years and realize how much time you wasted trying to incriminate a simple review.

Anyway, have a good night

[SpaceGhostC2C]

4 hours ago, mr moose said:

What's right about them.  Anyone can take shit dump on Intel and Nvidia for views.  

He does quite a bit more than that.

 

I don't always agreed to every conclusion he drew in the videos I watched, but the good thing about them is that he always gives you the sources and the reasoning he used, which allows you to judge the claims by yourself and reach your own conclusions.

 

The fact that he stops to think about test results and information scattered around the internet as a whole is an inflow of fresh air in a landscape dominated by reviewers spitting out numbers without giving too much thought to it. I mean, we do need people running test, and we do need multiple people running the same tests, but someone at some point has to put all those results together to get anything more than a superficial understanding. Even if he would systematically draw stupid conclusions out of the data, just putting together the data in perspective is enough of a contribution in my view.

[RagnarokDel]

5 hours ago, Notional said:

 This time Jim calls out PC Per for outright journalistic ethics violation.

This goes far beyond journalistic ethics. They are likely in legal troubles with the FTC.

5 hours ago, Enderman said:

So exactly what ethics were violated here...?

The conclusion of the reviews were pretty much the same.

This sounds more like a complaint from someone who is jealous they didn't get 4 drives and pcper did.

Adoredtv doesnt do storage review.

5 hours ago, Notional said:

Shrout Research was paid by Intel to make an Optane 900p white paper including new testing methodology for it. All 900p drives and testing methodology were used in PCPer review by same author of both White paper and PCPer review. This was a review of an optane drive that other review outlets had less access to.

 

Yes, this was a paid review that wasnt disclosing it. This is in clear violation of FTC rules.

3 hours ago, Enderman said:

It's astounding to see people on a forum watch one youtube video and believe everything they hear without doing any critical thinking for themselves.

The funny thing is that there are sources that confirm what is claimed.

[unsubscribed]

5 hours ago, NvidiaIntelAMDLoveTriangle said:

The second I read AdoredTV, is the second my brain turned off.

Anything regarding that guy has to be ignored.

Why is that? While it's easy to be blinded by the guys sitting deep in NVidia, Intel or AMD pockets I found it quite interesting to watch his videos. Obviously he is not for ones with deep pockets and craving for latest tech as he very nicely points out how much of a rip-off products are due to lack of competition.

[XenosTech]

5 hours ago, djdwosk97 said:

The issue was less that and more them telling reviewers to benchmark HEDT Intel in dual channel mode.

It's not any different to me paying you to do review and then tell you how to craft your methodology to make it look good. Both are bad for the consumer in the end.