"Nasty and personal"? Give me a break.
Have you ever read these threads about Noss' tests?
Noss said himself that the videos are not scientific. So unless someone proves to you that they are not repeatable, by doing additional random smashing, you insist they are repeatable? Scientific = repeatable. Why do you think there are pages and pages of information and specs to even do the easiest ASTM tests? Because they want repeatablility. Why do you think every test specimen MUST be exactly the same in a charpy test? Repeatability, and they want to test the steel (not the sample). What reason do you have that would help explain how the failures shown in these videos are repeatable? I think the fanboys ought to get over it and accept that many here don't buy into the sweeping statements so often seen in bandwagon jumping portion of the threads.
Noss plays down the finality of his tests. This is a wise thing. However, I argue that his testing, though limited, is reasonable enough to be taken into account as a limited, and possibly representative sample.
Your argument over repeatability, on the other hand, is broken.
If I take a hammer and break a glass light bulb, can I conclude that lightbulbs will not withstand a blow from a hammer? Or would such a demonstration be deemed bad science because the tests are not repeatable, since the hammer blows are not finely calibrated and measured, as you argue? Of course not. But by your logic, such a test is not repeatable because the hammer blow isn't measured and made consistent. Even if you could break a thousand light bulbs with a hammer, you argue that the test would be neither scientific nor repeatable. And would be wrong on both accounts.
Any evaluation is done with the best tools available. This has always been the case. And has sometimes led to very wrong results. There are certainly more precise ways to quantify the light bulb failure point exemplified in the previous hypothetical.
But more precision isn't really necessary for most folks. And there is no reason to believe that the tests Noss performs are misleading or false.
Now if Noss were to take the same hammer and break a knife instead of a light bulb, even on a single sample, I'm willing to believe that it's more than likely representative than not because knives tend to be fairly consistent. Breaking multiple samples in the same way would be more scientific. Breaking more samples in a precisely quantified way even more so. But I tend to think that such precision is not really necessary. Now, any or all of the knives Noss has tested may be flukes. But flukes tend to be, well, flukes-not very common occurrences. It is therefore not unreasonable to conclude that the testing Noss performs and documents are satisfactory for our general purposes.
One question. Would anyone in the market for one of the knives Noss has tested actually refuse to find out how it performed, because his tests are not scientific enough? Especially if one wants a "bombproof" style knife, as these knives are often marketed as?
I'm unsure a youtube video taken randomly at the SHOT Show qualifies as a "ton" of hype, but perhaps to some it does.