Vinography: a wine blog: Terroir Doesn't Exist and Parker Is Pricey: “This will be dismissed, perhaps rightly, as highly contentious and flawed research. Anyone who has drunk enough wine, and in particular, tasted barrel samples from different regions of a vineyard will know that different soils and microclimates, even within a vineyard, will produce wines that can taste wildly different, even given identical winemaking techniques.”
Just like everybody knows that children raised in the same environment will have wildly different personalities, according to their birth sign, right? Well, wrong!
To be clear, I'm not saying that terroir does not exist. I'm not competent enough to tell. What I'm saying is that assertions like the above look very much like a case of communal reinforcement:
Communal reinforcement is the process by which a claim becomes a strong belief through repeated assertion by members of a community. The process is independent of whether the claim has been properly researched or is supported by empirical data significant enough to warrant belief by reasonable people. Often, the mass media contribute to the process by uncritically supporting the claims. More often, however, the mass media provide tacit support for untested and unsupported claims by saying nothing skeptical about even the most outlandish of claims.
Communal reinforcement explains how entire nations can pass on ineffable gibberish from generation to generation. It also explains how testimonials reinforced by other testimonials within the community of therapists, sociologists, psychologists, theologians, politicians, talk show hosts, etc., can supplant and be more powerful than scientific studies or accurate gathering of data by disinterested parties.
So, I'd advise more caution before dismissing the results of a scientific study. It takes more than “anyone will know”.
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