[Cathar]

There are many good reasons to be suspicious of manufacturer dependent tests. Many of those reasons have nothing at all to do with the honesty and integrity of the testers involved. Quite often it all comes down to marketing, and as such is typically out of the hands of the original testers, or they were instructed to, or perhaps even subconsciously, set the boundaries of their testing to arrive at a set of results which were favorable for a marketing bent.

The results may be perfectly valid, and quite often they usually are. Very easy for independent review to catch people out who are blatantly lying, as was the case of Professor Hwang Woo-suk. His research failed to stand up in the light of independent scrutiny, and so was caught out in a lie.

No, the clever marketer knows the strengths of their products, the scenarios or tests to choose which most favorably present their chosen produt in the best light, and the sets of test results to omit, both for their own products and/or their competitors, whether in part or in whole of completely ignoring a competing product, for purposes of presenting the strongest possible marketing case. Let's face it, industry testers who receive a pay packet derived from one of the products that they are testing are not going to publically present results unless they can find a set of results that is marketable and thereby facilitates receiving more pay. Anyone who says otherwise is either a liar, or they are very soon out of a job or out of business. Take your pick.

The art of "tactical deception" (aka marketing) is often achieved through careful omission of the truth. At best one can expect a playing down the product's weaknesses by attempting to dismiss the importance of the weak results, typically in fine print or in a side link, while presenting big pretty graphs of the strong points emblazoned with strong words about how such results are truly important and relevant.

More often than not, it is extremely important to analyse what is NOT being presented to you, far moreso than what IS being presented to you, when dealing with results derived from a source of conflicted interest. The results may very well be true, but the picture being presented can often be much like that of the publically viewable physical representation of "Escher's Triangle" on display in France. It looks perfect when viewed from a single very limited viewpoint, but when viewed from other angles that are not being controlled by the tester/marketer, all may well not be what it seems.