> But sommeliers can absolutely taste a wine and produce fairly reliable estimates of country, region, appellation, variety, etc.
This is what I'm asking if there's any firm evidence of. Do you know of any?
> That's essentially what they are trained to do, their exam is literally that.
One can equivalently say that healing the body is what acupuncturists do, and what their exams cover. That's all well and good, but if they can actually do it one should expect there to be research to that effect, right?
I'm not sure, but my brother in law is somewhere along the progression of the master of wine exams and they do tell you how many of the wines you classified correctly and how many you did incorrectly. Obviously, if you are no better than random then you are not going to pass the test. He generally gets most of the wines right on the exams.
I understand that the exams are very rigorous, but that doesn't in and of itself prove any particular thing. Somewhere some other guy's brother is studying for a master acupuncturist exam and he probably believes it's just as rigorous.
What I'm asking about is evidence of the usual sort - published results that can be duplicated, and whatnot. That doesn't seem like an unreasonable standard for believing something is real.
This is what I'm asking if there's any firm evidence of. Do you know of any?
> That's essentially what they are trained to do, their exam is literally that.
One can equivalently say that healing the body is what acupuncturists do, and what their exams cover. That's all well and good, but if they can actually do it one should expect there to be research to that effect, right?