MQ1shooter: Would you really trust your local gas station in giving you 1 gallon of gas and not short-changing you 10% at a time??? It's like asking the fox to guard the chicken coup.

I'm definitely believe that a majority of manufacturers are very honest. I think most of them are. The problem, however, it that without standards (as you have at the gas pumps) you open up the possibility for the "bad guys" to rob and cheat.

Although it's done this way right now and will continue, allowing manufacturers to TELL YOU what their bows will do, as far as speed, is like giving all your money to a stranger to invest. So many expensive, and some inexpensive items, that we purchase on a daily basis are controlled by standards like US Dept. of Standards, UL, US Weights and Measures (which I think may be part of US Dept. of Standards), US Food and Health, Surgeon General's Office, etc., etc., etc.

What you're asking is if everyone sends their arrow weighing equipment in for standards checking, is their chronograph calibrated and to what standard, are they using the same style arrow, is their bow scale calibrated, is the bow they actually test arbitrarily pulled from a production line or selected as the "best" of a run. Do they polish the axles, select a string that has less strands for more speed, set the draw length 1/4, 1/2 or 1" longer than what it should be????

Who is performing the test makes all the difference in the world. You said it best in your last sentence: "If the parameters weren't the same, then we can hardly term it an evaluation worth mentioning in terms of comparison".