On Tue, 01 Nov 2016 09:33:24 -0700, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

you're entitled to invent a new testing standard, along with yet
another collection of artificial test conditions, that will satisfy
your vision of a "real world" test.

Fair enough response.

I've only had three LED light
failures. All were in the bathroom, all were failures of the driver
electronics

I believe that.
I suspect, but without personal experience, that the LED drivers are the
weak link in the LED setup. I haven't looked at one yet, but a single
electrolytic cap would tell me as much. I know you know electronics well, so
you'd know more of what to look for, but, I know wet caps dry out (among
other things that go poof over time).

two were mounted inverted (base up), and all were
retrofitted into incandescent fixtures with miserable ventilation.
Therefore, I propose a bathroom LED test, which includes heat,
condensing and non-condensing humidity, on-off cycle time, over
voltage, erratic power glitches by PG&E, limited ventilation, and dust
accumulation. Such a test will clearly define what might be expected
from "typical" bathroom LED service. The EU micro managers have specs
and tests for almost everything and will surely appreciate your
efforts on their behalf.

Yup. You had 'em all, especially:
- Heat
- Cycles
- Humidity (which wasn't mentioned in the previous articles)
- Overvoltage (which also wasn't mentioned, but happens all the time)
etc.

I think you need a major dose of testing reality.

Fair enough assessment.

Instead of LED's,
let's try drug testing. In order to release a new drug, one of the
tests that a pharmaceutical company must survive is a cancer test.

I have one degree in the life sciences, so, I'm familiar with details.

For LED testing, much the same trick is used.

I have another degree in engineering, so, again, I'm familiar with details
(remember, I invited you to the inventors club, long ago?).

There are quite a few products that suffer from inflated
specifications.

Ummm... er.... almost *all* products suffer from inflated specs.
You know this from looking at anything built by Apple, for example.

Eventually, they run out of
these fringes, and start inflating the specifications on the
assumption that the typical customer doesn't understand the specs.

Yup. I was in marketing myself.
The stupids outnumber the intelligent parsers 10,000 to one.

There are still people who believe Techron (aka polyetheramines) are
something special to Chevron, for example, or that high-octane fuel is
somehow (magically?) better than regular octane fuel.

Or, that a battery with a longer warrantee is somehow, electrically, better
than a battery with a shorter warrantee.

Back to LED lifetime claims, I'm shooting for 4 or 5 years.
If my one LED fixture meets that expectation, I'll be happy as the Philips
wacko sized fluorescents lasted 1/4 that each time, until I got sick of
replacing them.