What is the best synthetic oil?

Jordo!

Honestly, I'm just not disregarding empirical data (reported in the oil nerd's thread) when it's available and relevant.

Independently gatherd and averaged UOA wear data from diferent samples for a highly similar engine is relevant whereas gear lubricity tests (like RP and I think Amsoil are known to report) are not.

As to whether any of that data should be taken into account at all comes down to the degree of typical variablity in engine wear in the population.

My feeling (which may be wrong) is that short of balls-to-the wall track only driving, the mean wear data from other DD's for a given oil in a given motor shouldn't vary substantially from that of other DD's for that oil and engine.

In other words, yes driving habits may vary, but the motor itself shouldn't break down significantly differently from driver to driver provided they are operating the vehicle within its design tolerances, especially modern engines that are built quite a bit better allowing for tighter tolerances.

The only people who regularly push that envelop are track-only drivers, who may even tear down the whole engine afterwards. That said, if the oil is doing it's job, wear should be minimal, and parts shouldn't fail prematurally, even then. When they do, it's because the design tolareances were exceeded rather than skirted.

Someone with a strong background in automotive engineering may disagree with this view in which case I will defer to their wisdom.

That said, if the end result is to conclude, "well any oil will do the job, and any syntehtic should be fine or better", then that means, at worst, you won't make a flat-out wrong decision taking the availabe wear data into account.

In other words, the data may be inconclusive, but they point to a few specific oils, all of which should work just fine, and if the data are correct, may even work a bit better. Inconclusive data should not be dismissed; in any science, there is always some error and variablity. That's just the way it is. However, disregarding relevant empirical data entirely, to me, is just foolish.

__________________
Enjoy it. Destroy it.