Need tires.

[jtopiso_imp]

I am no expert, certainly not in tires. And of course, tires have a subjective side and an objective side, like any consumer product. But since my life may depend on tires, more than on windshields and RLETs, I would (innocently) claim that the subjective side should not (and in my case does not) matter. The same, most people agree is true for helmets.
Nobody needs to ride a tire in rain or shine for 40k miles in order to evaluate and compare it. Grip, braking action, abrasion - at different pressures, temps and on different surfaces - all of this is measured in a matter of hours. What cannot be measured in the lab is taken onto a standardized piece of tarmac, dry, wet, under water, with oil etc. - and measured. This process (I wouldn't call this science) is highly sophisticated, standardized, and reliable. All big tire manufacturers do it, the GP guys do it, automobile associations (here in Europe) do it. There is not a jota of subjectivity left - unless sb prefers to inject it afterwards.
But one point is taken, such information is not found in a bikers journal, and is not wanted by industry in a bike journal. What you see there is marketing twisted around journalism, where the cost of ads placed every month define the subjective results.
Many of the things said above are perfectly correct, please don't get my response wrong. Yet, when I asked "are there no dependable tire tests?", may be I should have better asked "shouldn't you care more about independent test data, and put more time into finding them, reading them and may be ... paying for them?"

On vehicle dynamics, there is always objective and subjective evaluation.

Example:
-braking distance, in controled conditions, would be an objective evaluation (and some are required to accomplish some regulations in some markets).
-confort, can be evaluated on a subjective manner

There are lots of metrics trying to make objective measures from subjective feels (e.g. ride frecuency is measurable, and directly related to confort), but there are always some subjective metrics.

Tyres can be evaluated by objective metrics (in europe we have standard categories for wet grip, dry grp, noise, durability...), but subjective evaluation is, for me, critical. The feel, handling, response from one tyre to another in the same category (and same objective class) can be astonishing.