I am not against led as I have myself.It is not cherry picking data ,at any high they are less bad, and I not know a lot of people that want high them on the ceiling sale coral farms do. And this alone show you the led not even come close.Yes people can go with them and maybe be happy, but they should be aware of the reality the advantage and disadvantage of each technology and not be miss leaded by false marketing claims.
Led use less electricity and are programmable,you can have sunrise sunset..yes this I agree,but the spectrum and spread is still behind the older technologies.
I think people should use a mix of the two technologies until we get a led that match them for really.I experimented enough on my one tanks for the difference, and I also see the tanks of my friends before and after, even with the straton.They are reasons why most sell them already..
Who said mount the straton up near the ceiling? Did you actually look at each of the maps and the par? At the height mentioned in the article you got the map from, they were getting SPS level par 24 inches away on the sand bed. That's about 30 inches away from the light that the person is able to grow SPS. Thus they can mount it higher, maybe try 10-12 inches, and get ideal performance.
Also the spectrum is wider in some LED fixtures. Again, it depends on the fixture and you are generalizing things. Same goes for spread. Depends on the fixture. You can't generalize. It is more complicated.
Another point, I doubt you did an "experiment" with one on your tank. You put a light over it, and stared at the coral. I doubt you have any way to measure the physiological well being of a coral, outside of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Switching lights in general can stress a coral, and simply staring at a coral doesn't tell you anything except what you want to see. This is a common thing I see t5 or MH owners fall trap to.
Finally, you are stating most people are selling their stratons already? Where did you get this information? Have you done large scale surveys on this? Do you know >50% of straton owners?