Nikon's continued silence on the D800 focus issue is seriously hurting them. Why? Because while there's a real problem with some bodies, I can now say with some confidence that quite a few of the folk complaining that their cameras have that specific problem actually don't.
I've now looked at hundreds of test samples on URLs provided me from site visitors who've attempted my test. The statistics aren't good, but not for the reasons you think. Nearly 40% actually haven't done an adequate test. Of the remaining group that has, about a third have a camera that looks like it may have the problem.
As I've noted before, the problem cameras are obvious if the test is done correctly. Indeed, so obvious that I actually don't have to look at images to make the assessment! Wait, say what?
Assuming that you're on a sturdy tripod and really performed the test well, just the file sizes of JPEGs will usually tell you all you need to know. Five results will be within a percent of each other, one will be more than 10% different (smaller, since out of focus results in less detail). Guess which one that will be? Yep, the lefthand phase detect sensor sample. Not good enough for you? Well, if you used black and white test charts I can run a pixel value assessment and determine the same thing chromatically for many lenses: longitudinal chromatic aberration is a dead giveaway of missed focus on the 50mm for example, so I can just tally up purple values and see the difference immediately just as I can with file sizes.
So far, I've encountered samples from misaligned lenses, samples from cameras that definitely needed to be AF Fine Tuned, samples taken in really low and strange light that seems to trigger random behavior in the focus system, samples with test charts that aren't parallel to the image sensor or won't necessarily produce appropriate focus behavior, samples where the camera wasn't actually set to Single Servo, Single Point so the camera didn't actually focus where the user thought, and a person that thinks that striped puffy pillows are flat test targets (though in that particular case, I suspect his camera does have the problem; it's just that his choice of test target isn't definitive enough to prove it).
Now back to why this is hurting Nikon. For every 100 people that have shown me test results, slightly less than 20 have produced results that suggest the camera might have the problem we're looking to detect, but over 50 think they have the problem. Bad word of mouth is a bitch to deal with, but bad word of mouth due to false positives is a real bitch to try to overcome. Put another way, the false positives are adding to the Internet chatter about the problem, and thus causing even more people to test and even more people to report false positives.
This is one reason why the proper PR method for dealing with a serious problem like this is for the company to get ahead of it: be forthcoming on what the problem is, how to detect it, and what to do about it before anyone thinks to ask. Exactly the thing that Nikon is not doing. Nikon isn't ahead of their customer on this, they're not jogging alongside, they're not even following them at a distance; Nikon appears to instead still be in bed napping.
Some people seem to think that I'm ragging on Nikon's engineering or manufacturing abilities. No, I'm not. Manufacturing and QC problems happen, especially with complex devices early in the production run. I'm okay with that. It's not whether you have such a problem that's the issue, it's what you do about it. I'm holding Nikon to the fire for one thing: their customer response on this issue. It's not the right response, and it's actually now making matters worse for them.
Given that Nikon will be launching another new DSLR shortly, what kind of spillover do you think the focus issue with the D800 will have on that launch? Think about it for a moment. We're six months after the D800 launch and four months into shipments, yet we're still here talking about what appears to be a manufacturing issue with initial units. If you were actually a likely customer for any new Nikon DSLR announced later this month, how long would you wait to see if there were similar launch problems with it?
As the song says: "silence like a cancer grows."