well there are anti backtesters because backesting has been generally abused and many or most people dont' use it right.  I've seen so many systems out there are simply a collection of a bunch of indicators and the person runs a huge ramge backtest on all the variables and while a backtest report might spit back settings that would have been profitable in the past, if you looked at the setups, it's really just a bunch of nonsense you would never do in real life.  I think backtest should be targeted to a logical set of conditions and ranges that you are trying to verify, that you see visually.