We examine the suggestion that half of the galaxies observed by the Hubble
Space Telescope Key Project and the Type Ia Supernova Calibration Team have
had their distances systematically underestimated, by 0.1-0.3 mag in the d
istance modulus, because of the underappreciated influence of stellar profi
le blending on the Wide Field Camera chips. The signature of such an effect
would be a systematic trend in (1) the Type Ia supernova-corrected peak lu
minosity and (2) the Tully-Fisher residuals, with increasing calibrator dis
tance, and (3) a differential offset between Planetary Camera and Wide Fiel
d Camera distance moduli, within the same galaxy. The absence of a trend wo
uld be expected if blending were negligible (as has been inherently assumed
in the analyses of the aforementioned teams). We adopt a functional form f
or the predicted influence of blending that is consistent with the models o
f Mochejska et al. and Stanek & Udalski, and we demonstrate that the expect
ed correlation with distance predicted by these studies is not supported by
the data. We conclude that the Cepheid-based extragalactic distance scale
has not been severely compromised by the neglect of blending.