Bones in dry cooked meat have little to no impact on flavor. Look at the composition. Extremely hard and dense calcium makes up the surface. The interior is either the porus spunge like red marrow that makes blood cells or the fatty yellow marrow of femurs. While the bone surfice has tiny pores that let blood pass in and out, a relatively short burst of heat has little effect on breaking down the surface or melting the marrow and causing it to ooze into the meat. Add the fact that muscle and especially cooked muscle absorbs little in a short time. Marinades and brines take days or weeks to penetrate, what can you expect in a few minutes or hours? The bone in the center of a Butt roast will have next to zero impact on the flavor. The exception here is Fish as the bones are cartilage that do soften and slightly dissolves when the fish is cooked adding to the flavor.
Now take meat with exposed bone, ribs, cross-cut chuck roast, oxtails, and cook the meat low and slow in a solvent like water or wine and the bones begin to dissolve and the marrow melts and flavors the soup, stew or braise.
The bone in a pork butt weighs less than 10 ounces. It adds little to the weight and price. But a boneless but is a value added product. A worker has taken time and a knife to it to remove the bone and while at it often removes the fat cap reducing the weight then nets the roast. Somebody has to pay for all this labor and weight loss. On average there will be a higher price compared to an uncut butt. Since the bone falls out of a butt that is ready to pull, there is very little labor on your part and there is a savings on the cost per pound over boneless...JJ
