sogood said:
I am not denying the validity of those data. Data stand for the specific test conditions they were set up for. But they are inadequate proof for the ride feel difference b/n deep and shallow rims. You can take the term compliance by strict engineering definition, or by what people often use it for, to describe a less jarring ride. And as much as there's subjectivity and placebo with biological system, one can't absolutely deny the presence of a phenomenon on the basis of one set of experimental parameter. I think ScienceIsCool is correct in formulating a new set of hypothesis for the new data and test condition. The accelerometer data may deny or confirm a difference, but it'll still be open to argument as to just exactly what a rider felt. Categorically deny the presence of such a difference based on just rim deflection data (what's been done up to this point) is unscientific.
While data represent results under specific conditions, if all variables are accounted for and there is only one independent variable, then that variable is true for all conditions assuming that variable's behavior is described completely or sufficiently. In the case of my data, the independent variable is energy. Energy input into a wheel results in a force being applied at the axle/dropout interface, or if you wish, and acceleration of the axle, in the direction of the force. There is no ambiguity about that.
True, this test doesn't say what a rider felt, but it does say what a rider didn't feel: that the deep rim did not necessarily result in the "poor ride." In fact, it confirms what rational people have long suspected: that riders cannot accurately determine the reasons for a certain bike response or differences in a bike's response based soley on what they "feel." In other words, it confirms that human beings suck as accurate sensors, that they are in fact, wildly inaccurate.
For the record, my tests also quantify damping coefficients for the three wheels, so the behavior of the wheels is even better defined. The damping coeffients are only relative to the test, but this is often the case with any test procedure. Completely defining the wheels' vibrational behavior was not possible as I couldn't obtain, in time, the equipment necessary to find the harmonic modes of each wheel and thus define their fundamental modes.
Believe it or not, scientists and engineers actually do tests to replicate real world phenomena, and we make great efforts to construct said tests to reflect real world conditions and to evaluate the results in terms meaningful in the real world. This is one thing that non-scientists and no-engineers don't seem to get: we don't make **** up and test it just for giggles. In fact, it's pretty damned hard to get any research money for anything that doesn't have a real world application. It can be done, but it's a challenge.
I'm in the process of setting up for calibrating an instrument that measures displacement and has a resolution of 1.6 picometers. That's 0.016 times the diameter of a hydrogen atom. The science and data we'll get will be really cool and will be the sort of stuff that gives us scientists stiffies. However, we didn't get the money just to see how fine of a displacement we could optically measure: we got the money to produce something for someone. That's how it works. So everything we do, every result, and every datum will be viewed in real world, operational terms.
So the idea that a test just isn't right, or completely right, because it wasn't done on the road with rider on a bike, is, well, BS. That idea shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what scientific tests are all about. There is nothing unworldly or mysterious about quantifying the behavior of bikes and bike components.
