Originally Posted by
amazinmets73
Can you provide any more scientifically credible tests? Shouldn't be difficult if the topic has indeed been beaten to death.
One thing that would help is multiple controlled repeats of the experiment, to establish some statistical significance to the claimed differences.
But before that, one would really need to have a properly controlled experiment. The biggest single flaw in the google doc is that the tires on the steel bike have vastly better rolling resistance than those on the carbon bike, so how do you know that you are measuring something other than the differences due to the tires?
Essentially, you want to change one thing only: frame material. Ideally, you would want to use the same wheels, tires and drive train. Several different routes, several different riders, etc. would also make things more compelling.
You are trying to test a very specific hypothesis: frame material is the only thing that matters. The rest of the bike should weigh the same, have the same air resistance, road resistance, pedaling resistance, etc. In practice, this is a very difficult thing to achieve.
If you see repeatable differences, it is most compelling to design a series of experiments to try to disprove the idea that the observed differences can be explained away by any other effect.
It is a lot harder, in other words, than what is presented in the google doc or that video.