The guy in the website even says that he simplified things to make it easier to analyze. In the page where he explains the development of the model used he says what to analyse and what to skip is a bit of an art. But as for the data that is presented in the table I have not said I have any beef with that.
My only real beef is with the human analysis portion of the data. Some aspects of the results are ignored, twisted or glossed over to further the idea of this "standing on the lower spokes".
Just one such example of an area that wasn't really explained fully is the increase in tension in spokes near the bending points of the rim. A bicycle wheel is a locked system and that you can't look at any increase or decrease in any single or even a limited group of spokes in isolation. The whole wheel contributes to the job with various forces between spokes fighting each other and balancing out a lot of the tension changes in any individual or small group of spokes. Sort of like pushing your hands together super hard and then using your isometrically tensioned arms to reach out and move an object. It doesn't take much to move the object but the total forces involved in the balanced pressures between your arms and the amount needed to move the object are FAR higher than the amount needed to move the object. But the outside world only sees the effort needed to move the object and the locked isometric forces in your opposing arms are hidden other than to your arms.
A full blown analysis of this would result in a hugely complex vector diagram or a ream of higher math equations. But I don't see any reference made to such a study of the findings. Instead the spoke loadings are only commented on in isolation or in small groupings. It's things like this that indicates to me that there's more to this model and data analysis that isn't being mentioned.
But in the end it really is about not agreeing with the semantical idea of standing on the lower spokes.
Instead I see it as the upper spokes have to take up the slack from the lower contact patch spokes that are no longer doing their job due to being under reduced tension. My own semantics? Perhaps. And in the end the whole idea of standing on or hanging from seems to come down to a case of semantics.
Lets take a non wheel example to illustrate the point. A platform is attached to a crane lift line. A steady line from directly below is tensioned to hold the platform from swaying. There's a lot of tension in both the upper and lower lines. A man steps onto the platform.....
The concept of "standing on the lower spokes" would suggest that the man is being supported by a decrease in the lower steady line tension.
The "hanging from the upper spokes" suggests that the increase in tension in the line to the end of the crane boom is holding up the man.
If I was the man on the platform I think I'd be happy that the line to the crane boom was there.....
Using this compressive concept may be an interesting way to study the forces involved from a mathematical standpoint and certainly I ran across many similar examples of "relative observation point" convieniences when I studied physics in university. But those cases all recognised that it was a convienience for the sake of making the calculations easier rather than a real world reality. This whole standing on the lower spokes seems like such a convienience run amok to me.