Originally Posted by Seattle Forrest

You use the same wheels, the same tires, the same FD, etc, to hold as many of the variables constant as possible. Then you do analysis to find the contributions from the other variables and eliminate them. We've mapped the human genome, we do mtDNA studies to determine ancient migration patterns, we build metal things that fly across oceans, and even do hard things like testing bicycles in wind tunnels. I don't think it's beyond our capability to know whether frame stiffness has a meaningful effect on bike speed or not.