Nope. The loss of credibility attributes to anyone making the absurd claim that carrying your water on your body does NOT degrade one's physical performance while pedaling. If you carry an extra pound to pound and a half of weight on your body in the form of a water bottle, where it can shift as you move, as you engage in the activity of bicycling, it will at least slightly degrade your physical performance. That is not subjective. It's objective fact. Much more so than if you anchor that same amount of weight, plus an extra 2 ounces of cage to do so, to the seat tube or down tube of your bicycle.

There is a reason that, universally, professional bike racers do not carry their water bottles in their jersey pockets when they are sprinting or climbing. It's because their performance would drop, at least slightly.

My prior comment, that spending $20 or more on a Carbon Fiber bottle cage, rather than a couple of bucks on a plastic or aluminum bottle cage - THAT was a subjective opinion. The statement that carrying extra weight on the order of a 1 to 1.5 pound water bottle on your body rather than in a cage on your frame while bicycling will degrade your performance somewhat, that remains objective fact. But feel free to try to disprove it.