I dont see how its a crock this should give you a good baseline to get started. I didn't copy the whole chapter but, it's backed up by science, You think Lance Armstrong gets on his bike and adjusts things until they feel "right", I dont think so, they test this stuff, over and over, recording the results, and test again.
You better believe he does, he's known for hopping on and off his bike making 1/2 mm adjustments until everything feels just right, and he's known to do that for days on end during the tour depending on how he feels.
But that's only half the story, he positions himself on the bike according to his "fit" expert, for TT duties they then go into the wind tunnel and tweak it all, etc. So yes, he's using science and technology to the very limit, but to him it's still a "starting" point.
But using LA as an example really doesn't work for the rest of us, the guy puts more miles on his bike than the average American puts on a car in a year. So he's going to be much more in tune with what he likes and dislikes. As an extreme example, anybody notice his TT frame this year? How it's different than the rest of the team (and what's available from Trek), it's an old 2001 model painted to this years specs. The reason given why he's riding that old thing....he likes the feel of the bearings in the headset.
Me? I can barely tell when they need to be serviced, and I bet if you lined up 10 identical bikes, all sized the same, everything else sized the same (seat height, stem length/angle, etc) I wouldn't be able to tell them apart.
When I set my seat height, I used one of the formula's out there to get me in the ballpark, except it was to high (I use longer cranks), so I tweaked from there.
Andrew