Originally Posted by
Tom Bombadil
Reading that article reminded me of how far my interests lie from that type of riding. It is also another confirmation of how blind testing, in this case barely blind, can make it difficult to sense things that you think are very obvious when you know what you are using. I've proven this over and over again when testing audio components.
Given that I never "hammer", never corner at high speed (or even moderate speed), and never ride downhill at higher speeds, any differences in these bikes on those characteristics are lost on me.
As a statistician, I would consider this rider's observations to have dubious value, as he did not repeat the rides in a different order to confirm his findings. Riding them once each induces biases into one's observations. Likewise having only one rider, with obviously only one weight and one set of performance characteristics, reduces their value.
But to someone who respects and values that author's opinions, they could have value.
Well, the reason I thought you would find it interesting is the lack of difference an expert found in a range of tubing. What I took from it was that, like almost everything, the last 10% takes 90% of the resources (money). I figured it would provide some input to your mental chart... i.e. that the differences that are written about may be so tiny as to be imperceptible. It might change your rankings of what's important to consider.