Originally Posted by
Cleave
It may be a fallacy, it may not. You can record a person's opinion on ride qualities against the vibration frequencies. If you have a large enough sample size you can statistically determine if there is a correlation between the opinions and frequencies or if there is not.
Your hypothesis is that there is not a correlation. The opposite of your hypothesis may be true.
From all the quantitative and qualitative customer testing that I've participated in, it isn't so simple. People's perception of sensations isn't very accurate - for example, if they're holding objects of different weight in each hand, they need a 5-7% difference to perceive anything. With the subtleties in ride quality we're talking about, I'd bet the test administrator's behavior would have more bearing on the results of the test than the material.
My position isn't that it's not able to be determined - it's just that it really doesn't matter when so many other factors get conflated in people's minds so much. You could probably make an extremely stiff bike 'feel' softer just by using more rounded tubing.