"Nice bike you got there. Looks smooth, like you're planing."

JH has a degree in geology, not physics or engineering. As I recall, one of the other PhDs involved with JH has a degree in the social sciences. What field did the third person get their PhD in?

What was described was not peer review, in a way recognizable to the scientific community. Peer review is a formal process, is almost always anonymous, is conducted by specialists in the field, and is moderated by an impartial journal editor (a difficult problem if you self-publish your own journal). It is expected that the referees, with the protection of anonymity, will be as harsh and as critical as is reasonable and required.

Because no matter how much you try, with rocker plates, etc. it only poorly mimicks how the bike and rider move when out of the saddle, which is probably the only situation where the twisting and untwisting of the frame, and the power input high enough, to reliably measure the effect without it getting lost in the noise?

This has been posted on BF many times. Thing is, those are elites. They are not like most of us. It's a mistake to think that because they can do whatever, we can also benefit by doing the same thing. Everyone on here probably knows that I pedal round, i.e. try to keep the total crank torque about the same all the way around the circle, mostly unweighting the backstroke pedal but not pulling up. What's unexplained is how a duffer like me, with a crap FTP can finish in the top 10% of finishers on long rides, say 10 hours and up, even though I'd be 15 years older than most of them. And don't get tired. On a 400 or a double century, I'd be dropping riders in the last 30 miles. It's simply because my max pedal pressure is lower, so I use more Type 1 and less Type 2. One of the properties of being an elite is that they have a higher percentage of Type 1 which they can use effectively, even though their max pedal pressure would have most of us using Type 2. On shorter rides, I'd get dropped on hills, but get them back after the hill because I didn't need to let off the pressure like they did. Late in the ride, I could drop folks because my Type 2s were mostly unused and ready to go. I usually won the finishing sprints.

On short rides, like TTs, all of us can profitably pedal most effectively by hammering the downstroke. Changing one's pedal stroke for some particular test is silly and the testers knew this. It takes years of work to effectively change one's pedal stroke. I clearly remember the first time I was able to pedal three strokes in a row with my new technique. The downside of pedaling like I do is that it took a lot of specialized training to be able to do it effectively, so it's a one-way street. An upside was that I could win hill sprints against much stronger riders. I think it helped my skiing, too.

Of course all of this has nothing to do with the subject of this thread.

I guess he should have specified what he wanted instead of saying "academic background".

Mechanical Engineering.

JH claims it happens while pedaling seated. If the effect is as big as he claims, it should be easily measureable under those conditions.

It's hilarious that a poster is touting the number of PhDs involved in this discussion (and in Heine's "research") with no apparent recognition that PhDs are not created equal. I mean, if I have a PhD in English Literature, does that give more credence to my opinions on planing?

PhD'd geologists and social scientists might (just might) have enough training in research methods to recognize faulty research design...But the further they stray from their own fields, the harder that becomes.

And, unlike Heine, actual researchers will willingly provide their data to others.

I have a PhD and I'm pretty damn unsure about most of the stuff I've done. I don't pay much attention to doctorates as a qualifying attribute.

Decades ago when I was still a grad student, I asked the then-chair of our department, a pretty well-known guy and a member of the NAS, about a long-running academic dispute he had with another professor on campus, of equal reknown and also a member of the NAS. He thought for a moment, then lowered his voice and leaned in. "Robert," said he, "you can lead a horse's ass to water but you can't make him think."

I quoted the correct post. Are you able to follow the conversation chain into which you inserted yourself? Did you quote the correct post?

If Trakhak wanted only those with physics or engineering degrees to weigh in on his experiment he should have specified that in his post.

"Academic background" means nothing, every single person posting here has an "academic background".

Yeah, but I think that's horse ****. Same conditions, two different riders, only one sees a relatively massive effect in a system that's measured subjectively? And the other sees no effect at all?

Who said it is perceivable by the riser?

as others with more direct training have noted, this really wouldn’t be that hard to measure. a couple strain gauges on a couple frames with similar geometry, a set of power pedals, matching groupsets, a pair of wheels which fit all the bikes, a cycle track or velodrome, heart rate monitor, strong rider, and an afternoon spent in Z2 or Z3 to avoid fatigue and aero being too much of a factor. the minor effects of weight and cda could be compensated for since those things are measurable.

the only part i couldn’t go set up with a few friends from BF (if i had any friends) is the strain gauge part, but it is just unimaginable to me that with tens of millions of dollars spent on marginal gains in cycling by both amateurs, unsponsored pros, teams, manufacturers, etc, that nobody would have done this. if the gains are tiny it would be lost in other noise of the experiment, but if they’re anywhere near the magnitude referenced by JH it would be almost immediately obvious.

My way of saying that has always been, "Some PhDs are smarter than others."

To actual academics, those words mean something very different than what you're implying.

Sure, half of all PhDs are below average, and some are flat-out wrong at times. But, as a group, people with PhDs in physics and engineering are much more qualified to analyze this theory than people with PhDs in totally unrelated fields.

This was the thrust of my observation. More knowledge ("academic background") applied here has apparently only muddied the understanding. Reading the comments from 10 years ago makes it clear we know less today than we did then.

I suppose the angst with which many approach this topic precludes the ability to see the humor.

Apparently Jan Heine did, in the descriptions I've read (in this thread) about his "experiment" involving two riders climbing a hill on different bikes.

Regardless, believing that these pieces of stiff steel are flexing and unflexing enough to have any impact is implausible.

Once published, (and different fields have different expectations). But in general, it is an expectation. In fields like mine, there are public repositories that you have to use (eg Protein Data Bank -- which, despite the name, is for all macromolecular structures), and you have to obtain what is in essence a serial number from them before any credible journal will consider your publication, which means that your data will be available upon publication. (There is a provision for a 1 year hold, but most people don't invoke that even.)

Maybe. But I've read comments by sprint specialists that they rejected particular smart trainers from purchase consideration because the manufacturers said that they're good for only 2,000 watts or so. Whether anchoring the rear of the frame in a trainer eliminates the kind of frame flex that leads to the planing effect out on the road seems to me an open question. There's been a surprising amount of gatekeeping regarding similar speculations in this thread, though.

If nothing else, kudos to Jan Heine for inventing (or revealing, depending on your point of view) a new phenomenon that, for the foreseeable future, will divide a population of enthusiasts into the usual three camps: you're an idiot if you believe it/not sure/you're an idiot if you don't believe it (and a fourth, I guess: the camp of Who cares?).

It's like the never-ending arguments on electric guitar forums (e.g., you can/can't hear the differences in tone between solid-body guitars with polyester and lacquer finishes/solid-body guitars made of basswood and alder and ash and mahogany and poplar/and so on). (By the way: you can't.)

One did, everybody is too scared to critique the model: https://web.archive.org/web/20090323.../Frameflex.htm

Why are you misapplying power data from pro riders to Heine's ideas and test group? When did Heine say that planing would primarily benefit those capable of very high peak power? If anything, the implication is the opposite - that those unable to stomp through the max load portionof the pedal load benefit from a device that decreases peak torque and redistributes that energy.

I had to look that one up. The Bergelin is unique in being able to make tension adjustments on the court. Other racquets string tension can be adjusted/tuned when being re-strung.

Would that "during competition" adjustment even be allowed?

They can tell the difference between bikes and sometimes that difference matched their performance. Other riders it did not.

I'm suggesting that fixing the bike in the vertical plane means both the crank and wheel can't be loaded normally by weight and lean angle together.

You will measure something, but it will be different than on the road.