As are many people, which tells you why JH's "double blind" test was not at all double blind. Cosmetically disguising bikes does not make it a double blind test. By his own accounting, two of the three riders in the test could tell the difference between the bikes by the way they felt, i.e. they knew which bike they were riding at any given time. If you combine that with the fact that they knew what effect they were testing for, it is not at all surprising that they observed some positive results. (I also wouldn't be surprised if the rider that recorded the remarkable 12% increase in power was JH himself.)

I can't find the post, but I'll paraphrase something written by someone else on this forum in a previous thread:

At some point we can talk about the test showing the handlebar bag he sells makes you more aero than no handlebar bag at all.

In my case, this is entirely plausible.

Very possibly; but his experimental test was poop.

I was thinking more in terms of my lousy physique and terrible riding posture.

Sometimes a pre-ride poop will help.

thread-kill

Exactly. At the end of the testing, the best you can actually say is, "I'm not wrong."

Hopefully.

Are there springs in this bag? Maybe plastic spoons?...I think if we buckle down and canvas folks here, we can find a few with a conjecture-hypothesis thing that makes that plausible...

Funny you should say that, because I just watched a video where an archer who routinely shoots warbows with draw weights in the 130-160# range struggles to draw a compound bow with a peak draw weight of 135#, mostly because the peak is early in the draw when it's predominantly the arms and a bit of shoulder doing the work while with the warbows the peak comes at the end of the draw, by which time you've recruited the whole body. He managed a handful of shots with the compound before exhaustion, whereas he could shoot dozens with the warbow.

BUT it was an arrow from the compound that was finally able to penetrate a replica 15th Century breastplate, which they'd never managed with any arrows from even a 160# warbow.

I wish I was as smart as the people that think they can rule something out by posting their denial often enough.

We should be so lucky (he said, adding yet another comment to the thread)

It certainly helps one concentrate on the ride, and not how far it is to that park with the restroom, if it's even open.

There is no correlation between ruling dumb **** out and number of posts...

Fantastic. Have you ever done it yourself? I competed in archery with a 70 lbs recurve and used a compound as well. Experience has value. Compound bows rarely have draw weights much above 80 lbs.

It is not surprising that someone used to an extremely heavy long bow would falter using what is clearly a custom compound built well beyond anything you can buy.

Calling stuff you disagree with or don't understand "dumb" is certainly another tried and trued method of expanding human knowledge.

Bravo.

Yeah, for about a decade I was very into Traditional Archery - so no compounds. I still have a number of longbows and several recurves. I also dabbled in selfbowyery, including making one Yew longbow that draws about 65# or so. Mostly I stuck with 50-55#, though. Never anything in the warbow range!

"I'm 95% confident that I'm not wrong."

I don't call it dumb because I disagree with it, I call it dumb because it is dumb, and I think you'd be very surprised as to how well I understand it.

First, I see what you did there.

Second, the right bag of the right size and right shape *could* be more aero if it acted like a fairing. That's entirely plausible, it's an interesting idea, and what Jan was claiming: that his handlebar bag had those properties. But it turned out that his experiment was poopy. A friend and I pointed out the error. Jan deleted our comments from his blog post, which is his right. So I don't usually bother reading his blog anymore.

I would be surprised that your understanding exceeds your ability to articulate it.

I initially didn't out you as author of the paraphrased quote (post #351), because I wasn't sure if my choice of the pejorative "poop" would sit well with you. But, I guess you're probably okay with it ...

Again, a rather un-sciency thing to do.

Whenever anyone (including one or two people in this thread) says of Heine, "But he's got a PhD!", let's remember that (1) he doesn't share his data, (2) he deletes critiques, and (3) even a lousy scientist can spot the glaring methodological problems in the things he calls "experiments."

None of this means that the whole "planing" is idea incorrect, per se...But to the extent that people take such ideas seriously because Heine seems all scientifical, well, those folks are kind of being hoodwinked.

Ok... Ok... Everyone take a pause.