With regard to your earlier point on models: Stephen Hawking who holds Isaac Newton’s former chair as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge (UK) and who probably has an intelligence equal to the sum of all of us who contribute to this blog, wrote the following in his book Black Holes and Baby Universes (1993; p36):
“In theoretical physics, the search for logical self-consistency has always been more important in making advances than experimental results. Otherwise elegant and beautiful theories have been rejected because they don’t agree with observation but I don’t know of any major theory that has been advanced just on the basis of experiment. THE THEORY ALWAYS COMES FIRST, PUT FORWARD WITH THE DESIRE TO HAVE A CONSISTENT MATHEMATICAL MODEL. The theory then makes predictions which can be tested by observation. If the observations agree with the predictions, that doesn’t prove the theory; but the theory survives to make further predictions, which again are tested against observation. If the observations don’t agree with the predictions, one abandons the theory”. Hawking also warns that: “A theory is a good theory if it is an elegant model, if it describes a wide class of observations, and if it predicts the results of new observations. Beyond that, it makes no sense to ask if it corresponds to reality, BECAUSE WE DO NOT KNOW WHAT REALITY IS INDEPENDENT OF A THEORY” (P38).
To say that the only evidence for the Central Governor model (CGM) is because of studies showing that VO2max is an imperfect predictor of performance (ie less than an Rsquared of 1.0) only confirms the confession that you made in an earlier post – that you have never taken the time to read this work or to try to understand what we are saying or even what is the role of models in scientific research. The CGM is simply a model that has been advanced in an attempt to explain many observations in the published exercise physiology literature that cannot be explained by the traditional Hill model of “peripheral fatigue”. For as Hawking writes, a model that is unable to explain all the published observations should be modified or abandoned. But for many reasons this has not happened with the Hill model – instead its manifest weaknesses continue to be defended by scientists who should know better.
But Hawking also explains why this is so: “In practice, people are very reluctant to give up a theory in which they have invested a lot of time and effort. They usually start by questioning the accuracy of the observations. If that fails, they try to modify the theory in an ad hoc manner. Eventually the theory becomes a creaking and ugly edifice. Then someone suggests a new theory, in which all the awkward observations are explained in an elegant and natural manner” (p36). Hawking also refers to the popular technique of “refutation by denigration” which is much in evidence on this blog but which, besides being very demeaning for all concerned, is a very tedious and boring tactic; one that needs to be recognized as the final resting place for the intellectually destitute.
More than one hundred years ago the German bacteriologist Robert Koch was faced with a difficult problem. He believed that he had discovered the cause of tuberculosis. This was at a time that the infectious theory of disease was still not widely accepted. He therefore posed this question of his learned colleagues: “I believe that tuberculosis is an infectious disease and I believe that I have discovered the cause. What experiments must I now do that will convince you that my hypothesis is true?”. After much discussion it was agreed that there were 4 experiments he would have to complete before it could be proven that the bacterium he had isolated caused tuberculosis. Koch went away did the 4 experiments and then on March 24th 1882 came back to report his results to the Berlin Physiological Society. Since he has been able to fulfill the 4 criteria laid down, his proof was accepted. This method of proof then became known as Koch’s four principles and these are still used to prove that a particular infective agent is the cause of a particular disease.
Now the question that I might ask is the following: What research study is needed to prove the existence of the Central Governor (CG) as we have described it? And if we provide that evidence would anyone be prepared to accept it?
I suggest there is one obvious experiment: Ablate the action of the CG either surgically or with the use of drugs. If the CG acts as we suggest it does, then after its removal, the subjects that are being studied will pace themselves at a higher intensity than they would when the CG was intact and acting in the way we suggest it does. This would then prove the following:
(i) That the regulation of exercise performance is not due to the development of “peripheral fatigue” since the exercise performance was improved without any interventions that could have influenced the development of “peripheral fatigue”.
(ii) That the regulation of pace is not set purely by conscious (learned) actions since if this were the case, the removal of the CG would have no effect. For if the CG does not exist, then subjects would continue to pace themselves consciously at the exactly same pace that they did when they had the CG in place (since the CG does not play any part in the pacing strategy which is consciously chosen by the athlete – as argued frequently by a number of participants on this blog).
Of course the absence of an effect might also indicate that we had not located the CG and had failed to ablate its action – a false negative finding.
Thus the really important finding (to support the existence of the CG) would be an increase in performance after the removal of the postulated CG.