So good on Nike for building a better shoe wrote:
researcher wrote:
Did you actually read how the study was done? It was a horribly done study and results should be thrown own. Other shoes have the same zoom x foam and do not give close to the same results as the vaporfly.
So should we just allow runners to only go barefoot? Or maybe they can strap a leaf to their foot. Anything else can be left to interpretation based on what racer is wearing. Seems to be the only fair way.
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Your thinking is logically flawed. First, I did not make an argument about whether the shoes should be legal or not. I'm responding to the accusation that Des is a hypocrite and to the implicit assumption that the carbon fiber plate is the critical component of the shoe. Additionally, there is something called an interaction effect. This occurs when two variables, when combined, have a different impact than either single variable has on its own. This could mean a positive effect is bigger than the addition of two separate variables with a positive effect, the two could cancel one another out, etc. The improvements seen in the Vaporfly may be a combination of the curved plate and the foam, but this study suggests that the foam accounts for a disproportinate amount of the energy savings.
In terms of how the study was done: it was not "horribly done," nor should the results "be thrown out." That's not how the scientific research process unfolds. If somebody thinks a study is flawed, they can formally critique it and engage in a debate with fellow researchers and attempt to do their own superior study.