Thanks for pointing out the deficits in so many self-proclaimed experts' understanding of exercise physiology. I'm not an exercise physiologist, so I should not know more about the original Hoogkamer (2017) et al study's protocols than people like Ross Tucker. And yet I'm always disappointed that these people never actually talk about the science. The actual study. they are just talking about times and performances, and always saying 'How can we know what's real anymore? the world is upside down!' Well, the first step would be to try.
Try reading the science. You are a scientist. Whenever I try and bring it up with Tucker on Twitter, it's always put aside. Hoogkamer et al did use calorimetry to measure metabolic energy savings in that 2017 study -- they took the protocol from another study authored by Fletcher, which they cited -- and yet Tucker (and others, including rojo -- but you guys are not scientists, so that's a little more un understandable) always plays around with percentages as if they're related to some total performance measure, or, worse, an actual time improvement. No one talks about the translational problem between metabolic energy savings and marathon performance, for instance.
Yes, the shoes are great. But what about all the other improvements in the last 5 years. Maurten? Strava? NN Running Team management? Improved camp conditions and team morale? Training improvement and better data metrics? There are so many other '1%' improvements that are never discussed. I have no doubt we would have seen many of these records go even if the record breakers were running in, say, epic reacts.
The other issue with Tucker is his proposed 20mm stack height solution. How will that make a difference? It's arbitrary and just nitpicking. PEBAX is PEBAX at any height. You might see less advantage than 40mm of PEBAX, but you'll still see 20mm of PEBAX advantage. Foamised PEBAX took a long time to get into running shoes, but it's here now. And it works. EVA is not found in nature, nor it polyurethane or thermoplastic polyurethane. People need to see this for what it is. Improvements in chemistry! If you want to say that running as an activity should only occur when a runner has a specific man-made fibre underfoot then you are surely restricting and tying the activity to technologies of a particular time. I thought running was defined by the action (just as race walking). Putting this or that underfoot should not essentially render a runner not a runner. Chemistry happens.
When we discover a new pharmaceutical drug that's vastly different or superior to the last, one that transforms our understanding of a mental disease like depression, because it effectly cures it or makes it much improved, no one says 'But they've transformed depression! What about all the wonderful poetry and philosophy dealing with melancholy? Shouldn't we play fair and let everyone feel the depression as they always have?'
No, that doesn't happen. What happens is this. We say, 'Okay, well the normative epistemic definition of depression has changed -- and that is a good thing, because depression is bad.'
In running, the critics want to say that the current definition of running in TPU or EVA is good (even though foams like boost are not those), and they want to freeze it in time, and to effectively say 'This is what running is.' They want to preserve it on the basis that it is good, and that it's the only thing that counts as running. This is a categorical problem.
But that's a ridiculously time-bound definition of running. Running with PEBAX underfoot is still running. It's just a faster and better way of running.