That is my question…how did SSE let these tests take place as purported and not correct them?
It really raises questions for me re: any test results we see coming out of their lab at this point.
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Do people generally take GCN reviews/tests seriously? I think of them as the company that has a guy do laps on multiple bikes and then declares one of the bikes faster than the others even though there are about a billion variables in how each lap could be different, which is completely being ignored.
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Speaking of SSE, can you read this test they posted and understand it? It’s been a long day so I may just be thick.
I’m not sure which seat post is sprung or solid. They introduce the standard seat post first so I would have assumed that is seat post 1 but it looks like the results are stating that seat post 1 performed better on cobbles which would hint to it being the sprung one. Why are we making these graphs in excel with rubbish labels. Same goes for tyre pressure.
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Agreed. the two sets of graphs contradict each other (assuming Seaposts 1 & 2 remain consistent between the Asphalt and Cobbles test, which they should).
Absolute rookie mistakes and again makes me question any data our of SSE.
Carbon soles are the dogs bollocks for ultra endurance. Anything less expect your feet to die a lingering death.
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Some of their earlier work was very well thought out and executed, but there were some boners too. I made a mistake posting this after a cursory glance at what they had setup for testing during the video. It seemed like it could work, that what they were looking for would be found that way.
Yeah, not so easy for that answer… Now the question is what answer did they actually find?
Unless that’s what they were supposed to find. There is a big university near here that had a professor working there several years aog who was bringing in lots of money (so they looked the other way a lot) and he was basically making research results to order. His lab’ would take a clients desired result and tailor testing around proving that result. Anything that could possibly disprove that thesis was tossed form the protocol. I read a lawsuit where he was offered as an expert witness, and the opposition lawyers were having a field day ripping his lab to shreds. They went to other cases his lab was admitted as a expert and tore his research to fine pieces. The opposing council even got an ex-employee to testify that he/they would meet with clients (for days occasionally) to go over the exact methods they would use and what bits of data they would record to prove their clients point. They called it ‘sound science’, and I began to see that phrase pop up a lot in the press. ‘Sound science’ was bought and paid for fake news. But I’m sure they university got lots of cash from his ‘work’. I think he was eventually fired, his ‘lab’ disbanded, but it was a huge black mark on university research.
Clearly “Big Cheap Shoe” is behind this testing.
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website of the guy I mentioned above that tests running shoes.
Something like this should in theory work for this test. Since trying to figure out the power being put into the shoe would be difficult doing it this way should in theory show that if someone had to work harder to get the same amount of power to the pedals that one shoe was more or less efficient on the bike too.
That was covered in the second video posted. There are ways to infer the amount of power going into the system. That second video is from an actual engineer who immediately was the errors in the GCN video.
Will GCN do an update, or delete that video.
Yeah I mentioned above it was the way to do it before that second guy pressed record on his phone 
His video reminded me to look it up and post a link since I had just heard about the same type of testing for running shoes.
And I remembered when I was a runner, you don’t mess with people’s running shoe brand. You can easily declare open war doing that with some people. Yikes, it was like a religion, a personal assault. I had two brands that I ‘loved’, but people ripped them, especially one of them, ruthlessly. But it’s important to keep data accurate and reports on issues with power and usability as accurate as possible.
I just found the fizik carbon Vento shoes and they are my go to for sure, and I didn’t have to buy either white or black.
No but if they go to s lab and measure something I expect at least a basic understanding of what they are measuring… That video was just really bad.
Personally I think shoes are super personal but overall I prefer stiffer soles. For me Shimano shoes seen to work great and I can find the 7 series for heavy discounts.
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Isnt it easier to measure shoe deflection. The more a shoe deflects the more power is lost. So a stiffer shoe is always better from a power transfer perspective. It gets hard when you try to quantify that in terms of watt savings but even then its still doable with a couple hundred dollars of equipment from sparkfun and a good pedal power meter.
Don’t forget that Oli likes to remind everyone he’s a scientist (and he’s Dr Oliver on social media), which I guess is intended to add credibility to these tests they do.
Not necessarily, think of the sole as a spring instead. During deflection it stores energy which is recovered when it springs back. Lost energy manifest itself as an increased temperature.
HAH!!! When we moved to our current location, I mentioned as we were driving around with a real estate agent that ‘Oh, we have an international airport too?’. She said ‘Just because they call it that doesn’t make it so’. Then I found out there is a room at the general aviation terminal where a customs agent sits. It’s a ‘port of entry’, meaning the 1% often fly in there rather than a ‘real international airport’ so they can breeze through the customs process. There are no foreign destination flights, it’s just a person sitting there waiting for self interested people to be rushed through the ‘entry process’. 
So Ollie/Oli/Olly can call himself a scientist, but that dog don’t hunt. A real scientist would have thought this whole thing through and realized they weren’t even in the ball park of proving what they thought they were. And shame on the company they used for not being more forceful pointing out the lunacy of this. Sure they got paid (likely) but it’s still an embarrassment that they didn’t do ‘due diligence’ to make sure that their work actually had a contact with reality. It’s bad on both of them, but the later more so as they were the focus of the perceived ‘expertise’ to prove the point. (Flogging a dead horse?)
Nobel disease.
Smart people can make dumb decisions on things outside their expertise.
I do it all the time thinking I can do house DIY because I have a PhD 
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They’re hit or miss in the content. They’ve had some really cool stuff like the Hour Record attempt a while back. And they’ve had some really good interviews lately. I think the interviews is the best thing they do. I also like their race tech stuff, like asking pros what crank lengths or handlebar widths they run. Just neat to hear what the pros do. Or just showing off new tech seen at races. But then they also put out terrible content like above. I don’t think I’d take any of their testing as gospel. But the interviews are good.
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I had to explain, several times, how to replace a knob set on an inside door to someone who worked down the hall from me. People told him I did a lot of remodel jobs on various properties, and I did at the time, so I didn’t realize how much help he actually needed. I get it, there are things I should probably know on some level, but filing taxes drives me to catatonia and I fall over. I tried to do our taxes once, and it said we owed over $20,000 in taxes. We both freaked out… A good accountant actually got us a refund! 
chatgpt says it better than me:
Yes! If you can measure output force and spring displacement accurately, you can construct a force-displacement hysteresis loop, which directly shows energy loss per cycle.
How to Construct a Hysteresis Loop:
- Apply Cyclic Displacement:
- Move the spring back and forth through a full cycle.
- Use a controlled displacement waveform (sinusoidal or triangular works best).
- Record displacement and output force simultaneously.
- Plot Force vs. Displacement:
- X-axis: Displacement (xx)
- Y-axis: Output Force (FoutFout)
- Analyze the Hysteresis Loop:
- If the system is purely elastic (no losses), the curve is a straight line.
- If there are viscoelastic losses, the loop encloses an area.
- The enclosed area represents energy lost per cycle due to internal damping.
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