It kind of makes sense - since it's just sport, there really isn't an incentive for someone to do an unbiased study. Unless an individual is spending their own money to do a high-quality, double-blind study, you're generally only going to get company-sponsored studies like bike or wheel windtunnel data. There's not the customer base to support a consumer-reports-style completely independent organization.

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STAC Zero Trainer - Zero noise, zero tire contact, zero moving parts. Suffer in Silence starting fall 2016

Intersesting article. I espescaily raised a brow at the line about running shoes.
I was told that I should always run in stability or motion control shoes.....

Yeah I think you need to make sure you read that the right way which I interpret as you need the right shoe "comfort" = for your gait & something that uses proper foam cushioning (not cheap shit as that will cause injury) & feels comfy/fits.

But beyond those pretty basic requirements (take that as pretty much any shoe £50-60+) it's mostly buzzwords & bullshit, the law of diminishing returns quickly turns into parting with money for a placebo effect. It's no different with the swim (overpriced wetsuits, those ridiculous fastskin goggles) and the bike (yeah...).

AHare: I would be all for an independent testing body when it comes to equipment and supplements even some sort of consumer crowd sourced one. You already see it in obsessive detail with things like photography review sites but with sport there's a distinct lack, even with all the equipment we have to measure and rate these things being available to us.

What about the bike? Are you trying to tell me that spending $12,000 is not going to make me as fast as Chris Lieto?

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

That depends, does that $12k include a free piggyback on Chris Lieto?

So true about the shoes. Until the age of 16 I trained in keds, with no injuries. Also, we did not have goggles or sports bras..

I'd be for it as well, but it's the kind of thing where you'd need a ton of capital to make it work. To do a proper bike test, for example, you'd have to have enough money to buy 5-10 bikes and enough windtunnel time to do a proper test on them. Then you need to talk about rider on/rider off and other vagaries of test protocol.

Something less capital-intensive would be running shoes, but it'd be so hard to do a controlled test on running shes when talking about injuries or speed. And of course, if you found that there's no real difference, you'd just get overwhelmed by the marketing budgets of adidas/nike/etc shouting that your protocol is bad and of course their latest shoe makes a difference.

Actually, isn't there a site that sells whitepapers on tire comparisons/bike comparisons? Yes there is: http://biketechreview.com/store

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STAC Zero Trainer - Zero noise, zero tire contact, zero moving parts. Suffer in Silence starting fall 2016

I'm not sure what you're referring to in the way of overpriced wetsuits, but as a long time swimming I can tell you my B70 Helix is considerably faster than a low end wetsuit. They wouldn't have banned tech suits in swimming if there wasn't an appreciable benefit.

As far as bikes/wheels there is plenty of independent data proving a measurable improvement in performance.

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Michael J. Pelechaty
Brewer, Black Box Brewing Co.

"Yeah, I was depressed for a little while, but then I remembered how awesome I am."

The more we learn, the more it seems stability has been over-emphasized. It is still part of the equation, but not the main piece. I recently sat through a presentation with Dr. Reed Ferber from the U of Calgary and then had dinner with him. Lots of interesting data coming out now, but he stated that there has been no studies looking at the "stability category of shoes. When the research world talks "stability" they are talking motion control. His research showed that about 70% of the population would be fine in either a neutral or stability shoe, and only 30% would NEED extremely flexible or controlling footwear.

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Brian