If you have a good product to sell, you don't need to stoop to such things to effectively sell it...

True, but I'm a cynical person by nature, and I don't really trust anything given by the company selling it.
Cervelo, Specialized, Giant, Trek, Kestrel, Felt, they all have "data" that proves their bike is faster than everybody else's. But someone must be doing something to skew the data, because they can't all have the "fastest" bike.
Same with Zipp vs HED vs Reynolds vs Blackwell, etc.
Everybody has data to prove their stuff is better than what the other guys are selling.
If there's data from an independent source, I'm much more likely to believe that than anything a company tells me. Sure, a good company should be honest, but selling products seems to come first.


EDIT: I'm not saying Kestrel did or didn't do anything shady here. I highly doubt they would have done something so drastic as use deep dish wheels on their bike, and box rims on the others. The cynic in me just thinks that any company will do small things to make their bike come out on top in testing.