Testing is a really complicated arena. In the past, a lot of German magazines were using certain brands' in-house test rigs to test things like bars and stems. So instead of having test results that seemed as unbiased as possible, they were (unwittingly but hilariously) producing results that favoured those brands' products because the test rigs were proprietary. Even better, that brand was often German and would be declared the 'Test Sieger'. I know this first hand, by the way. So, let's just keep that salt shaker in hand because we're going to need a lot more grains of it if we're going to invoke German mag objectivity. I love the idea and intention of independent testing and I'm not saying it's all bad or biased or useless, but you're getting hit with marketing there, too, on the part of the so-called impartial magazines.
Do a little digging sometime into who 'owns' most awards organizations...it's often media outlets. I won't point fingers but you don't have to dig too deep to find a rather glaring example of this among a multi-disciplinary cycling media company in Europe. Oh, by the way, they charge brands to include them in their 'evaluations'.
Most standardized testing that is regulated by CE and other bodies, whether it's for bar strength and durability, helmet safety, etc, are deeply flawed* and most brands will tell you they create their own test parameters as a result. I'm not going to get into it here but be very wary of whose empirical testing you rely on or trust. Sure, we could create a test rig for bar stiffness and report on the results, but do weights hung from the ends of a bar and measured deflection tell you much about how they'll feel on the bike? (Nope.)
*if it's deeply flawed, why is it used or approved? Well, regulatory bodies need some kind of testing standards, and we can agree it would be impossible for all industry brands to agree on what those would be, so there's usually a bit of a stalemate. Ultimately, the person in charge of 'bike component test standards' at CE has to come up with parameters. Unfortunately that means things like road bars are tested only based on hundreds of thousands of cycles of regular riding and sprinting with hands in ONE position, which isn't how road bars are used (this is only one example of how insufficient standardized testing can be).
July 9, 2024, 8:17 a.m. - Pete Roggeman
Testing is a really complicated arena. In the past, a lot of German magazines were using certain brands' in-house test rigs to test things like bars and stems. So instead of having test results that seemed as unbiased as possible, they were (unwittingly but hilariously) producing results that favoured those brands' products because the test rigs were proprietary. Even better, that brand was often German and would be declared the 'Test Sieger'. I know this first hand, by the way. So, let's just keep that salt shaker in hand because we're going to need a lot more grains of it if we're going to invoke German mag objectivity. I love the idea and intention of independent testing and I'm not saying it's all bad or biased or useless, but you're getting hit with marketing there, too, on the part of the so-called impartial magazines. Do a little digging sometime into who 'owns' most awards organizations...it's often media outlets. I won't point fingers but you don't have to dig too deep to find a rather glaring example of this among a multi-disciplinary cycling media company in Europe. Oh, by the way, they charge brands to include them in their 'evaluations'. Most standardized testing that is regulated by CE and other bodies, whether it's for bar strength and durability, helmet safety, etc, are deeply flawed* and most brands will tell you they create their own test parameters as a result. I'm not going to get into it here but be very wary of whose empirical testing you rely on or trust. Sure, we could create a test rig for bar stiffness and report on the results, but do weights hung from the ends of a bar and measured deflection tell you much about how they'll feel on the bike? (Nope.) *if it's deeply flawed, why is it used or approved? Well, regulatory bodies need some kind of testing standards, and we can agree it would be impossible for all industry brands to agree on what those would be, so there's usually a bit of a stalemate. Ultimately, the person in charge of 'bike component test standards' at CE has to come up with parameters. Unfortunately that means things like road bars are tested only based on hundreds of thousands of cycles of regular riding and sprinting with hands in ONE position, which isn't how road bars are used (this is only one example of how insufficient standardized testing can be).