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this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2024
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The claim that humanity with all the money, medicine, science, and effort placed into recruiting and training world class sprinters has only managed to achieve less than 70% of the potential top speed for a human and that someone could pop up in the next couple decades that could drop the world record by more than it has moved in the last century in one fell swoop is not plausible. Sprinting is too close to raw power output for this kind record movement and if your analysis says that it is then you need to go back to the drawing board.
That's actually what is happening here. Rather than a 'gut feeling' about human performance, someone/several people decided to try to model it with the best available information. If it's wrong, the next step is to prove why it's wrong and get a new 'best approximation'.
The next step is not to throw it all out because it doesn't sound plausible.
What's happening here is single sentence from the conclusion of paper with the explanation and caveats removed is being cherry picked by another author who then uses it to pretend it means what he thinks it means and make spurious arguments. Pointing at the paper and exclaiming "Science!" isn't a defense. The paper posits human anatomy and physiology that does not exist to reach their speed. It's scarcely different than referencing a paper pointing out humans would swim faster if only they had flippers.