The research points that way. You are the one on the "science" side in this debate and I am pointing out what science has observed in many studies of talent vs. nurture. Certainly there is going to be certain physical limitations with any endeavor that are defaults by the nature of the endeavor. A 400lb person is not going to be a world champion rock climber and a 120lb person is not going to be an NFL linebacker. But the science says that IF a person is physically capable then it's training and desire that makes the talent and not something a person is "born with".
It depends on what you consider the scientific approach to building a pool player is? Naturally the physiology is quite different than what's needed in a world class runner. So the science of building a runner needs much more heavy work in understanding human dynamics in my view.
Yes, we do, and they will stay that way until someone or something comes along in pool to change the paradigm. Which is why I said that the preeminent "science of pool" people should take on the project of building a champion and document the process.
It does happen (e.g. Jim Furyk's golf swing), but it is the exception to the rule. Not many people can maintain the extra sharpness required to keep more complex and difficult-to-execute motions from occasionally falling apart. A common expression is that someone's motion has "too many moving parts". If the motion is a required part of success in the activity, then obviously it has to stay.
I understand where you are coming from. Naturally we think that there is or should be a textbook way to play. But if I showed you the stroke of 100 players from the bridge hand through the cue ball you would probably conclude that the moving parts you can't see are all doing the same thing within a very tight range. However if I then showed you the pre-contact movement of those 100 players you would see a much larger range of movements than you originally thought would or should be there. The conclusion is that there are many many ways to end up imparting a quality stroke consistently.
Welcome to AZB. I think that this is just another version of the nature vs. nurture debate. The fact of it that pool players benefit from the science guys quite a lot as none of the improvements in equipment and true pool knowledge would be there today without people taking a keen interest in pool from the scientific perspective.
I took the original question to mean, on matters of shooting whom do you trust more, the science person who can explain the exact mechanics or the experienced person who can demonstrate the mechanics in action?
Dr. Dave has a video on his site where Mike Massey's power draw is analyzed. When it comes to learning to draw the ball like that I'd rather have Mike teaching me than Dr. Dave. No offense to Dave but Mike does that shot routinely and knows how it FEELS and hopefully can impart that to me.
When I taught people to jump using jump cues as part of my job selling them I quickly learned that explaining the mechanics of the jump shot only worked for SOME people. I had to learn at least ten different ways to demonstrate to people what to do, including learning to imitate them doing it wrong so that they could see what I was seeing. In other words I am confident that if presented with 100 people eager to learn to jump at a show I can have most of them jumping within five minutes simply because of my experience teaching using a library of techniques I had to create on my own. Simply knowing the mechanics isn't enough. I had diagrams and videos that I created along with a booklet defining the exact way to jump a ball written by a Master Instructor.
But that means nothing if the student can't translate it. Being a good instructor means you have to go way outside the prescribed book version in order to translate the feeling of success to the student. That is where experience trumps science in my opinion.
