Kelly_Guy said:Dude, you don't get it. You might be right, you might be wrong, I don't care, but saying "scientifically proven"? People do some little experiment and draw their own conclusions and say things are proven, and they don't have the slightest idea of what a null hypothesis is or the rigors of scientific study.
Like I said before, the experiment you described is only at best proving that chalk on the balls is NOT THE ONLY cause of skids. It didn't prove chalk doesn't or can't cause skids, and it doesn't prove that chalk does.
"Scientifically proven" requires a scientific design with no motive going into it, replication, statistical scrutiny, etc.
Does smoking cause lung cancer? I know someone who died of lung cancer, and they never smoked, so therefore it is proven that smoking does not cause lung cancer. That is the same argument you are making by stating the Mike Davis experiment proves chalk marks don't cause skids.
You can make arguments as to why you have your opinion and give examples of experiments that you think might give some credence to your opinion, but the scientifically proven talk is down right laughable.
Kelly
Not as laughable as your smoking analogy but we'll have to agree to disagree. They once tested babies who live in smoke free homes and they found trace's of nicotine in their lungs, everybody knows we all smoke whether we like it or not.
A unniveristy professor did a controlled experiment and easily recreated massive kicks with ZERO chalk present. I have seen similar experiments like the one willie mentions where both balls where completely covered in chalk and hundreds of shots where played without a single kick. For me this is enough eveidence to suggest that chalk is not the cause of kicks/skids.
Now if they had played a thousand shots with ZERO chalk on both balls and where unable to recreate a kick then I would consider the chalk theory to have more weight, fact is it was simple to recreate a kick with ZERO chalk.