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Recently several responders criticized the writer's scientifically based arguements regarding ideal technique in the PV, as being overly simplistic and lacking in detail.
The writer's counter response to this is that science and scientists absolutely love the concept of simplicity. At first glance reality is full of random choas or complexity . One of science's most important abilities is the power to bring SIMPLE order to seemingly random chaos ( this is the basis for most of the major advances in scientific knowledge ). A good example was the discovery that sun light, micro waves, radio waves, gamma rays, x-rays and so on, were all simply different wave lengths of electomagnetic energy. Other good examples are the Theory of Evolution and the Big Bang Theory, which both provide relatively simple explanations for highly complex phenomena.
Scientists often praise good theories for their "elegance" or simple beauty. One of the most often used maxims in science is Occam's Razar, which was developed by the medival philosopher William Occam. It states that any given idea should not be more complex than is absolutely neccesary. Or, the simplist explanation is most likely to be the correct explanation.
Therefore, the simplicity of the writer's arguements concerning ideal technique should be seen as a strength, not as a weakness. Making things more complex than necessary, a problem endemic on this site, is , on the otherhand, anti-scentific.
Further, the crux of the writer's arguements is based on the fact that empirical evidence ( observation and or experience of the real world ) is considered to be the only valid proof in science.
The writer recently read an article in DISCOVER magazine about time asymmetry. To summarize the article, at the quantum level the laws of physics are symmetrical in time. That is events that occur in one direction in time can just as easily occur in the reverse direction. However experiments have suggested that there should be exceptions to this rule or "time-reversal violations".
Recently direct evidence of time -reversal violations has been discovered. The article states that despite strong theoretical reasons for expecting time-reversal violations to exist, this discovery is an exciting confirmation. "In physics, nothing is there until you actually see it", says lead scientist Fernando Martinez-Vidal. In otherwirds empirical evdence is the proof of the pudding.

Recently several responders criticized the writer's scientifically based arguments

The responder has not criticized your arguments. The respondent's intent was only to educate you and help you realize that they are in fact not scientifically based.

While it is true that empirical evidence has been collected, the lack of a controlled experiment places great limitation on the conclusions which can be drawn from these observations.

WARNING: Physics Content
Back to your example of light as a wave. You could turn on a lamp a thousand times and never "observe" that light behaves a wave, only through careful and precise experimental design, such as was done with the double slit experiment, could observations be made which supported the hypothesis that light behaves as a wave.

Additionally, you may go your whole life believing that light is a wave, and all your experiments and observations support this... until someone demonstrates the photoelectric effect, and scientists are able to observe that light can also behave as a particle (a photon).

Then you have Louis-Victor de Broglie, who postulated (based primarily on intuition) that all matter exhibited both wave and particle behavior. Through meticulously designed and carefully controlled experimentation his postulate was confirmed, leading to the wave-particle duality that we all know and love today.

While observation (or a better term would be measurement) is the final validation necessary in any scientific experiment or study, the experiment must be set up such that the measurements made are a clear result of what is being tested. E.g. If one were to be experimenting with different takeoff points, then a measurement of height cleared would need to be solely dependent on the takeoff point for it to have any validity.

Bringing the discussion back to the pole vault and your observations, you must also realize that you are not observing natural phenomena, but human action. There is no indication that any of the vaulters you have observed have attempted to execute a free takeoff or any other p/b technical element, therefore indicating that their selection of takeoff point is not an indication of optimization, but one of preference. Taking this a step further, and getting to the crux of the complaints many people have with your comments, is that if one were to read your posts, and take you at your word that there is no right way to [insert pole vault technical element] that they may assume that the p/b model is inferior, or not worth the effort, and may end up being one more statistic on the list of successful variable styled vaulters. No one knew that the flop was a superior high jump technique until Dick went and did it. The p/b model doesn't happen by accident, it takes a lot of dedicated practice to master it. Altius advocates that any athlete can demonstrate at least some level of mastery of the model, but I think he would agree that it takes work and dedication. It is much easier to let your takeoff remain inside, especially when you are successful, than it is to perfect the run and takeoff (which in these cases usually involves overhaul).

And in response to David's previous question in another thread about my apparent technical flip-flopping, let me explain. I prescribe to Roman's vaulting methodology (6.40 model), which includes the free takeoff. However, I am not arguing as an advocate of the model. I am not trying to convince David or anyone else that it is the ideal model. In fact, the less of you that try it, the better my chances for getting into big meets! What I am arguing is the logical fallacy of David's argument, which is completely technical model agnostic.

I'll leave the arguments for which model is best to someone else (I enjoy PVStudent's posts), my only aim is to illustrate disconnect between the conclusions drawn by David, and what his evidence actually suggests. His theory may or may not be correct, but his evidence cannot be used to draw such a conclusion at this time. Hopefully this has been illustrative and effective in communicating how David's opinion is not actually based on science, but on a misinterpretation of observations of uncontrolled human behavior.

Walrus,
Experiments are fine, but how do you set up an experiment that will give you accurate info on which take off point is the best? This seems impossible to me. It is my view that the only accurate info available is the performance of the best vaulters (5.80 and better ), which indicates that there is no ideal take off point.
You and others state that the free-take off is ideal, but you never give proof of it. Also I'm fully aware that light, like electrons can take the form of a particle or a wave, but this is unrelated to the point I was making, which is that science is about unifyng and simplifiying what previously appeared to be chaotic/complex. It is my contention that you and others on this site want to complicate how you go about understanding vaulting technique and I want to simplify it.

Walrus,
More thoughts: The Big Bang Theory and The Theory of Evolution were both developed based on observational evidence and some good inductive reasoning. It seems to me that the fg. vault is ideadlly suited to analysis and theory development based on observational evidence and good inductive reasoning as well.
All I can say is if you disagree with this ( as you have previously ), then we just have to agree to diagree. But please don't claim that I'm being unscentific. This is patently false.