Jack, do you know what burden of proof is?
"When two parties are in a discussion and one makes a claim that the other disputes, the one who makes the claim typically has a burden of proof to justify or substantiate that claim especially when it challenges a perceived status quo.[1]" - Wikipedia: Philosophical burden of proof
Also if you expect scientific data from a hobbyist community then you're going to come up short. Many of us don't care or have the time to conduct scientific studies just to "prove" what we have learned from experience. In this game anecdotal evidence is what you'll get and let me tell ya, it's produced some amazing bows and bowyers and they only keep getting better. It would be truly ignorant to ignore the massive amount of anecdotal evidence of thousands of people accumulated over decades/centuries, believing that a single scientific paper (which always have plenty of their own flaws) has any more weight.