What made really serious scientists who studied the accuracy of the Polar OH1 in a PLOS ONE paper choose a testing protocol on a treadmill which looks not very serious?

Last Updated on February 2, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org

The scientists who wrote the paper in PLOS ONE look really serious:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333333571_Validation_of_Polar_OH1_optical_heart_rate_sensor_for_moderate_and_high_intensity_physical_activities

But is the treadmill protocol they have chosen really serious? The protocol of the papers is listed as paper [90.8.6] in the following list of the protocols choose in the papers:

90.3 Summary of the testing protocols of different studies

We wonder why they have chosen zero inclination on the treadmill, and then later on run on the treadmill with inclination. Why did they do this?

In the second paper of Dr. Desai from Cleveland Clinic in Ohio we can see, that they have chosen a protocol on the treadmill which only goes to 15 km/h on the treadmill:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6732081/

Did these authors have problems with movement ECG artifacts at higher speeds, and therefore have chosen only speeds on the treadmill up to 15 km/h?

• Who publishes a paper with a 50 000 USD g.tec medical device about the Polar OH1 in a PLOS ONE paper? Did the authors submit the paper to another journal first, where it was rejected? And where they asked to change the treadmill protocol for the paper to be accepted?

• They have chosen treadmill protocols only at very slow speeds. And did they change the treadmill protocol, and increased the inclination, and submitted then the paper to PLOS ONE, where the chance is high that the paper is accepted?