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ChristianKl comments on What are your contrarian views? - Less Wrong Discussion
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The study and analysis of human movement is very underfunded. There a lot of researches into getting information about static information such as DNA or X-ray but very little about getting dynamic information about how humans move.
I agree with this, so I'm telling you instead of upvoting.
Except for the purpose of making CGI actors' movements look realistic.
That's mostly not done within biology but by companies that produce closed-source knowledge and proprietary algorithms for the purposes of CGI.
This is very intriguing. Can you give examples of what gains we would get from studying this?
I think most people who suffer from back pain suffer from back pain because their muscles do something they shouldn't do. RSI is probably also an illness that has to do with muscles engaging in patterns of activation that's aren't healthy.
I personally had to relearn walking after 7 weeks of being in bed in the hospital. You need an amazing number of different muscles to walk and if you don't use a bunch you are walking suboptimally.
These days you can use approaches such as Feldenkrais to relearn how to use all your muscles but Feldenkrais isn't really science-based. A real science of movement that would have equipment that measures human movement very exactly and then runs machine learning algorithms over those measurements is likely yield a science-based version of Feldenkrais that's more efficient and where you can diagnose issues much better to be able to say beforehand whether Feldenkrais will help a person.
I think I've found a scientifically-based system. It's based on anatomy, and uses pressure plates to establish how people move their weight when they stand and walk.
Unfortunately, the book costs $60, and is a book of principles and facts, not methods. Even though it's directed toward body-workers rather than people in general, it still doesn't include the exercises for activating the appropriate movement patterns to improve walking.
Nonetheless, I'm experimenting cautiously with what I can get out of it-- gently shifting the weight transfer patterns in my feet while walking toward what's recommended, for example. This may be doing some good, but I'll do more of a report later.
Author's blog
It might be a bit measurement based but that alone doesn't mean it's science-based. As far as I can see the author doesn't hold an academic degree and doesn't even think that it's important to have somebody with an academic degree recommend his method if you look at the testimonial page. I don't see references to published papers on the website.
Of course that doesn't mean that the knowledge in the book isn't useful. On the other hand it doesn't help with sanctioning treatment as evidence-based and getting them covered by mainstream medical providers.
This book solved my RSI, FWIW: http://saveyourself.ca/tutorials/trigger-points.php
What would science-based Feldenkreis teaching look like?
How would you get from "machine learning algorithms over measurements", which sounds like statistical curve-fitting, to actionable conclusions, about how people should use their bodies, and how to teach people how to do that? No-one can follow instructions like "increase activation of the iliopsoas by 3%", even if you somehow validated a causal model that made that a useful thing to do in some situation. People can barely follow verbal instructions at all about posture and movement.
The problem is that we don't really know which instructions people can easily follow and which they can't follow. If the problem is "increasing activation of the iliopsoas by 3%" you can empirically test various interventions. Without having a casual model of what kind of movement is good, you can't validate interventions and determine whether the intervention is good.
Apart from that it's possible to do biofeedback. Good feedback can give humans perception and control over many variables.
On the other hand you can make a similar argument about the useful of understanding how proteins do what they do. Just because you understanding a pathway doesn't mean you can manipulate it the way you want. Science advances by first mapping the space of phenomena and then hopefully finding a way to intervene.