in fairness, i havent read through ALL the relevant thread, but from the parts i did read (think it pretty much covered the debate) i didnt seem to get the impression that Richard was claiming his research was the be all and end all. He just said that he watched it on a camera with 78fps (cant remember the exact number) and made a calculation, and defended himself for doing it.
Now i think the figures are a bit high personally (mind you, my A level physics is an E, so i'm even worse off). But i have to defend him here, you could measure 80revs/sec on a 78fps camera . If you have a clear mark on the ball that you use to measure from, and you notice the balls doing 1.1 rotations per frame, every frame, then thats 85.8 rev/sec. However, you'd need 2 marks on opposite sides of the ball, because the uneven number of turns a frame would mean for a while the markers on the wrong side of the ball to see. I doubt Richard did this, hence why i'm slightly doubting his results, but the theories there people!