ESPN Sports Science: Run or Slide?

I love these ESPN Sport Science features, even though it's really more technology, analytics and cinematography than science.  The conclusion here seems clear enough for base runners:  Run through first base, and don't slide.  But John Brenkus himself points out that for a very short segment, the sliding base runner actually lurches forward faster than the run-through base runner.  Sure, the base runner decelerates and loses time to the bag, if he launches into his slide too soon.  However, if he were to time that slide closer to the bag, he would actually get there fractions of a second sooner than the run-through base runner.  A true scientific study would have experimented with different distances from bag, and determined that at a certain point it would be better to slide than run.