It seems like money permiate every aspect of the running/shoe industry, the science it’s supposedly based on as well as the journalism covering it. I would love to see people with a good graps of what constitutes good science systematically go through the relevant science and evaluate how much is nonsense and how much isn’t. Seing as fields and science within them that often are considered the hallmark of good science is anything but (see link below) I’m guessing that most of the “science” on which the shoe-companies use to justify their latest “thechnologies” is BS, quite frankly. I really don’t know this, I’m no expert at any of this, but that’s my gut feeling.

Sorry for the pretty off topic rant, I just needed to get that off my chest, i guess. Oh, and I don’t disagree with the article, on the contrary I think it’s good, it’s just the way it ended seems to encapsulate everything that is wrong with this business.

While it has nothing (directly) to do with running or running shoes I really urge you to check out this article (if you haven’t seen it already) about how common poor science is:
Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science – The Antlantic ( http://www.theatlantic.com/mag…  – the actual paper: http://www.plosmedicine.org/ar… )

PS. I appologize for typos and poor english.

I’ve read that Atlantic article, and just finished Bad Science by Ben Goldacre, both worth reading. Doing what you suggest about looking into the research is what I attempted to do in my book, and it’s true that there is not a lot of science supporting much of what is done when it comes to running shoes. But, speaking as someone who advertises running shoes, I don’t demonize the running shoe industry. Their business is to make money selling shoes. And magazines and bloggers have to pay the bills, you just have to be willing to remain objective about things. As a personal example, I recently did some consulting work for Merrell, but did not accept a consulting fee – I did it because I think the shoes they are making are moving in a very positive direction.
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Good article. Thanks for posting.