New Barefoot Running Research From Harvard

It doesn't mean a damn that the study was funded by Vibram. Watch the videos, look at the stats, read the other 5 papers/abstracts that drew the same conclusion about barefoot running (3 of which came out before Vibrams even existed).

yes, it does matter that the study was sponsored by vibram. i'm not sure that it creates a huge conflict, but it is worth noting that there is certainly the illusion of conflict.

I keep addressing this in my blog:

http://marinrunningco.blogspot.com/2010/01/barefoot-runnig-with-neanderthals.html

and keep wondering how the yelling going to go on. As someone who makes a living selling shoes, but who has been pushing for the barefoot running and running in minimalist shoes for 20 years, I feel vindicated by some of the anecdotal evidence, but i want more poeple to take a reasoned approach to the conversion!

charles

marinrunningcompany.com

I see... wrote:

So you don't object to research done by companies on their own products and then reported, but you do object to research partially funded by a company, not done by the company, peer-reviewed, and then published in a mainstream scientific journal.

Got it.

What a dope.

I object to the lack of disclosure about the financial relationship between the sponsor who will be benefited by certain results and the people who take the sponsor's money and present those results. The original poster remains remarkably silent about the funding arrangement, and the attempts to gloss over the issue by talking about Harvard's policy on free speech or other funding sources seem rather transparent to me.

Note, by the way, that the web site says that the research "was funded by Harvard University and, in part, by Vibram USA." It would be at least as correct to say that the research "was funded by Vibram USA and, in part, by Harvard University." Have you considered the possibility that the phrasing reflects a deliberate choice rather than an arbitrary ordering of words?

Smoke Free wrote:

First getting funding from a particular company to do a study is not new at all. You can discount research based on that, but then you better never use pharmacological drugs.

Totally wrong. You can discount research based on funding sources, but still make a wide range of determinations about the value of the research, depending upon (among other things) the design of the study, the subjectivity or objectivity of the data, the reputation of the researcher, and the extent to which the findings and conclusions appear to be merited by the data.

According to the marketing materials that I provided a link to, Vibram itself stated that it had "commission[ed] Harvard researcher" Daniel E. Lieberman "to assess the advantages, and challenges of running in FiveFingers." The word "commission" has a particular meaning.

Smoke Free wrote:

Finally... you know by saying the study is bad due to Vibram funding it... you really are calling into question the authors, and Harvard's credibility along with everyone else who donated money.

I don't recall that anyone claimed that the study was bad because Vibram funded it. It may be the best anthropological study since the days of Charles Darwin.

I also don't recall any comments that called Harvard's credibility into question. Certainly I didn't. As a graduate of the place, I have a certain interest in protecting its credibility.

Avocados Number wrote:

Totally wrong. You can discount research based on funding sources, but still make a wide range of determinations about the value of the research, depending upon (among other things) the design of the study, the subjectivity or objectivity of the data, the reputation of the researcher, and the extent to which the findings and conclusions appear to be merited by the data.

Pfizer funded over 30 billion dollars worth of research last year.

So, have you ever taken an antibiotic before? You've probably swallowed the product of research that had obvious conflicts of interest.

Why haven't you succumbed to an out-of-control MRSA infection post surgery?

..because Big Pharma funds billions of dollars worth of "biased" research.

There's no bias or conflict in good, statistically-sound, research; there's bias in its interpretation.

Are you disagreeing with anything that I said?

Here, by the way, is Vibram's official facebook page, directing viewers to Professor Lieberman's web site and a video if you want to learn about the study "from Professor Lieberman, himself."

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Vibram-FiveFingers/20025344225

I'm still waiting for disclosure of the financial arrangements.

Agreed, more studies need to be done, and statements like this one need to be backed up with facts and long-term studies:

"A common perception is that running on hard surfaces causes injuries, but runners typically adjust leg stiffness so they experience the similar impact forces on soft and hard surfaces. Further, forefoot and some midfoot strikers hit the ground in a way that generates almost no collision forces even on hard surfaces like steel. You can run barefoot and heel strike on a soft beach or lawn, but most natural surfaces are much harder and rougher. With proper forefoot or midfoot strike form, running on hard, rough surfaces can be comfortable and safe"

Frankly, I think this is a silly statement without any support that you can point to.

It does make it appear like Vibram is running your show.

My shoes look much cooler than my bare feet. I think I will keep them.

[quote]tommy h wrote:

this latest research and media blitz prompted a response from the local running shops, which i found interesting. it was is my inbox today.

i just posted this on some other minimalist thread, sorry for the dual-post.

-----------------------------------------------

An Open Letter to the Running Community

Regardless of what you call it ---barefoot running, POSE running, Chi running, good-lord-my-calves-are-killing-me running, etc. --- what was once passed off as a fad adopted by an elite few and an assortment of loonies is now garnering national attention thanks to a few hard-hitting publications.

...

Anybody who skipped this post, click back a page and read it. Well thought out, courteous, and correct.

End of Story

Please stop offering critiques on the source of funding and start offering critiques on the design of the study if you believe that it is flawed. The source of the fuding itself does not do that. I do research in interpersonal relationships and companies like E-harmony provide funding to researchers to study the relationship between various factors and relationship outcome. Just because the results may serve the company doesn't automatically make them invalid. If you believe this then you probably have not spend any time in academic research.

Lycurgus wrote:

Please stop offering critiques on the source of funding and start offering critiques on the design of the study if you believe that it is flawed. The source of the fuding itself does not do that. I do research in interpersonal relationships and companies like E-harmony provide funding to researchers to study the relationship between various factors and relationship outcome. Just because the results may serve the company doesn't automatically make them invalid. If you believe this then you probably have not spend any time in academic research.

QFE

Lycurgus wrote:

Please stop offering critiques on the source of funding and start offering critiques on the design of the study if you believe that it is flawed. The source of the fuding itself does not do that. . . . Just because the results may serve the company doesn't automatically make them invalid. If you believe this then you probably have not spend any time in academic research.

Please stop offering strawmen to attack. Nobody has said that results that may serve the source of funding "automatically make them invalid." But a study that has been expressly and very publicly "commissioned" by a company to get a "Harvard researcher" to "assess the advantages" of the company's heavily marketed retail product is almost certainly going to be designed and interpreted in a way that favors the company. If you believe otherwise, then you probably haven't dealt very much with the use of experts to develop studies and reports for companies that pay the bills for those studies and reports. And that's a lot different from a study that's designed and interpreted to figure out how to design a better product, or to determine the efficacy and safety of various possible prescription drugs that have yet to be submitted for FDA approval, especially presciption drugs that are designed to effect easily meaurable changes (for example, drugs that are designed to lower blood cholesteral, as opposed to SSRI antidepressants). If you believe otherwise, then you're an idiot -- whether or not you've spent any time in academic research.

I was very interested in the study when I first heard about it on NPR Wesnesday afternoon (which happened to be almost precisely the same moment that Vibram put up an announcement of the publication of the study on its facebook page). I've been a rather extreme "minimalist" for many years, long before Vibram or any of these researchers got into the act, and I was looking forward to reading the study, hoping that it would provide some good and interesting support for the minimalist approach of companies like Vibram. But I lost almost all of my interest in the study when I discovered that it was funded by Vibram. Not because I dislike Vibram, and not because I dislike my alma mater. It's because I've routinely dealt with experts in many fields who are paid by vested interests to publish their findings, and I have found that I generally don't need to read their reports or listen to their testimony to know approximately what they're going to say and what their conclusions are going to be. I just need to know who is paying their bills.

I'm still waiting for the disclosure of the financial arrangement. (It would also be amusing to hear an explanation for the ways in which Vibram -- which, according to Vibram itself, was the funding source that commissioned the study -- was minimized as a funding source in the documentation for the study.)

Just read the study already. I just spent an hour or so carefully reading it. I though it was a good simple (simple=good in my view) design. I don't see how my own (educated) reading of it is affected by the funding, and if you are a Harvard grad, you should easily be able to pick out limitations of the study that might be important to you. If you don't read it yourself, you'll get spoon fed others' interpretations.

The data in the graphs and tables were interesting to examine, and provided me some answers to what I was long curious about with respect to body angles in different groups of runners. It also included some clever modeling of the effective mass that is hammered into your foot in a comparison with rear-foot strike vs. fore-foot strike.

I have recently been trying out more of a fore-foot strike and noticed that my body had more bounce, which I wasn't that sure I liked. I normally have almost no bounce. So, I found it interesting to see the data on "compliance" with the different foot strikes. It made me think about the implications of bounce a bit more.

A pdf is here, for now anyway:

http://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B0I1IOkvfGFvYTkyMjZkN2QtZGQ5NS00MDQ2LWIyMmUtYmZhMjU3MjFkOGI3&hl=en

The OP asked for opinions...what are you upset about?

The Runner's World Barefoot Forum/Barefoot Running University has an excellent compilation of peer-reviewed research supporting barefoot and minimalist running. If the Harvard study were all there is, it would be convincing. But in light of the body of research out there and the almost complete lack of research supporting running in typical running shoes, it ought to be pretty convincing that less is more.

http://www.runnersworld.com/community/forums/runner-communities/barefoot-running/barefoot-minimalist-shoe-resources-research-articles-videos-websites

jarviscera wrote:

it ought to be pretty convincing that less is more.

That is, VERY convincing.

Vibram sponsoring the study can be seen as a conflict, but if any running shoe company can come up any studies at all that shows that their shoes are somehow superior, be my guest. But don't try to tell us that Vibram is bullying the shoe market with their big bucks.

More food for thought:

new research from U of Utah finds no energetic difference between bare heel-strike running vs. bare fore-foot striking (for running).

http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/content/full/213/5/i-a

http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/content/abstract/213/5/790

rk

I, for one, welcome the barefoot Darwinism. They'll all get injured and leave the trails blissfully free for real runners...