I have the comments turned off on this blog for a number of reasons. Mainly because I have no desire or energy to engage in discussion with the barefoot running community. They have already proved how irrational and nonsensical they are in previous discussions; how they totally misrepresent and misquote research; and how they are totally incapable of addressing the actual issues that get raised. Instead they resort to attacking the messenger and not the message. I have lots of emails attacking me and not one of these emails actually addressed the issues I raised. All the emails do is keep on proving me right. Trying to rationally discuss the actual issues is no different to discussing religion. You cannot get anywhere with them and they do everything they can to avoid the issue.
All my attempts to engage in discussion in the past have been dismal failures as they are not capable of sticking to the issues, which is why I choose to remain anonymous. I will blog soon with some of the emails I get, so you can see exactly how they can not address the issues (I even had one email me today accusing me of being an evolution denier and to get over myself, etc etc! Where have I even said anything about evolution? – notice how they accuse me of that and try to abuse me, but are totally incapable of addressing any issues I raise? It’s the old tactic, that if you can’t debate the point, abuse the messenger. What if I am an evolution denier or not, what has that got to do with the issues I raise. Rather than accuse me of something and take ‘pot shots’ at me, why not actually address the issues? I have a lot more emails that I will quote later).
I have also in the past posted many comments on blogs about barefoot running pointing out things like, for example: “You do realise that there is not one study that has shown running shoes cause injury?“; “you say that the heel impact is the cause of running injuries – can you actually tell us what injury you are actually talking about as research has not linked one single injury to high heel impacts“; “You claim that the injury rate in runners has been going up recently, what evidence do you have for that? The published evidence is that this is not the case“; “The Kerrigan study was not even on osteoarthritis, so you cannot claim the osteoarthritis is caused by running shoes based on that study” and also we know that runners get no more osteoarthritis than the general population; “Lieberman in Nature did not show that barefoot running caused less injuries, so you cannot make that claim based on his research (even Lieberman had to post that on his website to stop people interpreting his research that way)”; etc. Guess what? NONE of them got approved for publication. Why is that? Why are they afraid of the truth? Is it because it does not fit with their agenda?
I do appreciate the occasional email I do get from a barefoot runner who are embarrassed at claims made by other barefoot runners (such as the two barefoot sites that lied about the Kerrigan research) as it makes them all look bad. I had one yesterday that wanted to distance themselves what they called the ‘Church of Barefoot Running’ and the nonsensical claims they make. They did make one criticism of what I write, that I will accept – that I am labelling the entire barefoot running community based on the public comments of a select few barefoot runners. They are probably right. But, perhaps they need to take this up with those in the barefoot community who make the nonsensical and irrational claims, as the public can only judge barefoot running based on the public comments made by those in that community.
I do get a number of emails demanding I turn on comments. Why should I allow barefoot runners who are not capable of sticking to the issues raised, make nonsense claims, and take ‘pot shots‘ comment here when my comments on barefoot running blogs do not get approved. You can’t have it both ways.
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