I just read an article in Veterinary Practice, July 2012 by Gareth Cross entitled "Bad Science Bingo". It's partly about pharmaceutical company trials, Ben Goldacre's book Bad Science, and his web science badscience.net. But it also goes on to mention Born to Run by Christopher McDougal.

Christopher McDougal's book is a fabulous, great fun book about minimalist running; running either barefoot or in shoes that offer no arch support or impact protection. I now run in the vibram five-fingers-sock , occasionally I run barefoot and I'm now an enthusiast.

I loved Christopher McDougal's book which apart from telling a great story also made the case that as homo sapiens we are born to run distance and designed for it. One of the arguments in the book is that because our abdominal contents are positioned below our diaphragm we are at an advantage to herbivores in the hunt because a herbivore's guts slam into the diaphragm at every stride. Interesting theory.

I think it was last year that I was watching "inside natures giants" on TV where they were dissecting a racehorse. And this program stated that the effect of the guts pushing in and out against the diaphragm was to create a pumping action forcing air in and out of the lungs. Bit of a different theory which you might want to put to the test; try out-running a horse over distance and see how it works out. I suspect it might just depend upon the terrain and your level of training. So personally I bought the theory about minimalist shoes and barefoot running because I tried it and it worked for me. I decided I am indeed "born to run" and I mentally pencilled "...maybe, maybe not" around the gut theory.

I haven't yet tried to outrun a horse.

Reading that part of Christopher McDougal's book about herbivore's guts did not detract from it for me; it's a great story, a great book and I'd recommend it to anyone who likes running and anybody considering starting running. If one theory in it might not be entirely proven it does not make the rest of the book wrong; it's just a hypothesis. When I read Ben Goldacre's book I noticed that it was also an excellent book but one which also contained much opinion and its own bias. For example, he seemed to me to think that a dysproportionate number of people in pharmaceutical companies are unethical, or dishonest.

In my experience of pharmaceutical companies they're not. They're just human - like Ben Goldacre, Christopher McDougal, and all vets.