It is customary to rely on a variety of studies that have the status of more or less scientific studies. This makes journal articles look more professional, and references to official sources move publications from the rank of yellow press to the rank of scholarly pop.
On the whole, this is certainly correct. However, the officiality of a source is not at all synonymous with reliability. Even if we are talking about Internet resources generally accepted in the scientific world, which publish the results according to strict rules.
One has to realize that when it comes to running in particular and sports in general, there is a billion-dollar market involved, as these concepts closely border on the weight loss industry. As such, any research can be generously sponsored by companies involved in one way or another in health, fat-burning and nutrition, as well as related equipment and gear. Moreover, they conduct the lion’s share of the experiments.
One might think that it is not easy to get into top scientific journals and research lists. Not at all. Not long ago, the Germans created their own pseudo-study on chocolate and its enormous benefits for weight loss in order to study the possible resonance in the press and, of course, online.
For maximum similarity to a scientific experiment, all algorithms were followed, including live volunteers, divided into as many as three groups, while many studies do only two. As usual, one group ate chocolates, the other did not, but was on a diet, and the third was simply a control group.
Of course, chocolate had no benefit for weight loss, as the first results clearly showed. Nevertheless, mathematics and neglecting the data play against chocolate comes into play next. With this, it is possible to construct a result that, on the contrary, shows the obvious benefits of chocolate for fat burning. Moreover, the benefit of chocolates of a particular variety, or better yet, a particular brand. Which is, in fact, what has been done.
The adjusted results were formatted in strict accordance with the requirements for scientific experiments and sent out to various journals.
For the sake of justice it is necessary to note, that this pseudo-research didn’t get into moderated with all seriousness scientific lists (or got, but not at once), however for resonance in a network and popularization of the theory (and accordingly stimulation of chocolates sales) it isn’t required at all, and who anyway will read boring summaries in which the most part of a content are occupied by figures? A couple or three reposts in science-pop would suffice.
After a short time, the “shocking results” of the German scientists were even broadcast on zombie TV, and not only on national TV. What to say about the Internet – this information is probably copied somewhere to this day.
All of the above, as you understand, is true for anything. In our case, it is primarily nutrition and running equipment, especially running shoes and heart rate monitors.
But this does not mean that any kind of assertion backed up by experiments should be overlooked. Not at all. Most of them are indeed valid and have reliable results. Many are in fact independent.
And some fabricated data in favor (most often indirectly) of some manufacturing companies are usually quite harmless to health and do not cause serious harm to followers. But they do bring serious profit to the organizers of the research. And in general, healthy skepticism is natural and right.
