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Predictive factors for flatfoot: The role of age and footwear in children in urban and rural communities in South West Nigeria.
Abolarin T, Aiyegbusi A, Tella A, Akinbo S.
Foot (Edinb). 2011 Aug 4. [Epub ahead of print]

 

Another myth bites the dust.

 

I commented on that myth in the There is no barefoot running debate thread:

Previous studies like

and others have demonstrated that there is a correlation between flatter feet and shoe wearing, but that is all they showed, a CORRELATION!.

I changed my breakfast cereal yesterday and the London Riots broke out. Did I cause the London Riots? Of course I didn't as CORRELATION is NOT CAUSATION.

As I said there is no doubt that there is a correlation, but in those other studies there could have been many explanations for the results. For example:
1. The shoes did cause the flatfoot
2. Those with flatfoot wear shoes to make them more comfortable
3. Those that wear shoes might ambulate more on hard grounds, but it is the hard ground maybe what caused the flatfoot
4. etc

Those with an agenda push (1); those without an agenda are open to a options 1 to 4

Now we have this new study above:

that took the type of analysis of these types of studies one step further to start controlling for other factors and appears to have shown that the shoes were not a factor in the flatfoot.

 

Crikey Craig, what did you change your breakfast cereal to?

 

Just picked up this tweet on the above study:

If you accept that, then you have to apply the standard to the previous studies that showed there was a correlation between flatfoot and shoes and stop saying they support barefoot!. You can't have it both ways! (see the post on Confirmation bias in the no barefoot running debate thread)

 

I Just quickly scanned through the paper and found the following a little odd.
In the Abstract we have

Whilst the concluding paragraphs of the paper contain -

Which isn't in conflict with the abstract statement, but does seem to be in conflict with the subject title of this thread..

 

Another way to look at it is that age is an indirect measure for the duration of shoe wearing among shod populations. I.e. Generally, the older they are the longer they have been wearing shoes