Science Is Not Always Right

Image: Corbis

“Man was born barefoot, but everywhere he is in sneakers.”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau did not say that, because he died in 1778, around a hundred years before the advent of athletic shoes and about two centuries short of the birth of sports shoe giants like Adidas, Nike and Reebok.

Since their birth however, these companies have managed to create a market of over $100 billion globally for shoes that help us walk and run better than millions of years of evolution equipped us to.

It was science, they said, billions of dollars of it. We needed “protection” while running, in the form of cushioning and arch support and even motors.

Then something strange happened. Science—real science—came up with a startling conclusion: Heavily cushioned shoes were actually increasing our chances of injury. You see, for millions of years we had been landing on the balls of our feet while running; in the space of a few decades, we switched to landing on our heels because they were now cushioned. The result was a multiplication of the impact forces our bodies took, increasing the risk of repetitive stress injuries across various joints in the body. In other words, a few decades worth of “scientific progress” (funded and touted by the shoe giants) was wrong. Science 1, Marketing 0.

There was no mea culpa from the companies however. Instead they coolly did an about-turn and “discovered” the concept of “barefoot-like running.” Multi-million dollar ad campaigns announced new shoes that were lightweight, minimal and thin-soled. Of course, they were all duly supported by “research.”

Marketing for the win!

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When it comes to high fidelity audio equipment, the day of realisation has yet to arrive.

Take surround sound, which is supposed to immerse you in 360° of sound waves. Have you ever truly listened to the music that comes from a good amplifier through a stereo speaker setup versus a multi-speaker surround sound system?

There’s a reason why audiophiles prefer stereo: most musical albums are still recorded in two channels. What your five- or seven-speaker setup does, essentially, is break those two channels down and reassemble them in a way that was never intended. Fidelity anyone?

Then there’s wireless.

Walk into any high-end electronics outlet and you’ll see scads of products that have forsaken wires: WiFi-capable music docks, wireless home theatre systems, and what have you. (Apple, being Apple of course, even has a name for it: “AirPlay.”)

Sure, they eliminate the tangle of wires sprouting from and between our devices, but that convenience comes at the cost of sound quality. Because wireless music comes into contact with the other wireless information that swirls around us these days: cordless telephones, WiFi networks, even microwave ovens. True, some of this can be handled by nifty software algorithms, but some will end up subtly compromising the sound.

If that weren’t bad enough, we now also have wireless video. Like Intel’s “Wireless Display” that claims to be able to deliver video sans wires to computer monitors, and another heavyweight consortium of hardware makers like Samsung, Sony, Philips and Intel again (you have to give it to the company for fighting to stay relevant) has “WirelessHD.”

But here’s the thing. First gen Wirelesshd products max out at around 4 gigabits per second of bandwidth, less than 40 percent of the now common HDMI cable standard and just 20 percent of Apple’s DisplayPort cables.

This is a battle wireless can never win;  no matter how much better it gets, physical cables will continue to beat it multiple times over.
Leave out the ‘Fi’ for ‘fidelity’ and you’re just left asking, “Why?”

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Food is yet another area where Westerners are realising, perhaps too late, that science isn’t always right.

Modern food processing started in the early nineteenth century as a way to preserve and send meals to expeditionary troops thousands of miles from home. As science advanced, the benefits of the technology became available to civilians, allowing ordinary folks to enjoy foods from around the world, even to ready-to-eat packed foods that require little or no preparation, What started as a way to preserve exotic or seasonal foods for later consumption soon became the default way to consume even local foods. And as millions of Western families chose convenience over freshness, the cost equation got inverted: Fresh foods became significantly more expensive than the packaged.

Combine this with facts like nearly 17 percent of Americans being identified as “food insecure” in 2010 by the US Department of Agriculture (i.e., they run out of money to buy food through the month), you realise why celebrity chefs like Jamie Oliver are running extensive campaigns in the US and UK urging people to eat fresh food.

Thankfully, in India it’s still cheaper to buy your vegetables and fruits at the local market or store than to load up on the sugars, salts and preservatives in processed food. With luck, we can avoid the West’s mistakes.

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To switch back from body to sole, remember the massive Reebok street hoardings with pictures of athletic female derrieres? The shoe being advertised was called Reetone, and it promised to tone wearers’ bottoms by just being walked about in. In September this year the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) imposed a US$25 million “settlement” on Reebok for fraudulent advertising. But by then it had already sold over 15 million pairs globally.

David Vladeck, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection said of the shoe’s advertising, “Reebok’s claims didn’t withstand scrutiny. Consumers expected to get a workout, not worked over.”

Science has it fervent followers. But remember, like priests and godmen who twist religious belief to their own ends, Science has no shortage of people willing to exploit our faith.