Duane, I don't pay attention to advertising on this site.

MPF is part of the SB Nation network, which is owned my Markos Moulitsas, one of the most successful online community-builders in the short history of the Internet, and Tyler Bleszinski, a former Men's Health colleague and a guy with a strong background in both mainstrean and online media.

Most of the advertising on the site is placed by the network, which is out of my control. Some of the ads are placed specifically on MPF, and I do have the option to reject those. But, again, speaking as a guy with a long history in print media, I don't see why I would.

My view of advertising is that I don't endorse advertisers; advertisers endorse me.

I came up in print media with a wall of separation between advertising and editorial. Advertisers can pay to promote their products in the designated spaces. I don't cross into their space, and they don't cross into mine.

I know that many lines have been blurred in online media, and in broadcast media those lines have never really existed.

But, like I said, I see what I do here the same way I used to view my newspaper or magazine work. Except in extraordinary circumstances, I'm fine with advertisers paying to promote legal products in the parts of this site I control.

I trust Markos and Tyler to make the right decisions on the spaces I don't control.

And, most of all, I trust MPF readers to understand and appreciate the wall that exists between advertising and editorial.

I know I'm too glib with the "Blog Meat" snippets. If I cared about the issue of running shoes, I'd probably have found something fishy in that study.

I've written before (on both my old and new blogs, I think) about some of the mythology of running shoes, particularly the idea that new shoes reduce injuries -- or, conversely, that wearing old shoes is riskier.

Some of our most strongly held ideas about fitness and nutrition really do seem to have been created by marketing people and then adapted by journalists and the public uncritically.

I've joked that Gatorade invented dehydration, or at least the idea that we're all dehydrated and need to drink more fluids ... preferably fluids that we get from a bottle instead of a tap.

I haven't followed the evolution of athletic shoes, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn it's worked the same way -- the major shoe companies create a need to replace shoes every XXX miles or months or whatever. The fitness press accepts these notions uncritically, since they have a symbiotic relationship with those companies that goes beyond advertising. The shoe companies enhance interest in fitness in general, as well as their own brands, and the magazines depend on that interest to drive their readership.

Science, from my outsider perspective, seems to accept a lot of these notions as a starting point. On hydration, for example, Gatorade might sponsor research that has scientific merit but also advances the company's narrative about the value and importance of its products. Eventually, research not funded by Gatorade starts with the same premise -- that dehydration is a lurking, deadly menace for all serious exercisers.

The narrative becomes so entrenched that even when people drop dead from overhydration, it doesn't really change.

I don't think anybody's dropping dead from spending too much money on shoes, but the dynamic has been the same. Everyone seems to accept the narrative about the lurking menace of worn-out shoes, even when it doesn't seem to be true.