Professor Adolfo Neto (Corrida): Correr 1h por dia em ritmo leve faz mal?

A partir de um post do Danilo Balu em que ele escreveu:

e cuja chamada no Twitter foi:

E se pra saúde, menos (e bem intenso) for mais? As top 100 marcas da maratona em 2014 http://t.co/iLzEHzxwkS
— Blog Recorrido ™ (@BlogRecorrido) January 8, 2015

...escrevi o seguinte comentário que quero compartilhar:

O problema de textos como este do NYT é que tem gente que acaba entendendo que correr 1h por dia faz mal, que treinar leve é inútil, etc. Canso de ler este tipo de bobagem nos grupos paleo do Facebook.

Até o Dr. Souto já abriu espaço para um texto que fazia cherry-picking e só olhava estudos muito curtos e bem limitados como os citados pelo NYT.

É claro que treinos intensos (muito intensos) são úteis. A bobagem é com isso dizer que endurance não serve pra nada, ou que é prejudicial. Sock Doc já escreveu tudo aqui.

E certa vez perguntei pro Ross Tucker no Facebook o que ele achava e ele disse que era o mesmo caso da polarização lowcarb vs. highcarb: não existiam evidências suficientes para dizer que uma das coisas era melhor do que a outra em todos os casos, mesmo assim as pessoas tomam lados como se fosse uma religião.

Atualização:

Post original de Ross Tucker no Facebook sobre polarização que depois ele transformou em post:

Here are 3 quick tips on how to spot that you're on the "thin ice" of truth when reading popular media translation of science:
1) unnecessary polarization - a type of straw man error where the protagonist artificially creates an 'either/or' situation, polarizing a debate into A vs B. But not both.
This happened, in sports science, with the talent vs training debate. Was it 10,000 hours & training, or was it talent & genes? The correct response should've been "Both. Why must it be one without the other?" Yet books were written implying that the world had discounted hard work and training, which was ludicrous.
So beware of foolish, unnecessarily and non-existent polarization.
2) Selective presentation of supporting evidence. I call this the "dark side of the moon" error because the protagonist only ever shows that side of the argument that supports the story, leaving the rest in darkness.
Gladwell did this in his latest book, citing a study that supported his theory, but not mentioning that a follow-up study, far larger, did not. Conveniently "shielded" from an inconvenient truth, the reader has no idea of potential complexity of an issue.
In my field, I have seen this often in the diet debate - carbs vs fat (note the polarization of this issue, by the way. Refer to point 1).
Here, protagonists will show evidence that supports only their perspective, and potentially dozens of studies that do not are written off. Both sides do this, the result being that an individualized approach to diet is made very difficult. It also creates, and then re-inforces enormous confirmation bias, as people eagerly seek out those studies and anecdotes that support their view of their particular moon.
This is an irresponsible attitude to discovery, but one that most people do naturally, so it's easy to excuse as an accident. It can, as an upside, allow both sides to gradually adapt and meet halfway, nearer where the truth may lie, provided their egos don't prevent it.
Done often & willfully, however, it is an entirely different matter. In science, we are supposed to be held to a higher standard, but that too often does not seem to apply.
The truth will usually emerge when two views of the moon are combined, and a full picture is created. But it takes hard work to get round the back, and it doesn't come with quite the same limelight to acknowledge complexity and present two sides of a debate. Frustratingly, everyone loses.
3) Over-simplification. Related to 1 & 2, I suspect this is symptomatic of modern life - "If I can't understand it in a tweet, then it's not worth knowing".
In exercise and health, unfortunately, there are so many connections that when you pull a particular string, there are multiple possible outcomes, and they are rarely predictable. Simple causality of A leads to B is the message people want, but it rarely applies.
What is more, in things like health and performance, the outcome is often severely delayed from the action - it can take years for weight to be lost or health status to change or performance to become world class. People are terrible at acting when the result is so delayed, and so many confounding events can affect the outcome that the message sounds tepid and suffers from poor uptake. I am led to believe, thanks to a stimulating conversation recently, that nature conservation efforts are hampered by identical challenges.
It's little wonder then that the market embraces simplicity, even when it is foolish. Case study of this is the barefoot running debate, where a simple argument of "we are born without shoes, it's natural and thus better" has spawned an industry.
Even science weighed in, when a Harvard lab showed lower loading rates when barefoot. What they failed to mention was a) the loading rate-injury link is tenuous (and non-existent for many injuries) and b) not all barefoot running is created equal and some people, for reasons as yet unknown, go the other way and may be worse off.
The simple story, in other words, had a fair amount of fine-print. But hey, who reads that stuff anyway? There is no fine-print in a 140 character tweet.
The solution to these latter problems, by the way, is to remember one of the fundamental requirements in science - disprove it, don't prove it. If you want to advocate for barefoot running, set out to understand why some people fail. If you promote low carbs, then find people who do not achieve results with that diet. Failure to do this will make you blissfully unaware, possibly even happy and content, until you lead an army of followers off a cliff you should've seen coming.
Finally, science needs to own the translation of its findings better. There are amazing examples of this, but too often, it is left to pied piper storytellers to change the world. Gladwell is right about the inaccessibility of science, and we should address it. But without falling into the same traps of polarizing, oversimplifying and presenting the convenient side of the story.
Over and out
Ross