The (short) “article” is here:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/sciencefair/2010/01/study-high-heels-better-than-running-shoes.html
The publication of the study is here:
http://www.pmrjournal.org/article/S1934-1482(09)01367-7/fulltext
The conclusion jumped on by the USA Today headline is, of course, crap, but the study is an interesting read. Unfortunately, however, the study is a bit narrow and has a few gaps in the controlled variable space, e.g. they should’ve done repetitions with different styles of running shoe before coming up with a generalized conclusion that running shoes cause excessive joint torque. Particularly, since they even admit that a large portion of the test population would not have chosen to run in the shoes they included in the test. Without a broader spectrum of stability, neutral, cushion, lightweight/performance, racing, and fore-/mid-foot-strike types of shoes run in by the test subjects, I disagree that the conclusion is valid for larger populations.
My conclusions:
The shoes used in the test had much more medial support than a significant portion of the tested runners normally utilize causing them, in short, to run bow-legged. Not everyone should run in the same shoes…but we already knew that.
The impact force data (and stride-length corrolation) really does back up what proponents of fore-/mid-foot-strike running have said for years: runners wearing running shoes tend to strike farther ahead of their center of gravity and tend to utilize the cushion of the shoe rather than leg flexion to dampen impact forces. However, this point is also affected by the fact that only one model of shoe was used in testing.