Evolutionary biologist Daniel E. Lieberman caused an international stir nearly a decade ago when he published a paper showing that running in cushioned sneakers encourages people to hit the ground harder than running barefoot.
Lieberman, a professor of biological sciences at Harvard University, also started running barefoot himself as an experiment and kept doing it because he enjoyed it. Every spring, after running the Boston Marathon, he would trade his traditional sneakers for a pair of minimal shoes or no footwear at all.
