Cheap shoes prevent injuries?

[marathondan]

We debated this a while back. The Daily Mail article linked seems to completely misunderstand the research, but I just noticed that the picture in that article (of Arnulfo Quimare and Scott Jurek) perfectly illustrates the difference between flats and cushions - look at their strike angles.

From my experience, I can only say that if you're running in heel-strike mode, you do need good cushioning (obvious, but my experiment of one backs it up). I'm generally extremely injury-free (probably because I never train...) but the one time I took a pair of shoes up to 700 miles I started to get back pain. New (identical) shoes, back pain gone.