According to a review study made by an American research group in March 2022 the answer is - No.
Before we get to the explanation its important to understand what pronation is.
What is pronation?
In short, pronation is a movement in the ankle during walking and running which makes the foot "fall inwards". The movement isn´t graceful. Therefore I can understand why you can look at a pronating foot and think: "That doesn´t look right, we need to correct that". But the movement also has an important function.
During running, you land with up to seven times your own body weight (depending on cadence, stride-length, etc.) All that energy needs to go somewhere. This is where pronation plays an important role. To even out the load, the body softens the landing through the bending of the knee, the bending of the hip and not least the bending of the ankle joint. Therefore pronation helps to soften your landing and is therefore a positive movement.
What happens then when we lock the pronation into a stability shoe? All the strain which the pronation was supposed to mitigate goes somewhere else. This means that you burden your hip and knee which is not desirable.
So what is recommended?
On the basis of the study, the research group recommend to buy shoes which are light, comfortable and with minimal pronation support. With the rationale: ”Together these findings suggest that recommending footwear from static foot posture assessment or degree of rearfoot eversion during stance phase of running is not currently supported in most cases and that reducing foot motion through motion control shoes may even be injurious. Additionally, the current evidence suggests that medial arch technology or controlling pronation does not reduce injury as once believed.”
Or to put it in a different way, there isn´t evidence that shoes can be recommended based on how the ankle moves during running. Pronation is an important shock absorption mechanism and an attempt to control pronation does not reduce the risk of injuries.
Conclusion
The conclusion is therefore - Shoes and Pronation isn´t the cause of running injuries.
We have also made an article which goes further into the subject. You can find it by clicking here here