6 ms·

I genuinely question why people are so concerned if people use science to achieve better results at sports. It often seems like some kind of puritanical moral o

I genuinely question why people are so concerned if people use science to achieve better results at sports. It often seems like some kind of puritanical moral outrage over drugs. Edit: I understand the reasoning behind why testing is done. I just question if it is really led by safety concerns, fairness and science or just our default knee-jerk "drugs are bad" culture. There are plenty of other safety concerns in sport that are ignored.

eloff 8y ago
I think it's more about having a level playing field so that drugs aren't the norm. But for spectator sports, it's probably more exciting when all the players are artificially enhanced with drugs into mutant gorillas. Sucks for the players though.
eldaberino7 8y ago
Agreed. Silicon valley tech bros microdose or take nutropics and everyone cheers, but a professional athlete takes some testosterone and suddenly there is outrage?
6nf 8y ago
We don’t want people doing damage to their long term health just for entertainment for the rest of us
- Mirioron 8y ago
  But when you look at some sports, that's exactly what doing that sport on a professional level does.
  - 6nf 8y ago
    Yea it's not good, we want to make sports as safe as we can.
    - Mirioron 8y ago
      No, I mean that participating on that sport will damage your health. Think back on all the talk about TBI in football. There are plenty of rough sports out there that people have no real problems with, because we haven't figured out how exactly it causes damage to your body. Even just weightlifting on a professional level seems to harm a person's body, but it's only visible once they become older. You can't easily claim that "we ban drugs from sports because it damages people's health" when the sport itself also damages people's health.
      - 6nf 8y ago
        Yea so let's not make it even worse by allowing performance enhancing drugs. You're saying it's already dangerous so let's just push it all the way??
mrob 8y ago
Because these drugs have risks, and if they are allowed then every athlete has to take as much as possible or they won't be competitive. It's a classic "race to the bottom" scenario, where everybody would be better off without the drugs, but they're forced to expose themselves to avoidable heath risk because that's what everybody else is doing. There's a relevant SNL sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAdG-iTilWU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAdG-iTilWU
- collyw 8y ago
  Cannabis will still get you banned, despite not having a high risk profile and being unlikely to help in most sports.
eveningcoffee 8y ago
This is my understanding (not particularly my own view but can be). People are not especially against the science but drugs. Because drugs being drugs come all also with side effects. When athletes taking the drugs win then it forces other non taking athletes to take the drugs too making them involuntarily put their health into risk. That is not fair. That is the best reasonable explanation I have been able to come up with. This would be argument against allowing drugs. But this I think is not what the most people are against of. The current situation is that the drugs are not allowed. People who still take them gain an unfair advantage. Well, that is not fair.
- JamesBarney 8y ago
  There is nothing special about drugs that means they have side effects while other things don't. Take epo for instance. What makes epo risky is not epo, but the increase in red blood cells. Now other things that increase red blood cells like intense training at high altitudes have the same risk. But we always draw the line with drugs. It's definitely cultural. Imagine a ruling body finds out about a performance enhancing drug and a performance enhancing technique. They have the same risks. Which gets banned?
baroffoos 8y ago
Because those drugs have serious health issues and you risk death by taking them. We don't want every sport person to have to destroy their body and be on the edge of death to keep up with everyone else.
whatshisface 8y ago
Steroids ruin your body in the long run, where the long run can be as short as a few months. The moral outrage has a purpose, it's to prevent a Malthusian Nash equilibrium where all athletes are forced to ruin their bodies in order to have six months of a chance at high-level competition.
- dilyevsky 8y ago
  Lol and pro athlete career doesn’t ruin your body? Reason why steroid are banned is because they work so well, period.
yesenadam 8y ago
Because they don't frame it as you do, 'using science to achieve better results', to which no-one could object, but as cheating.
geargrinder 8y ago
As a competitive athlete, I value a fair playing field. I don't want the winner to be the one with the best scientific team behind them. That just becomes a race to spend more than anyone else and also happens to leave a trail of damaged or dead athletes. It would be totally de-motivating if I thought everybody was doping and it was just the best doper who wins.
- ben-schaaf 8y ago
  The same is true in pretty much any competition. Esports are banning performance enhancers and give competitors the same hardware to play on (at least on lan). Many (most?) racing competitions have very strict rules when it comes to cars so that one team doesn't just end up with a faster car.
- amnandkishore 8y ago
  I fully respect this view towards athletic competition. But to what extent do you think this is the case now (even if we assume drug testing catches the cheats perfectly)? I'd struggle to believe that a person could succeed in, say, an Olympic athletics event without a top-quality nutritionist and team of trainers, probably including in-depth analysis of their biomechanical patterns and minute adjustments they need to make. Even with famous stories like Usain Bolt's McDonald's habits, he's probably had a nutritionist evaluate and design a custom diet based around his liking of McNuggets. In some very real sense, the poor kid who doesn't have access to this team will never be able to compete, regardless of his 'natural' talent. The same is probably true across a large, large proportion of elite sports. Now, obviously, we have a system where if you demonstrate enough talent you ideally get pulled into academies or teams or structures where you do start to get access to these teams and facilities - but then if that's the case, how does it matter if the teams are providing non-drug-enhanced meals designed for peak performance or drugged-enhanced meals designed for peak performance?
  - 5partan 8y ago
    There are exceptions to the rule though, Donald Thomas jumped higher at his 7th attempt at high jumping as a basketball player (not measuring his run-up, shoes without spikes, arms behind back to land on the mat as if breaking his fall), than years later at the olympics. Sometimes natural talent beats all the science of the world.
brownbat 8y ago
You received six answers along the lines of "drugs do long term damage." That may be part of the answer, but it feels incomplete. Elite training itself is often unhealthy. And doping techniques vary wildly. There are risks to HGH, EPO, anabolic steroids, and blood doping, but they have radically different risk profiles. I think it's more that people have an idealized notion of athletes accomplishing something through sheer force of will. So... a scientifically designed training regimen seems fine, chemical alterations to your blood chemistry do not. Training at high altitudes is fine, replacing your blood with blood from when you were at high altitudes is not. Overtraining, eating disorders, destroyed tendons, encephalopathy -- none are ideal, but we seem to tolerate them. Questions about what to tolerate are fuzzy and pervasive. Testosterone levels are monitored in women's competitions and someone has to decide the cutoff. Progressively sleeker swimsuits were fine, until they weren't. Equipment manufacturers generally advertise increased performance, but if they deliver too much too soon, they get banned. These are all versions of the question, "What is this sport?" It's deceptive. Seems simple, but after examining all the edge cases, it becomes impossible to deduce from pure reason. Ruling bodies just pile on conventions. A Supreme Court dissent once argued: "[S]ince it is the very nature of a game to have no object except amusement (that is what distinguishes games from productive activity), it is quite impossible to say that any of a game’s arbitrary rules is ‘essential.’ Eighteen-hole golf courses, 10-foot-high basketball hoops, 90-foot baselines, 100-yard football fields – all are arbitrary and none is essential. The only support for any of them is tradition and (in more modern times) insistence by what has come to be regarded as the ruling body of the sport[.]" Banning some supplements but not others is perfectly reasonable, but the fine lines are going to be somewhat arbitrary.
a_imho 8y ago
Not just drugs, governing bodies very much disliked when swimming records fell left and right due to better swimsuits. Or how bikes must be upright and have a minimum weight.
tomp 8y ago
> I genuinely question why people are so concerned if people use science to achieve better results at sports Because the only point of sports is human performance. If we wanted to use science, we'd use machines instead.
HeadsUpHigh 8y ago
> I just question if it is really led by safety concerns, fairness and science or just our default knee-jerk "drugs are bad" It's a race to the bottom kind of situation. There are plenty of substances that have been shown to not have any side effects but act as performance boosters( creatinine comes in mind) that are perfectly legal and every athlete uses. So I think steroid bans are meant to protect athletes.

eloff 8y ago

I think it's more about having a level playing field so that drugs aren't the norm. But for spectator sports, it's probably more exciting when all the players are artificially enhanced with drugs into mutant gorillas. Sucks for the players though.

eldaberino7 8y ago

Agreed. Silicon valley tech bros microdose or take nutropics and everyone cheers, but a professional athlete takes some testosterone and suddenly there is outrage?

6nf 8y ago

We don’t want people doing damage to their long term health just for entertainment for the rest of us

Mirioron 8y ago
But when you look at some sports, that's exactly what doing that sport on a professional level does.
- 6nf 8y ago
  Yea it's not good, we want to make sports as safe as we can.
  - Mirioron 8y ago
    No, I mean that participating on that sport will damage your health. Think back on all the talk about TBI in football. There are plenty of rough sports out there that people have no real problems with, because we haven't figured out how exactly it causes damage to your body. Even just weightlifting on a professional level seems to harm a person's body, but it's only visible once they become older. You can't easily claim that "we ban drugs from sports because it damages people's health" when the sport itself also damages people's health.
    - 6nf 8y ago
      Yea so let's not make it even worse by allowing performance enhancing drugs. You're saying it's already dangerous so let's just push it all the way??

mrob 8y ago

Because these drugs have risks, and if they are allowed then every athlete has to take as much as possible or they won't be competitive. It's a classic "race to the bottom" scenario, where everybody would be better off without the drugs, but they're forced to expose themselves to avoidable heath risk because that's what everybody else is doing. There's a relevant SNL sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAdG-iTilWU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAdG-iTilWU

collyw 8y ago
Cannabis will still get you banned, despite not having a high risk profile and being unlikely to help in most sports.

eveningcoffee 8y ago

This is my understanding (not particularly my own view but can be). People are not especially against the science but drugs. Because drugs being drugs come all also with side effects. When athletes taking the drugs win then it forces other non taking athletes to take the drugs too making them involuntarily put their health into risk. That is not fair. That is the best reasonable explanation I have been able to come up with. This would be argument against allowing drugs. But this I think is not what the most people are against of. The current situation is that the drugs are not allowed. People who still take them gain an unfair advantage. Well, that is not fair.

JamesBarney 8y ago
There is nothing special about drugs that means they have side effects while other things don't. Take epo for instance. What makes epo risky is not epo, but the increase in red blood cells. Now other things that increase red blood cells like intense training at high altitudes have the same risk. But we always draw the line with drugs. It's definitely cultural. Imagine a ruling body finds out about a performance enhancing drug and a performance enhancing technique. They have the same risks. Which gets banned?

baroffoos 8y ago

Because those drugs have serious health issues and you risk death by taking them. We don't want every sport person to have to destroy their body and be on the edge of death to keep up with everyone else.

whatshisface 8y ago

Steroids ruin your body in the long run, where the long run can be as short as a few months. The moral outrage has a purpose, it's to prevent a Malthusian Nash equilibrium where all athletes are forced to ruin their bodies in order to have six months of a chance at high-level competition.

dilyevsky 8y ago
Lol and pro athlete career doesn’t ruin your body? Reason why steroid are banned is because they work so well, period.

yesenadam 8y ago

Because they don't frame it as you do, 'using science to achieve better results', to which no-one could object, but as cheating.

geargrinder 8y ago

As a competitive athlete, I value a fair playing field. I don't want the winner to be the one with the best scientific team behind them. That just becomes a race to spend more than anyone else and also happens to leave a trail of damaged or dead athletes. It would be totally de-motivating if I thought everybody was doping and it was just the best doper who wins.

ben-schaaf 8y ago
The same is true in pretty much any competition. Esports are banning performance enhancers and give competitors the same hardware to play on (at least on lan). Many (most?) racing competitions have very strict rules when it comes to cars so that one team doesn't just end up with a faster car.
amnandkishore 8y ago
I fully respect this view towards athletic competition. But to what extent do you think this is the case now (even if we assume drug testing catches the cheats perfectly)? I'd struggle to believe that a person could succeed in, say, an Olympic athletics event without a top-quality nutritionist and team of trainers, probably including in-depth analysis of their biomechanical patterns and minute adjustments they need to make. Even with famous stories like Usain Bolt's McDonald's habits, he's probably had a nutritionist evaluate and design a custom diet based around his liking of McNuggets. In some very real sense, the poor kid who doesn't have access to this team will never be able to compete, regardless of his 'natural' talent. The same is probably true across a large, large proportion of elite sports. Now, obviously, we have a system where if you demonstrate enough talent you ideally get pulled into academies or teams or structures where you do start to get access to these teams and facilities - but then if that's the case, how does it matter if the teams are providing non-drug-enhanced meals designed for peak performance or drugged-enhanced meals designed for peak performance?
- 5partan 8y ago
  There are exceptions to the rule though, Donald Thomas jumped higher at his 7th attempt at high jumping as a basketball player (not measuring his run-up, shoes without spikes, arms behind back to land on the mat as if breaking his fall), than years later at the olympics. Sometimes natural talent beats all the science of the world.

brownbat 8y ago

You received six answers along the lines of "drugs do long term damage." That may be part of the answer, but it feels incomplete. Elite training itself is often unhealthy. And doping techniques vary wildly. There are risks to HGH, EPO, anabolic steroids, and blood doping, but they have radically different risk profiles. I think it's more that people have an idealized notion of athletes accomplishing something through sheer force of will. So... a scientifically designed training regimen seems fine, chemical alterations to your blood chemistry do not. Training at high altitudes is fine, replacing your blood with blood from when you were at high altitudes is not. Overtraining, eating disorders, destroyed tendons, encephalopathy -- none are ideal, but we seem to tolerate them. Questions about what to tolerate are fuzzy and pervasive. Testosterone levels are monitored in women's competitions and someone has to decide the cutoff. Progressively sleeker swimsuits were fine, until they weren't. Equipment manufacturers generally advertise increased performance, but if they deliver too much too soon, they get banned. These are all versions of the question, "What is this sport?" It's deceptive. Seems simple, but after examining all the edge cases, it becomes impossible to deduce from pure reason. Ruling bodies just pile on conventions. A Supreme Court dissent once argued: "[S]ince it is the very nature of a game to have no object except amusement (that is what distinguishes games from productive activity), it is quite impossible to say that any of a game’s arbitrary rules is ‘essential.’ Eighteen-hole golf courses, 10-foot-high basketball hoops, 90-foot baselines, 100-yard football fields – all are arbitrary and none is essential. The only support for any of them is tradition and (in more modern times) insistence by what has come to be regarded as the ruling body of the sport[.]" Banning some supplements but not others is perfectly reasonable, but the fine lines are going to be somewhat arbitrary.

a_imho 8y ago

Not just drugs, governing bodies very much disliked when swimming records fell left and right due to better swimsuits. Or how bikes must be upright and have a minimum weight.

tomp 8y ago

> I genuinely question why people are so concerned if people use science to achieve better results at sports Because the only point of sports is human performance. If we wanted to use science, we'd use machines instead.

HeadsUpHigh 8y ago

> I just question if it is really led by safety concerns, fairness and science or just our default knee-jerk "drugs are bad" It's a race to the bottom kind of situation. There are plenty of substances that have been shown to not have any side effects but act as performance boosters( creatinine comes in mind) that are perfectly legal and every athlete uses. So I think steroid bans are meant to protect athletes.