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March 06, 2004
Bad Analogy
I think Gene Orza did a bad bit of PR here when he compared steroids to cirgarettes.
I don't think anyone accuses cigarettes of being performance enhancers. Orza's really does seem to believe that the effect of steroids on performance has been greatly exaggerated. Seems what we really need is a good double blind study. A double blind is a study in which neither the subjects, or the people directly studying them know if they are getting a drug or a placebo. (I believe placebo was Steve Martin's drug of choice in the 1970's. :-)) Let's get 200 ballplayers, and send them to camp next off season. Half get a dosed with a steroid, half with placebo. All undergo the same vigorous training regimen. Everyday, the players would undergo some strength test. At the end of a month say, the two groups would be evaluated to see if there is any difference. Does anyone know if a study like this has ever been conducted? Posted by David Pinto at 12:32 PM
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My admittedly limited review of steroid-related literature on the Web turned up no examples of this kind of double-blind study, and I seriously doubt that any such work has been done. The reasons are probably very similar to the lack of in-depth research on THC's real effects - the illegality of the substances in question. Blanket bans are a huge handicap in conducting medical research, which is why so many researchers opposed the steroid ban to begin with. The current zero-tolerance policy has very little to do with documented adverse health effects and much to do with political hysteria orignally fueled by the East German and Chinese Olympic "scandals" and the Ben Johnson case. It bears more than a few similarities to the breast-implant litigation that almost broke Dow-Corning - anecdotal "evidence" seized upon and magnified by the media and litigators, with virtually nothing in the way of real medical research to back it up. Posted by: Mark B. at March 6, 2004 01:35 PMInteresting idea of the double-blind survey. Yet I highly doubt anyone would do this with Major League players since steroids have side affects and I'm sure players wouldn't want that. Lawsuit galour then. Posted by: Booth at March 6, 2004 01:47 PMYep, a double-blind study is probably the only way we'll ever know how much, if any, effects steroids have on the performance of hitters and pitchers. I've never heard of such a study being done (I've been looking for a while now for such a thing, but I can't find a damn thing). Like the two previous posters, I'm pessimistic about the prospects of it being done in the current atmosphere of hysteria. Posted by: Johnny Mack at March 6, 2004 02:12 PMBut why bother with a double blind study? Either steroids have an impact (in which case those supporting a ban will continue to support it) or they don't (in which case, what benefit is there to allowing steroid use?). It seems to me both cases support a rationale for limiting or banning its use. Posted by: seamus at March 6, 2004 02:16 PMCost, seamus, cost. We shouldn't ban their use if we don't know what they do because that's pointless regulation or self-regulation. I don't want to pay for this. Do you? The fans will absorb the cost as always. I thought of another dubiously performance-enhancing trick that we should ban if we are going to ban things that some players do because they think it enhances their performance: Steve Kline never washes or changes his hat. No doubt he thinks this enhances his performance. Just in case he is obtaining an unfair advantage, let's make a rule that says all players have to wear a new hat for every game. Think of the health benefits: players will have less acne on their foreheads. This should boost their value in commercials and photoshoots. At the very least, it would save the expense of paying someone to remove the unsightly blemishes with Photoshop. Posted by: Rowdy at March 6, 2004 03:44 PMAlso we could ban the rally monkey. It's not fair that only one team has that performance-enhancing rally monkey. It's true that we don't know for sure whether or not the rally monkey enhances the performance of the Angels. Of course the players insist that it helps, but you know what, the players are pretty superstitious and not too many of them ever finished college. To preserve the integrity of the game, we must ban the rally monkey just in case it really does enhance the performance of the Angels. To do otherwise would be unfair to the other teams. Our next target will be the Terrible Towel. Is there any chance that this enhances the performance of the Pittsburgh Steelers? Regardless, we will probably recommend that we ban it just in case. To do otherwise would be irresponsible. Perhaps the fans at Heinz Field would pay $18.00 per beer so that the Steelers could furnish Terrible Towels to all teams in the league. Otherwise, I don't see how we can turn our back on the possibility that the Terrible Towel is giving the Steelers an unfair competitive advantage. Posted by: rowdy at March 6, 2004 03:49 PMI don't think Orza's cigarette analogy has much to do with performance enhancement, or lack therof. I think he's making the point that if Substance X is no more dangerous than cigarettes--in that it's disease-causing potential is based on long-term, continuous use--then the "we must protect the players" argument is overblown. Most of the coverage of steroids seems to assume that these drugs will just make you drop dead on the spot. That's emphatically not the case. Perricone's site has a link to a fantastic artilce about the health risks...which are real, but certainly overblown in the alarmist media culture. Tim Posted by: Tim Schultz at March 7, 2004 03:48 PMI have never seen anything that assumes that steroids will make anyone drop dead on the spot. The troublesome with a double blind study would be that you could only test the drugs effect on strength, not necessarily on baseball performance. THe effects of steroids would probably be more measureable if looking at an increase in the distance of home runs, not in the increase in NUMBER of home runs. To hit a home run you need to have a pretty well timed swing and hit the ball pretty much flush. The better test would be to measure a players home runs pre and post roids or with and without roids, to see if the roid home runs go farther. Posted by: steve at March 8, 2004 10:46 AM |
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