Bob Tufts sends along this article on performance enhancing drugs in academia:

But others insist that the ethics are not so clear, and that academic performance is different in important ways from baseball, or cycling.

"I think the analogy with sports doping is really misleading, because in sports it's all about competition, only about who's the best runner or home run hitter," said Martha Farah, director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. "In academics, whether you're a student or a researcher, there is an element of competition, but it's secondary. The main purpose is to try to learn things, to get experience, to write papers, to do experiments. So in that case if you can do it better because you've got some drug on board, that would on the face of things seem like a plus."

Baloney. Competition for entrance to colleges is fierce. When I applied to Harvard in 1978, one in ten applicants were accepted. Harvard added 300 places since then, but this year's applicant pool faces a 1 in 15 chance of admission. It's exactly the same problem baseball players face. The ones that remain clean might miss an opportunity to succeed because of someone who is doping. On top of that, I've never met a Principle Investigator who didn't face tough competition in applying for a grant, nor a pre-med student who didn't worry about the difference between an A and an A-. It's all about the competition.

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