Disputing the Canseco Effect
Sabernomics offers a different take on the Gould and Kaplan study of the Canseco Effect.
Sabernomics offers a different take on the Gould and Kaplan study of the Canseco Effect.
The economists Eric Gould and Todd Kaplan have used data to evaluate Jose Canseco’s claim that he taught many teammates to use steroids and growth hormones.
Why does Levitt find Landis’s allegations so compelling? He describes in great specificity and detail scenarios involving refrigerators hidden in closets, and the precise temperature at which the blood stored in those refrigerators had to be kept; and faked bus breakdowns during which Lance received blood transfusions while lying on the floor of the bus, etc. To make up stories of this kind, with that sort of detail, strikes Levitt as a difficult task.
A reader named Christopher Rumney writes in with an interesting idea for how to discourage illicit performance-enhancing drugs in pro sports. Perhaps something like this has already been proposed, but I’ve not heard of it, and it’s certainly an interesting idea — although any players’ union in its right mind would likely rather blow itself up than submit.
Bob Clapp is 72 years old. He’s six-foot-one, weighs 190 pounds, has a 32-inch waist, 11 percent body fat, and claims to maintain the biological age of a 36-year-old. Clapp has also been a regular user of anabolic steroids for 50 years with “no irreparable negative side effects.” Jordan Heller profiles Clapp and other users, questioning the criminalization of steroids. A similar inquiry has recently been pursued by Miguel Sancho, Andrew Kirell, and John Stossel.
Michael Shermer, author of Mind of the Market and columnist extraordinaire at Scientific American, delivers an excellent column in this issue on sports doping. Shermer, it turns out, was a competitive cyclist who observed the rise of doping first-hand. He offers a number of suggestions for fighting illegal doping, such as disqualifying all team members from any event if one . . .
Can learning about the arts make you smarter? Are animals next in the sports doping craze? (Second item) (Earlier) Is economics “played out”? The rise of “freeconomics.”