Sports Doping via Elective Surgery

BikeMonkey Guest PostProfessional sports continues to suffer from doping scandal. Although it is understood that preparation for the highest levels of competition involves considerably more than “training”, most sports have enacted rules to distinguish allowable training/preparation aids from “cheating“. This is by no means new. Nor is it over, the cycling world is poised for the now-traditional pre-Tour revelations of doping which will re-shuffle the lineup on July 4th.
But rules violations are in some ways uninteresting. There are rules to sport and if you break them you are penalized. Within that context, the nature of cheating and the ethical concepts of fair play are operationalized. Boring.
More interesting is to consider the essentially arbitrary distinctions that create the rules in the first place. Take Lance Armstrong. Winner of a record number of Tours de France, dominant rider and all around cycling icon. Did I mention he was making a come-back at his ripe old age and after a several year layoff? Great stuff.
And this was all possible only because he decided to have cancer.

Mind Bogglingly Stupid Logic About the Drug War from Kristoff

Nicholas Kristoff of the NYT has an Op-Ed Column up which questions the Drug War. When it comes to asking about the cost of incarceration and interdiction, I have no bloggable opinion. As my readers know, I don’t really delve into policy issues on this front.
My main problem is when Kristoff trots out the usual dismissal of the public health costs of de-criminalization and, in particular, resorts to an argument which is so disconnected from any logical reality it is laughable. Or it would be, if I couldn’t see otherwise intelligent people nodding along in agreement.

Candid thoughts on the GlamourMag chase

Candid Engineer recently posted on the local publication culture and how this has shifted internal frames of reference to covet GlamourMag publications.

When the hell did I get so obsessed with Glamour Mags?!?!?!! It is seriously not a particularly healthy behavior.
I got obsessed with Glamour Mags because my lab is obsessed with Glamour Mags. It’s all people seem to read, all people seem to want to talk about, all people want to publish in.

I was further struck by this observation, which underlines my occasional soapboxing on the issue:

I need to remind myself that I don’t need this kind of publication to succeed. I need to remind myself about one of my labmates, who has numerous impact factor 4-5 papers from her stint as a postdoc, got 9 interviews at top-20 schools and something like 5 or 6 offers. She’s starting her TT-position at Stanford in the fall. And I guess Stanford is nothing to sneeze at.

Exactly. The CNS-laden CV is not a prerequisite for a career. Singing my song.
But I have some additional thoughts.