WEBVTT

NOTE Doping: Never-ending story? Never-ending glory?

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Good afternoon. Thank you very much for inviting me here to Auburn.

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The topic I'm talking about is doping, never-ending story, never-ending glory.

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And this is a picture you can see.

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Perhaps, have a closer look to the facial features and to the five o'clock shadow.

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It's not me with hairs. It's a girl. That's Tammy Thomas and she's a track cyclist and

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She won silver in 2001, and she used anabolic steroids a little bit too much, as you can see.

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And she was banned from cycling for life in 2002.

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So, this is what I want to talk about.

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Doping. I have a very preliminary definition of doping here.

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is methods to improve the performance of an athlete, which are critical from a sport ethical point of view.

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So the main focus is on improving the performance and the second focus is on critical from an ethical point of view.

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So let us be clear, we cannot define doping very well, but let's go with that.

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So if you look to the scandals, we have a lot of scandals here around. We have anabolic steroids, we have APO or THG, and there is an advance fighting against doping.

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So there is a Lausanne Declaration on doping in sports, there is a foundation of the USADA in 2002. So there are a lot of institutions who fight against doping.

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On the other side, if we look to the empirical evidence and to the tests, so we had in 2011 we had 243,000 tests and only 2,800 positive results.

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That means there are 1.2% positive results, which is very, very few.

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A colleague of mine, who had done research with a special method to find out how many people, how many athletes are doping, found out that there are more than 30% of all professional athletes are doping.

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So the tests do not show the reality.

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So, what I want to talk about is, why does doping occur in elite sports? That's the first

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question. And the second question is, should doping be banned by the government? So, this

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is more interesting from an Austrian point of view. Yeah, should there be a governmental

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and Financial Intervention at all.

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So this is the content.

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First, I've talked about the problem.

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Then I will have a closer look to the explanation,

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which is a little bit mathematical, but not too much.

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So it's based on game theory.

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And then the third question here,

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should doping be banned by the government?

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And then some results.

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So, if we look to a game theory theoretical explanation, let's assume, okay, you know

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economics always assume, so there are some assumptions, there are two athletes and they

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are meeting in a simultaneously competition in an individual sport, like running or something

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like that, or sprint, and there should be no penalty carrying doping ban, so there is

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There is no ban against doping, so they meet in a contest and they have two strategies they can dope or they can avoid doping.

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So what are the determinants for their decision? There are three points.

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First, the probability to win depends on their own strategy and the strategy of the competitor and the performance, their own performance in relation to the performance of the competitor.

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And there is some accidental variable in this stuff as well.

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One are benefits of the victory, like material benefits, there is a prize money, and there

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are non-material benefits like prestige or fame and honor.

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And on the other side there are costs of doping, like material costs, there are procurement

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costs or non-material costs like moral scruples and so on.

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So these are determinants, and if we look a little bit to the decision-making process,

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The net benefit of an athlete is the probability to win, multiplied by the benefit of winning, minus the cost of doping, if he uses doping methods.

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So these costs are zero, if he doesn't use doping, if he uses doping methods they are greater than zero.

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Doping is a dominant strategy if the net benefit of non-doping is less than the benefit of doping.

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This is the payoff matrix. We don't need that. Let's go to the determinants.

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The first thing must be clear. If doping leads to better performance, then this is fulfilled.

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The probability of winning with doping is greater than the probability of winning without doping.

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The first thing is true. If we look to the benefits of victory, we have a very high price money.

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So, there is an example, Australian Open Tennis, 30 million Australian dollars, so this is

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very huge.

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And the non-material benefits are also very huge.

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So on the material side and on the non-material side of the benefits, we have very huge extended.

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And if you look to the costs, so athletes do neglect the effects on the health status.

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So the health risks are totally underestimated. There are several tests like the Goldman test

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and so on. They are underestimated. And on the other side, the procurement costs are

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very low. If you look to this EPO injection, you can buy this for less than $10. So that's

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very cheap. So the result is that doping is a dominant strategy. This is the result. If

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If we go a little bit further and ask if there is a super game strategy, so if we repeat

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one game and we have more games, there could be interest of the elites in making a collusion

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like they talk to each other and try to avoid doping.

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And therefore there should be some preconditions fulfilled like identical rivals, low preference

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for the Present, and then the athletes should think that games are repeated so often so

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that they are not ending and that defection can be detected, so doping can be detected

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exposed. So what we can find out is these preconditions are not fulfilled. So there

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There are constantly new rivals. There is a very high preference for the present. The

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length of the career is limited, three years, perhaps a little bit more, perhaps less. And

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defection cannot be detected, exposed without a costly test. So you have to run tests to

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find out whether doping is here or not. So there is no super game strategy. That's the

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What is the result of that? So what is the result of all? Obviously, there is no inherent solution for this doping phenomena.

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That is the first point. Without anti-doping instruments, doping would occur widespread.

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That is the next point. And the third point is, avoiding doping requires an external institution using anti-doping instruments.

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So that is the result of the game theoretical analysis.

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Let's go a further step. Should doping be banned by the government? That's the next step.

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As you have seen, this is a prisoner dilemma situation, but a cartel is also a prisoner dilemma situation.

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So there is not necessarily a need for a governmental intervention.

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If we look to the governmental intervention, we can see that the governmental interventions are usually justified by the negative effects on sports.

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So doping has negative effects on sports. It affects the contest fairness, the athlete's health status, the market for sports, the social capital, and so on.

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So they say doping affects all this stuff. Let's have a closer look to the contest's fairness.

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So it means the contest is not fair anymore if doping is allowed. But is this true?

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So they define fairness as a state of equal opportunity from the beginning, from the start.

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So at the start there should be equal opportunities. But you have different physical constitutions,

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that's the first thing. And you have different training methods. What does it mean? It means

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if you go against doping, you have to equalize the physical constitution as well, or the

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training methods. So does it mean you have to introduce something like a bonus for worse

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First at least, or a handicap for better at least, that is the first thing.

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And the next thing is, allowing doping would enhance the fairness.

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For a simple reason, because nowadays these guys have the possibility to dope who uses

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doping methods which could be camouflaged very well.

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So if you allow doping for all people, it would be a leveling of the playing field.

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So that's the reason.

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So let's have a closer look to that.

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I've chosen Hayek 1, the older Hayek, not the evolution of rules and stuff.

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I want to stick to the old Hayek and the old Hayek says that there must be a set of rules

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with these characteristics, which guarantees a maximum of individual freedom, and this

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individual freedom has to be guaranteed to all individuals.

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So that's the older Hayek.

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And he says these rules have to be universal, open, abstract, etc., etc.

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Let's go to the first thing, universality.

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What does universality mean?

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It means that there must be indifference between the individuals.

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How they are treated by law, that's the first thing.

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A law must apply to everybody regardless of his individual attributes.

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And it may not be exclusively applicable to certain person or groups.

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That's what Hayek says.

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And there are some other features, temporal concretization, local indifference and so

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on, that's not important for us right now.

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The first thing is important, the indifference between individuals.

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And the next thing is, the individuals, the result of these individuals interacting together

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based on this set of rules, this result is uncertain.

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So it's open.

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We cannot define it by itself.

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So what does it mean?

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It means the following.

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All these arguments I've showed before are based on an idea of an optimal outcome.

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Sports has to deliver this outcome.

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So that's the first thing, which is not true.

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The second thing is, each anti-doping intervention means that athletes are treated differently

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from us.

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So if we go as a professor and I take tranquilizers or anabolic steroids, there is no harm, there

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is no ban, but if an athlete does so, he has a problem.

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So what does it mean?

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A governmental anti-doping intervention does not fulfill the Hayekian criteria.

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So therefore, from this point of view, there is no need for a governmental intervention.

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So my results, as we have seen, doping occurs in elite sports due to the given setting and

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anti-doping intervention provided by the government cannot be justified on this basis.

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And the third thing is, of course, clubs, organizers of sports events or contests or

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leagues can use doping methods on their own because then there would be no discrimination

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and Decent.

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Thank you very much.