To cheat or not to cheat? Researchers uncover the moral dilemmas of doping

Press Release
University of Birmingham
Originally posted May 9, 2019

Elite athletes are less likely to take banned substances if they consider the morality of what they are doing, and not just the health consequences of doping, according to a new study led by the University of Birmingham and funded by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

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The researchers were also interested in finding out what factors might reduce these justifications, which would ultimately allow athletes to suppress their feelings of guilt and use banned substances. The key factor which seems to protect athletes from doping was moral identity. This means how important it was to the players to be a moral person, and how strong their moral values, such as being fair or honest, were. Those players who had a strong moral identity did not use justifications for doping, expected to feel more guilt for doping, and ultimately were less likely to dope.

The researchers also found that coaches' behavior, and the 'performance climate' in which athletes were training also had a significant effect on their doping likelihood. If coaches were creating a climate in which players who made a mistake were penalised, or if they gave undue attention to the best players, athletes were more likely to turn towards banned substances. The coach can therefore play an important role in doping prevention.

The research findings are forming the basis for anti-doping interventions aimed at challenging players' attitudes towards banned substances. Funded by the World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Olympic Committee, the team has developed a series of interventions which highlight the moral angle through stories of athletes who have been affected by these issues, and what it has meant for them, and for their team mates and families.

The pressor is here.

Why ‘smart drugs’ can make you less clever

Nadira Faber
The Conversation
Originally posted July 26, 2016

It is an open secret: while athletes dope their bodies, regular office workers dope their brains. They buy prescription drugs such as Ritalin or Provigil on the internet’s flourishing black market to boost their cognitive performance.

It is hard to get reliable data on how many people take such “smart drugs” or “pharmacological cognitive enhancement substances”, as scientists call them. Prevalence studies and surveys suggest, though, that people from different walks of life use them, such as researchers, surgeons, and students. In an informal poll among readers of the journal Nature, 20% reported that they had taken smart drugs. And it seems that their use is on the rise.

So, if you are in a demanding and competitive job, some of your colleagues probably take smart drugs. Does this thought worry you? If so, you are not alone. Studies consistently find that people see brain doping negatively.

The article is here.

Why it’s time to legalise doping in athletics

By Julian Savulescu
The Conversation
Originally posted August 28, 2015

Here is an excerpt:

Those athletes who are clean face a significantly doped field, and a climate of denial. They face a perverse dilemma: they must choose to either live with the disadvantage and accept the probable financial losses as a result, or to join the cheaters. If they do that, they face the risk of complete ruin as a scapegoat if they are caught. US runner Justin Gatlin, for example, has complained that previous doping bans have led to biased and unfair coverage of his performances.

It is not as though sport is somehow bereft of human struggle or magnificence. The only thing that is bad about sport today is that some athletes are getting a small advantage that others aren’t, and people are regularly getting tossed out or brought under a cloud by rules that are unfit for purpose.

The entire article is here.

The Ethics of Human Enhancement (Index to all Posts)

By John Danaher
Philosophical Disquisitions Blog
Originally published June 13, 2013

As some of you may have noticed, I've written quite a bit about the ethics of human enhancement over the past few years. For better or worse it has become one of my major research interests. This all started when I wrote a paper about human enhancement and criminal responsibility when completing my PhD (I now think that paper is terrible, but you can find it here). Subsequently, I wrote a (much better) article about the use of enhancement to improve the legitimacy of legal trials.

Well, just this month I finished writing first drafts of three separate articles on the topic,* and thought that now might be a good time to do a retrospective on all the blog posts I've done on enhancement. So here's a complete list, in reverse chronological order:


1. Douglas on Moral Enhancement and Superficiality (July 2013)
There is some evidence to suggest that technologies could be used to directly manipulate our moral emotions, thereby encouraging us to engage in morally conforming behaviour. Is this a welcome development? Some argue it leads to a more superficial, less worthy type of moral behaviour.

The entire blog post and index on human enhancement is here.