Doping, not just for jocks anymore...

[dickens]

http://www.slate.com/id/2188747

The interesting ethical point of the article is the scientist who suggested that using brain-enhancing drugs will improve his science and therefore human knowledge/life.

I don't know, the idea makes me squick a little.

Comments

[omnifarious.livejournal.com]

I think jock's and scientists using performance enhancing drugs are fundamentally different. In the case of jocks, their direct competition with their peers is part of the entertainment value of watching them. Using those drugs is like a chess player who uses a computer to help him or her analyze the board.

But a professional chess analyst is expected to use a computer. The analyst is in indirect competition with other analysts, but the competition itself isn't a part of why we read their analyses. It isn't 'cheating', it's doing their job better.

And I think the same can be said of scientists. They do compete with other scientists to produce results, but the competition isn't why we pay them. We pay them to find things out, to create and test hypothesis and come up with workable theories with a lot of predictive power. Their use of performance enhancing drugs isn't cheating, it's giving them the ability to do their jobs better.

So I think directly comparing them as the article does isn't exactly the right thing to do.