Jul 3, 2024 05:52 PM
(This post was last modified: Jul 3, 2024 05:52 PM by C C.)
https://skepticalinquirer.org/2024/06/fr...doscience/
EXCERPTS: The Games of the XXXIII Olympiad are just around the corner. As an exercise scientist who was formerly a physiologist at the British Olympic Center, I’ve seen pseudoscience infiltrate high-level sport, and I’ve battled it with unbiased professionalism. But as a lifelong exerciser, it’s become personal. Athletes and their teams continue to blend proven, unproven, and disproven strategies at the modern Games. What do these strategies look like? How do plausible and implausible claims coexist in sport? And why do some athletes cling to their lucky shorts, charms, and trinkets?
[...] You needn’t look far for examples of Olympic pseudoscience. It’s not that all Olympians have a penchant for poppycock, but there are enough high-profile ones to poison the well...
[...] Pseudoscience aside, Olympic sport has retained undertones of superstition and irrationality from the ancient Games...
[...] Elite athletes are blessed with immense determination, a unique stubbornness, and a refusal to quit even when they’re sick on their own legs. ... This obsession with victory has evolved out of necessity because success and failure at the games are separated by a rapidly shrinking margin. ... And not just victory but also prize money. ...
[...] In this hypercompetitive ecosystem, as high-pressure as any vocation on Earth, pursuing every performance advantage, no matter how small, is second nature...
[...] This is not to say that pseudoscience and superstition necessarily predominate. There are many athletes and teams who revere science and trust their support staff to give practical, evidence-based advice...
[...] The strands of pseudoscience that weave their way through Olympic sport are hard to untangle, but we must keep tugging at the threads... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: The Games of the XXXIII Olympiad are just around the corner. As an exercise scientist who was formerly a physiologist at the British Olympic Center, I’ve seen pseudoscience infiltrate high-level sport, and I’ve battled it with unbiased professionalism. But as a lifelong exerciser, it’s become personal. Athletes and their teams continue to blend proven, unproven, and disproven strategies at the modern Games. What do these strategies look like? How do plausible and implausible claims coexist in sport? And why do some athletes cling to their lucky shorts, charms, and trinkets?
[...] You needn’t look far for examples of Olympic pseudoscience. It’s not that all Olympians have a penchant for poppycock, but there are enough high-profile ones to poison the well...
[...] Pseudoscience aside, Olympic sport has retained undertones of superstition and irrationality from the ancient Games...
[...] Elite athletes are blessed with immense determination, a unique stubbornness, and a refusal to quit even when they’re sick on their own legs. ... This obsession with victory has evolved out of necessity because success and failure at the games are separated by a rapidly shrinking margin. ... And not just victory but also prize money. ...
[...] In this hypercompetitive ecosystem, as high-pressure as any vocation on Earth, pursuing every performance advantage, no matter how small, is second nature...
[...] This is not to say that pseudoscience and superstition necessarily predominate. There are many athletes and teams who revere science and trust their support staff to give practical, evidence-based advice...
[...] The strands of pseudoscience that weave their way through Olympic sport are hard to untangle, but we must keep tugging at the threads... (MORE - missing details)