Goldman's dilemma, or the Goldman dilemma, is a question that was posed to elite

athletes An athlete (also sportsman or sportswoman) is a person who competes in one or more sports that involve physical strength, speed, or endurance. Athletes may be professionals or amateurs. Most professional athletes have particularly well-develo ...

physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

, osteopath and

publicist A publicist is a person whose job is to generate and manage publicity for a company, a brand, or public figure – especially a celebrity – or for a work such as a book, film, or album. Publicists are public relations specialists who ...

Robert M. Goldman, asking whether they would take a drug that would guarantee them overwhelming success in sport, but cause them to die after five years. In his research, as in previous research by Mirkin, approximately half the athletes responded that they would take the drug, but modern research by James Connor and co-workers has yielded much lower numbers, with athletes having levels of acceptance of the dilemma that were similar to the general population of Australia.

History

In the 1970s,

Gabe Mirkin Gabe Baron Mirkin (born 18 June 1935) is a physician, author, professor, columnist, former guest lecturer, and a former marathon runner who hosted a radio show on health and fitness for more than 20 years, and wrote several books on sports medic ...

reported that more than half of the top runners whom he polled, would accept the following proposal: "If I could give you a pill that would make you an

Olympic Olympic or Olympics may refer to Sports Competitions * Olympic Games, international multi-sport event held since 1896 ** Summer Olympic Games ** Winter Olympic Games * Ancient Olympic Games, ancient multi-sport event held in Olympia, Greece b ...

champion and also kill you in a year, would you take it?". This surprising result prompted Bob Goldman to ask world-class athletes in

combat Combat ( French for ''fight'') is a purposeful violent conflict meant to physically harm or kill the opposition. Combat may be armed (using weapons) or unarmed ( not using weapons). Combat is sometimes resorted to as a method of self-defense, or ...

and power sports a similar question: "If I had a magic drug that was so fantastic that if you took it once you would win every competition you would enter from the Olympic

Decathlon The decathlon is a combined event in Athletics (sport), athletics consisting of ten track and field events. The word "decathlon" was formed, in analogy to the word "pentathlon", from Greek language, Greek δέκα (''déka'', meaning "ten") and ...

to the Mr Universe, for the next five years but it had one minor drawback, it would kill you five years after you took it, would you still take the drug?" He also found that more than half said they would take it. This result was consistent in his findings over a period from 1982 to 1995.^{cited in} Because of the shocking implications they held around

doping in sport In competitive sports, doping is the use of banned athletic performance-enhancing drugs by athletic competitors as a way of cheating in sports. The term ''doping'' is widely used by organizations that regulate sporting competitions. The use of ...

, Mirkin's and Goldman's results were widely reported, but also criticized.

Later research

In 2009, Connor et al. reported that members of the general

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

n public, surveyed by phone, overwhelmingly rejected Goldman's dilemma. The authors' conclusion at the time was that athletes were very different from the general public in terms of their attitudes to risk and victory. However, a later survey that they ran at an elite-level track and field event in USA showed similarly low levels (around 1%) of acceptance of the proposition of assured victory by illegal drug use followed by death. If the proposed drug were legal but deadly, around 6% would take it, and if it were illegal but harmless, around 12% said they would take it. They explain this difference in terms of changing attitudes in sport, both due to increased understanding of the risks of doping and the development of a clearer moral stance on doping.

References

{{reflist, refs= {{cite book , last=Goldman , first=Robert , title=Death in the locker room: drugs & sports , year=1992 , publisher=Elite Sports Medicine Publications , isbn=9780963145109 , pag
24
, edition=2 , author2=Ronald Klatz , url=https://archive.org/details/deathinlockerroo00gold/page/24 {{cite journal , last=Connot , first=James , author2=Jules Woolf , author3=Jason Mazanov , title=Would they dope? Revisiting the Goldman dilemma , journal=British Journal of Sports Medicine , date=January 2013 , volume=47 , issue=11 , pages=697–700 , doi=10.1136/bjsports-2012-091826 , pmid=23343717 , url=http://www.oliverfinlay.com/assets/pdf/connor%20(2013)%20would%20they%20dope.%20%20revisiting%20the%20goldman%20dilemma.pdf , accessdate=15 July 2013 {{cite journal , last=Connor , first=James , author2=Jason Mazanov , title=Would you dope? A general population test of the Goldman dilemma. , journal=British Journal of Sports Medicine , year=2009 , volume=43 , issue=11 , pages=871–872 , doi=10.1136/bjsm.2009.057596 , url=http://bjsportmed.com/content/43/11/871 , accessdate=15 July 2013 , url-status=dead , archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20131002191324/http://bjsportmed.com/content/43/11/871 , archivedate=2 October 2013 , pmid=19211586 {{cite book , last=Mirkin , first=Gabe , title=The Sports Medicine Book , year=1978 , publisher=Little Brown & Co , isbn=9780316574365 , author2=Marshall Hoffman , url=https://archive.org/details/sportsmedicinebo00mirk {{cite journal , title=Over the edge , journal=Sports Illustrated , date=14 April 1997 , author=Bamberger M, Yaeger D. {{cite book , title=Doping in Élite Sport: The Politics of Drugs in the Olympic Movement , year=2001 , publisher=Human Kinetics 1 , isbn=9780736003292 , page=80 , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wi2d4YyLh3wC&pg=PA80 , editor=Wayne Wilson, Edwuard Derse , accessdate=15 July 2013 Sports medicine Doping in sport

History

Later research

See also

References