The Goldman Dilemma

[More Strides than Rides]

There is a lot of psychology showing how bad people are at weighing current decisions against future consequences. One of my favorite findings is that someone's mental grammar structure for present and future tense has a huge correlation with how well they manage their savings. The study focused on the chinese language, which does not have seperate structures, while in english, the two exist as completely different, suggesting that people compartmentalize present vs. future (or not) accordig to the structure of their native language.

The point is, the Goldman dilema would be shown with validity accross demographics, and the concept is not limited to doping. Imagine lottery winners, or credit card use. People, not just athletes, are bad at really understanding the impact of their decisions.

(TED presentation of said studies)

 

[King Boonen]

Whilst he may not of covered it, the more I come back to this topic, the more I believe that the public are not different to elite athletes.

Low-T treatments to regain youthful vigour (with side effects), those anti-aging clinics, who charge an arm and a leg and inject you full of hormones (with side effects).

Diet pills, crash diets and so on.

Joe Public is looking for shortcuts, and certainly isn't doing it risk free.

I'm not sure. I'm guessing most people don't understand the health risks with some of the stupid diets and pills they may be taking. The Goldman study specifically outlined the risks (Ditch-city).

If you asked the kind of people who use all the rubbish if they wanted to look like a catalogue model for 5 years, enjoy celebrity and never have to worry about money, but they'd be dead afterwards I think the result would be lower than Goldman's findings.

Pure speculation though.

 

[blackcat]

There is a lot of psychology showing how bad people are at weighing current decisions against future consequences. One of my favorite findings is that someone's mental grammar structure for present and future tense has a huge correlation with how well they manage their savings. The study focused on the chinese language, which does not have seperate structures, while in english, the two exist as completely different, suggesting that people compartmentalize present vs. future (or not) accordig to the structure of their native language.

The point is, the Goldman dilema would be shown with validity accross demographics, and the concept is not limited to doping. Imagine lottery winners, or credit card use. People, not just athletes, are bad at really understanding the impact of their decisions.

(TED presentation of said studies)

may be cultural.
china have never had the consumer economy of the C21. Their savings bought US treasuries and was an element in the 2008gfc. they had mao greatleapforwardand culturalrevolution instead.

they do savings

is using the grammar explanation just reverse engineering in a confirmation bias?

 

[blackcat]

If you asked the kind of people who use all the rubbish if they wanted to look like a catalogue model for 5 years, enjoy celebrity and never have to worry about money, but they'd be dead afterwards I think the result would be lower than Goldman's findings.

Pure speculation though.

hypothetically, p'raps.

but lets tweak it a little, and give those folks a teaser, a taste of that. I would say it would be akin to goldman

 

[The Hitch]

I remember reading a few studies similar to the Goldman dilema in 2008 and 2012.

However I cannot find them. Anytime you type in any keywords remotely related to the question you get 10 000 hits about the 1984 study.

But I was looking for something more relevant to today - more recent.

Does anyone have any links to similar studies in recent times?

 

[fmk_RoI]

I remember reading a few studies similar to the Goldman dilema in 2008 and 2012.

However I cannot find them. Anytime you type in any keywords remotely related to the question you get 10 000 hits about the 1984 study.

But I was looking for something more relevant to today - more recent.

Does anyone have any links to similar studies in recent times?

There's been several articles about what a pile of nonsense it is, are they what you are looking for?

DYING TO WIN: DO ATHLETES REALLY WANT TO LIVE-FAST-DIE-YOUNG?

A new research study has found that the idea that athletes would be willing to trade death for glory is a myth, but like most fake news, the story won’t die, and grows in the retelling.

The Goldman Dilemma is dead: what elite athletes really think about doping, winning, and death

The reporting of the original Dilemma demonstrated a lack of scientific rigour, which raises questions about the Dilemma’s status as valid and reliable evidence to inform sports drug control policy.

Something to die for: Rebutting the Mirkin & Goldman dilemma

As noted above, the point here is not to deny that athletes are willing to make big sacrifices in orer to fulfil their ambitions, but simply to stress that, despite this, there are limits to how far they are willing to go. It was therefore praiseworthy when a group of doping scholars decided to re-test Goldman’s findings and said something along the lines of: ‘Okay, let’s see if we can replicate Mirkin’s and Goldman’s results, but in surveys and with questions operating under a proper methodological design’.

 

[King Boonen]

I remember reading a few studies similar to the Goldman dilema in 2008 and 2012.

However I cannot find them. Anytime you type in any keywords remotely related to the question you get 10 000 hits about the 1984 study.

But I was looking for something more relevant to today - more recent.

Does anyone have any links to similar studies in recent times?

Here you go:

Revisiting it:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23343717

General population:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19211586

 

[The Hitch]

No.
Ive seen those. Those still refference Goldman and his original test and are responses to it. 1 is of the general population

What I mean is similar surveys where they ask athletes similar questions, though not exactly the one by Goldman. Im sure i saw one where they ask the athletes if they would die within a year, as opposed to 5 by goldman

 

[King Boonen]

No.
Ive seen those. Those still refference Goldman and his original test and are responses to it. 1 is of the general population

What I mean is similar surveys where they ask athletes similar questions, though not exactly the one by Goldman. Im sure i saw one where they ask the athletes if they would die within a year, as opposed to 5 by goldman

Ah ok, that was Gabe Mirkin, but it was before 1984 I think it was just a survey:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/395271?redirect=true

Ive never read it as it’s a book. I can’t think of any more recent studies asking the same question.

 

[fmk_RoI]

No.
Ive seen those. Those still refference Goldman and his original test and are responses to it. 1 is of the general population

What I mean is similar surveys where they ask athletes similar questions, though not exactly the one by Goldman. Im sure i saw one where they ask the athletes if they would die within a year, as opposed to 5 by goldman

Ah ok, that was Gabe Mirkin, but it was before 1984 I think it was just a survey:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/395271?redirect=true

Ive never read it as it’s a book. I can’t think of any more recent studies asking the same question.

Ask Vest Christiansen explains some of the problems with Mirkin:

Mirkin’s study is indeed the classic evidence on athletes’ carelessness. However, a number of basic facts about the study remain unknown: How exactly was it undertaken? How many runners were surveyed? Who were they? What was the response-rate? What was the exact question they were asked? Were the answers distributed as ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ or was it a Likert-type scale? To the best of my knowledge, no sources that make a thorough account of the study exist. It is nevertheless often repeated as fact. When browsing through the literature referring to the survey, it is surprising to see how some present Mirkin’s question in one way, others slightly differently. However, none reproduced the original question directly or offered a reference to the source. Instead, scholars typically refer to one of two other works. The first – which Waddington for instance cites – is an article by the American sports historian Terry Todd. Todd mentions Mirkin’s survey, paraphrases his question and reports the result in a similar manner to Waddington above (Todd, 1987). However, the source Todd thereafter cites is not Mirkin, but an article on the subject in the San Diego Union newspaper from 1982[2]. That article has itself no references to the source of the information. The other work typically referred to is the American sport physician Bob Goldman’s book Death in the Locker Room from 1984. Goldman also mentions Mirkin’s survey, but again without any specific reference to it. He makes it known, though, that Mirkin is the (co)author of ‘the famous’ Sports Medicine Book (Goldman, Bush, & Klatz, 1984). To my knowledge, this book is the closest one can get to the original source. However, it is interesting to note that in his book, Mirkin only mentions his survey in passing.

 

[King Boonen]

Thanks, that pretty much confirms my suspicion that it’s anecdotal at best.

 

[Aragon]

Re:

Thanks, that pretty much confirms my suspicion that it’s anecdotal at best.

It is anecdotal and has a huge amount of shortcomings from scientific viewpoint and in the end very little has been published about how and when Goldman conducted his survey(s) (he claims in his 1992 followup book having "performed a series of polls on athletes in the mid and late 1980s") .

When a supplement manufacturer has its hand in the research process and even after all the peer-reviewing process the results fits his narrative, it is suspicious. It should be equally suspicious when an anti-steroid activist publishes a book and his survey results confirm his thesis that athletes have the "win-at-all-costs" - mentality and when there is pretty much nothing else published about his methodology than his own words. It is also at least strange that when G. Mirkin reviewed the 1984 book, he makes no mention of Goldman's survey at all even when in essence it confirmed his own earlier 1978 survey, the one that gave Goldman the idea to make one of his own.

My reading of the latest research on the "Goldman Dilemma" is that deep inside their minds many of the contemporary authors would want simply to claim that Goldman made the survey up to give extra boost for the anti-doping campaing, but that they feel they can't go that far.