Is Doping In Sports Here To Stay?

Many people might suspect that there is widespread doping that goes on in professional sports, but that's difficult to prove of course as many cases don't get caught by officials. However, according to one study on the subject, researchers found that current screening tests are only capturing a fraction of the actual use.

When surveying athletes from top sporting events, they discovered that more than 30 percent of the athletes admit to doping.

But that certainly isn't the amount that are showing up in official tests for those sporting events. Results indicate that the doping is far more prevalent than officials might currently suspect.

Scientists had randomly questioned more than 2,000 athletes who participated in the World Championships and Pan-Arab Games a few years back. The participants were questioned as to whether or not they had taken drugs or used other doping methods prior to the competition. The randomized response method for questioning that they had used ensured the anonymity of the participants who responded.

Researchers from that study had concluded that current biological tests greatly underestimate the true prevalence of doping in sports; they suspect that it's because athletes have found numerous ways to get around the tests.

In a separate study on doping, researchers interestingly discovered that moral dilemmas were most likely to prevent an athlete from doping.

Researchers from the University of Birmingham found that elite athletes are much less likely to take banned substances if they consider the morality of the situation and not only the health consequences. They also found that athletes might be more likely to engage in doping for injury recovery, rather than an effort to seek performance enhancement. They went a little further in investigating the specific attitudes and emotions linked with doping and they found that decisions on whether or not to do it were based on how much guilt they expected to feel.

Athletes might tell themselves that many other people do it as well, or that it's going to help their team win etc, these are considerations that help to distance the athletes from feeling guilt over the matter.

When those feelings of guilt are lowered, it's understandable that there would be an increased likelihood for doping.

"If an athlete can justify their actions to themselves, they will feel less guilt, which makes them more likely to dope. If we reinforce the message that doping is cheating, athletes are less likely to do it." - Dr M. Kavussanu

Some say doping is here to stay in sports forever, others say it's time to double down on the issue.

Suggestions for trying to improve the problem have included improving incentives for drug-testers to catch them, strengthening penalties, improving the efficiency of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), and attempting to change current sports culture. Previous research also suggests that the athlete's environment can play a big role in their likelihood to engage in doping or not, and therefore education on the issue they say is imperative going forward.

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