| Title |
Trading Health Risks for Glory: A Reformulation of the Goldman Dilemma
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
Sports Medicine, March 2018
|
| DOI | 10.1007/s40279-018-0881-9 |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
Juan Marcos González, F. Reed Johnson, Matthew Fedoruk, Joshua Posner, Larry Bowers |
| Abstract |
The Goldman dilemma presented athletes with a Faustian bargain that guaranteed winning an Olympic gold medal in their sport but resulted in certain death 5 years later. Athletes' responses to Goldman's bargain were reported from 1982 to 1995. Several studies subsequently evaluated people's willingness to accept the bargain proposed in the Goldman question. Our study updates Goldman's question using contingent-behavior questions, a preference-elicitation method widely applied in economics, marketing and psychology to understand people's choice behavior. Contingent-behavior questions ask people to evaluate hypothetical tradeoffs between outcomes when real-world decisions are unobservable, nonexistent, or unreliable. A web-enabled survey was conducted with athletes in 50 sports between June, 2012 and April, 2013. Athletes were invited by their sport governing bodies in the United States to complete the online survey. Responses from 2888 athletes were collected. Our reformulation elicited athletes' willingness to accept a performance-enhancing drug (PED) associated with the risk of a realistic fatal event, not certain death. A double-bounded dichotomous-choice question format was used to elicit athletes' maximum acceptable mortality risk (MAMR) for winning an Olympic gold medal. Data were analyzed using an interval regression model to estimate the implicit probability of accepting a continuous risk level. MAMR was defined as the mortality risk level with a 0.50 probability of acceptance. Estimated mean MAMRs varied between 7 and 14% across athletes in different ranks and sports. Elite athletes were generally the most willing to accept a fatal cardiovascular risk to win a gold medal in the Olympics. This range was similar to the levels of risk that patients accept for life-changing interventions. Results suggest that very few athletes would be expected to accept a PED in the bargain postulated by the Goldman dilemma. Risk tolerance among elite athletes suggest they may be more aware of the potential financial and nonfinancial benefits of such a win, and/or less optimistic about their potential to move up in the level of competition without the use of PEDs. |
X Demographics
The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 10 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Indonesia | 1 | 10% |
| Canada | 1 | 10% |
| United Kingdom | 1 | 10% |
| United States | 1 | 10% |
| Unknown | 6 | 60% |
Demographic breakdown
| Type | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Members of the public | 9 | 90% |
| Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 1 | 10% |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 41 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Unknown | 41 | 100% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Researcher | 9 | 22% |
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 6 | 15% |
| Student > Bachelor | 4 | 10% |
| Student > Master | 2 | 5% |
| Student > Doctoral Student | 1 | 2% |
| Other | 5 | 12% |
| Unknown | 14 | 34% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Psychology | 7 | 17% |
| Social Sciences | 3 | 7% |
| Chemistry | 3 | 7% |
| Sports and Recreations | 2 | 5% |
| Nursing and Health Professions | 2 | 5% |
| Other | 8 | 20% |
| Unknown | 16 | 39% |
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 34. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 30 May 2023.
All research outputs
#1,077,388
of 23,873,907 outputs
Outputs from Sports Medicine
#914
of 2,773 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#25,482
of 333,125 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Sports Medicine
#30
of 60 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,873,907 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 95th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,773 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 52.5. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 67% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 60 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 51% of its contemporaries.