StarTalk Radio - Cheating in Sports

Episode Date: January 17, 2020

Lance Armstrong, the New England Patriots, steroids in baseball – Neil deGrasse Tyson investigates cheating in sports alongside co-hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly, Dr. Lee Igel, PhD from the Tisch Institute of Global Sport, and behavioral scientist Lisa Shu, PhD. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And this is StarTalk Sports Edition. And I got with me, as always, Chuck Knight. That's right, sir. What's happening? Gary O'Reilly. Gary, just in case people don't know, you were a once and future professional athlete. Allegedly. Allegedly. One of those things are true. The once. The once. Or future. Right. It's definitely a past tense. It's

a past tense-y there. A footballer from the UK. Always good to have you on the show. And our topic this week, the future of cheating. Yay! On and or off the field. Finally, cheating is getting its due.

Cheating. Yes. Like, what's up with that? What's up with cheating? And so, it's not only the technology that might enable you to cheat, but the psychology of cheating as well. So, that's what we're going to explore in these three segments. And as usual, we comb the region to find academic expertise, of which there's quite a bit in

the tri-state area of New York. It's a good place to get brain power. New York is such a good place. And we have Dr. Lee Eagle. Lee, welcome to StarTalk. Thank you for having me over. I got to get this right. You're a clinical associate professor at the NYU Tisch Institute for global support.

Did I get that right? Global, yeah. That's correct. That's why I got it right. Okay. And your research focuses on medical ethics, especially with regard to sports business. Yeah, it's one of the areas. Well, okay.

So I didn't know anything about this. You guys got questions lined up. Yeah. What are the ethics? Because I would say that it's very possible to, it's a lot more difficult to be ethical as a doctor for a sports team because you are pressured to get people back to work. You're talking about ethics for him because there's a lot of concern

about cheating on the field, a lot of concern about cheating by players, but what about the doctors? What about them? Because you are pressured to cheat. That new drug. Yeah, get him out there. So there's incredible physicians on team physicians, especially. Most of them are hired by teams.

And what an enormous pressure to perform. Right. And to fit in the box. Because think about all the different people who are coming in on that. You've got the player. You've got the coaches. You've got team ownership. General management.

General managers, the front office. Advertisers at some level. Advertisers and sponsors, family members. I mean, everybody's sort of coming in. Right. And they're going, okay, make that happen. So to make that call is, it's not so easy. Yeah, I'm sure you would have a lot of people upset with you.

Like I watch now, one of them to me, it's a fascinating thing to watch in football games, the blue tent. This is the new thing now. The player gets injured, they take him into the blue tent, and you can't see what's going on in the blue tent, but I got a feeling what's going on in the blue tent is like,

you think he can get back out there? I don't know. No, you can get back out there. Try some of this. Get an injection right here. How about now? So people go in all busted and broken, and they pop out five minutes later after the commercial break. Sometimes it happens that way.

It does. And it's like that. At the very high end, you might have, towards the end of a season, you might be in a championship game, you might be in a playoff game. The pressure's high. If you don't play the next game as an owner, as a coach, I'm probably not that concerned. I want the result now.

So there's pressure. Just tell the athlete they're fine. They'll get through the game. They may not be 100%. They may not be 80%, but that'll be enough. So do you study ethics in your own field? It's one through the game. They may not be 100%. They may not be 80%, but that'll be enough. So do you study ethics in your own field? It's one of the areas. So I cover, I'm in sports business.

Did you get that answer? I said, do you study this? It's one of the areas. It's one of the areas, yeah. Do you study this? That's good to know. It's a professor, you know, so it's either three minutes or three hours,

nothing in between. You have the answers, right. In terms of comments. All right, from that point of view that Chuck just asked you about talking to that man in your mirror, let's come out of that and look at the sports business side of things.

If I'm a world governing body, like the IOC, the IAAF, or FIFA, whoever it might be, and I'm enforcing all of these sanctions, these bans, because of cheating for whatever reason. Right? Exactly. Punishment.

But there I am being investigated for corruption, for all sorts of misdemeanors and foul play. How is that balanced? How on earth do you get that to be in the right place? And how do the people in your organization say, well, I don't care because you're the bad guy as well? You've got a bunch of different things going on. And again, same kind of thing.

It's happening at a few different levels. And those pressures keep coming back in. So on one hand, when you talk about the different governing bodies, those organizations and institutions, even when we see corruption in those ranks, there's still something that the public looks at in terms of those bodies. Because, you know, those are still the sanctioning bodies. They're still legitimate.

And what they do, what their guidelines and laws are, what they stand for is still, there's a code that's there and that's in place. What happens within that is, you know, stuff we get to work on. What about organizational, I'll say, what's it called when you have kind of like a group think, but, you know, for instance, it's kind of well known that Bill Belichick will do whatever is necessary. Allegedly. Allegedly. To win. Bill Belichick, coach of the New England Patriots.

And son of Satan. Everyone who doesn't live in New England. Says the Eagles fan. Says the Eagles fan. Yeah. No, but I'm joking about that. He's a brilliant coach. But, you know, it's kind of bandied about that.

He can be as loose with the rules as anyone can be because his deal is the end justifies the means. If we walk off the field with a W, then I did the right thing, you know? What does that do to the team psychology? That's an interesting thing because Bill Belichick is really a special case. And a coach like he is, is such a special case because the culture that he created

and his ability to coach and to manage and to bring people along. It's a winning culture. Because it's a winning culture and it's so different. He operates on a level that I think most people looking at it miss. You know, you sort of see him in the hoodie and a press conference. He's gruff and all these things. But you talk to the players who have played with him and coaches who've worked with him, they go, this is somebody who is really special

and you know that he cares. So he can do some of the things that he does because the players know where it's coming from. And it's not just, you know, it's about, there's a line from management, culture eats strategy for breakfast. And that's a Bill Belichick thing. Okay, so I've got my win at all costs mentality

in my organization. And you know what? Everybody loves a winner by all accounts. So if you're able to sit in that organization and structure it so as, you've still got winning mentality, but you're not blur sit in that organization and structure it so as you've still got winning mentality, but you're not blurring the lines of, well, is it cheating? Isn't it? Well, let's do it and see if anyone catches up. How do you, and can you implement a culture within an organization and

still have it as a winning mentality? Well, that's a great question because part of this is also, I think it was the great Homer Simpson who said, it's only cheating if you get caught. Duh! And then he said that because he got caught. Yeah. Duh! But yeah, it really,

it comes back down to, I think really that idea of culture and strategy and the relationship between them. All right, so let's say for instance that you're a person who has this winning culture, all right? Let's remove the strategy, but it's all about win, win, win, win, win. But at the same time, you are a very honorable person. You would never actually cheat. However, you've created an environment that is so pressure-filled that it incites cheating by your players. I mean, I think sometimes you see that in educational arenas or forums,

like when a school is under a tremendous pressure to perform well on a standardized test. And then you find out all the teachers in the school cheated with the kids because they were under that much pressure. There it is. You know, it's interesting what people do in the school cheated with the kids because they were under that much pressure. There it is. It's interesting what people do in the moment, right? And I think you see this certainly in schools and in all sorts of cases where otherwise good people get caught doing something that they just wouldn't do. And if you had them in a room, there's a psychology called the hot, cold environment.

In the cold environment, when we're sort of sitting around and go, you know, would you ever do this? Oh my goodness, I would never. I would never do that awful thing. And then in the hot moment when it's happening, you know, the things that we let go of and our better selves start to go away and other things come out. And that's really where you see it, whether it's in sports or it's in education. So how does your research play into this understanding? Well, right at it.

I mean, something like what people do in different environments. A person who has no willingness to cheat when they're sitting in a room. It's one thing. Look at it, what happens when you're out there in that moment. So it's conditional ethics. It's conditional ethics. S at it. What happens when you're out there in that moment? So it's conditional ethics.

It's conditional ethics. Situational ethics. That's what I should have said. Situational ethics. Which is interesting because from the business side and the management side, that's all about ethics. It's this idea that what's permissible and what's allowed in certain environments.

And the truth is there really is ethics. I mean, ethics is ethics. There's right, there's wrong. And it's not so situational. Suppose there's an ethics that prevails today, but it's not so ethical, but it's no longer a matter of ethics in five years. We've sort of worked past it. And I don't know what an example of that would be. Okay, so we've become... Being gay.

Okay. In sports. Being gay in sports. We have been desensitized. Years ago, that would have been almost criminal. Right, in male sports.

And there's still some sports where it's not going to go particularly well if you come out as a gay athlete. Well, that's too bad because I am coming out. Good. Even though we ain't on any field at all. that's too bad because I am coming out. Good.

Even though we ain't on any field at all. I don't care. I've never played a sport and I'm not gay, but I'm coming out just because people don't like it. Are you happy now? You're happy. I'm very happy. In the last 20 years,

we have become desensitized to certain elements of low-level cheating. So in a football game, if I pulled an opponent's jersey 20 years ago, whistle, stop, foul goes against me. Now, I could probably get away with it. Flopping during a game, shunned upon 20 years ago, now it's like, okay, you did that. And the game carries on. And in basketball, there's a lot. I've seen, you know, when they're positioning themselves near the net,

I've seen guys pull on their, you know, and it's small and minor and you would never call it in the street. Right. Right? It's like, that's just part of the game. Right? But it's clearly unethical.

Yes. Clearly. So to your point, in X amount of years time. We all allow it now. So do you study the arc of ethics years time. We all allow it now. So do you study the arc of ethics over time? Sure.

Yeah. And I think that's an important point because you've got to have this context, right? We've got to have some historical context and understand how things, the big thing is why are people doing the things that they're doing so we can understand where we're going next. And I think that's a big part of it. So what, okay, so if everybody's cheating, is it your ethical responsibility to still not cheat? Or is it your sports responsibility

to cheat like everybody else? And then you get to the, like I said, Lance Armstrong, for example, when it finally came out that he was a cheater, and then he talked about it when people sat down and listened to him, he described how everybody around him was cheating. The only way he could compete is if he cheated as well. was a cheater. And then he talked about it when people sat down and listened to him. He described how everybody around him was cheating. The only way he could compete is if he cheated as well.

And so if everybody's cheating, then no one talks about it. Then the sport just becomes more and more of a spectator performance. And then you learn somebody's cheating. So how does that all settle out in the end? That's a really good point because what you just said, everybody knows that football players are on steroids. We want performance. Period. We want it. There's not one team in the NFL where somebody on that team is not on steroids. But you take steroids in baseball, you have ruined the sport.

It's like you're going to hell. Yeah. So it's… So that. So that's an interesting, it's all interesting pieces. But on that part, the NFL did something policy-wise about steroids and performance enhancing drugs a bunch of years before Major League Baseball ever did. And Major League Baseball had to figure it out after the fact, after it all came to light. And so that's the public pushback and an upset is really over that. They had a policy and said, look, we've been busting these guys for a good long time. Maybe not all of them, but we've got a policy in place. At least they

can say, okay, there we go. Major League Baseball, different story. And I think that's something that plays with our ethics. And your research. And our morals. That's a really interesting point. I mean, just having a police department, even if they're not enforcing the law, actually does something to you psychologically to say,

well, at least these guys are trying. Yep. National Hockey League, concussion policy. NFL, no concussion policy. You don't hear much about, you know, the same policy. You don't hear much about the same thing. You don't hear much about the concussions in the NHL. Because they have a policy.

And forget international football. Oh, I know. No, they're getting there. They're getting there. They're getting there. So in your research, have you come to a point where you think there is a way to construct an environment where cheating will not take place?

Ooh. I'm not so sure that we want that. And that's a little bit back to the point you were making earlier. I'm not so sure we want it. Sports is, you know, it's a human endeavor. It's about human performance. And part of the frustration about Lance Armstrong

is not, you know, one thing is that it took him a while to come to and say, this is what I did. And that's why people aren't listening so much. But the other thing is that really, we thought there was this incredible human performance. And most of us have gotten out on a bicycle and ridden it and figured, okay, I know what that feels like to go to these places. And here's somebody who did it at a level way better than I did and could ever do. Are you the measure of how good Lance Armstrong is?

Yeah. Of course. He was so good, he was better than me. I can't get through Central Park on a bicycle. But I think we all start to think about that. And it's why we can appreciate LeBron James. They've all been out shooting hoops at some point or another and you go, okay, I get it. And there's that level of performance. And when somebody cuts at it and seems to have faked it, we go, no, they didn't do it in a human way. But cheating is human. It's a really human thing. When somebody goes over the line, I'm not saying it's a good thing.

I'm just being human. But it's a human thing. I'm just being human. But it's a human thing. And that's part of where we look at what happens with cheating and ethics, because it's usually little lies that people start with and they excuse. And then they get bigger and they get bigger and bigger and bigger. And that's where I think all this kind of stuff sits and settles. And I'm not sure that as much as we would think sitting in that sort of cold room, we'd sort of go, yeah, yeah, yeah, get it all out.

I think when we really sit there and watch it happen, to see a little bit of the, I don't want to pull your jersey, but I don't know, sitting in your office. You know what that reminds me of? There was a, this is now two,

three decades ago, Major League Baseball, an important game. There was a pitcher who the other team accused him of roughing up the ball with an emery board. Oh, wow.

Yes. And he denied it. And then the umpire went out to the mound to have him empty his pockets. And so he went into his pocket and quickly threw the emery board out of it. He actually was rubbing it up with an emery board.

It fell out of his pocket on purpose, but the camera's on him, right? So the camera just sees the thing fly out of his pocket. Who'd have thought there'd be cameras in the game? Who'd have thought that baseball players would have pockets? Wait, what is that about? Well, you're going to put your stick aboard. But this is a case where you can actually, you know people are human and that they want to cheat.

So you put in ways that disincentivize it, like a camera at every possible angle where you might have cheated. That's another way to do it. Yeah. No, and now in the other part of the coin here, the other side of the coin is, yes. No, and now in the other part of the coin here, the other side of the coin is, yes, I mean, we also want people to not go so far over the line in cheating that it ends up, you know, let's have cameras look at all these different angles so that it's at least a level playing field. That's the great thing about sports. It's all really at a point about a level playing field. We want to see what people can do within that level playing field.

Where can you push the bounds? One day I want to see a football game that's on a playing field that's not level and just see how that actually plays out. A downhill ball. A downhill football. Seriously, back in the UK, I played on a team, Brighton, where the field was not level.

You went uphill, downhill. It was not a level playing field. No, never. We got to take a break. And when we come back, we'll continue with our discussions on ethics, cheating in sports on StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. O'Reilly.

Yes. Nice. Hey. All right. Gary and Chuck. The gang's all here. The gang's all here. Band is back Nice. Hey. All right. Gary and Chuck. The gang's all here. The gang's all here. Band is back together.

The band is back. We're continuing our discussion of the future of cheating on and off the playing field. Yes. And so, I don't know if you've ever cheated on the field. Cheaters never win. They just win the game. Possibly not. Possibly yes.

Possibly yes, says our former professional athlete here. So we got to introduce somebody who thinks about this stuff. So joining us for this conversation is Lisa Hsu. Lisa, welcome. Dialing in from London. Thank you so much. From London, right? Thank you so much for having me.

Excellent. You're an organizational psychologist, an expert on motivations for cheating to get ahead in sports and perhaps other things. And you're at the London Business School. So this is your ideal guest for this show.

And so let me just lead off with a question. Does almost everyone I competed against, as I used to wrestle, I used to row, I saw them cheat. And I realized they cared about winning by any means rather than actually following the rules and actually winning.

Winning. Because if you cheat, you didn't win. Because I was so disappointed by that. And I thought, what is going through their heads about this? And so, do you study these people's heads? That's exactly right. I study the mental acrobatics that we are able to perform internally to justify to ourselves that we are good people despite the fact that we sometimes or very oftentimes will break the rules in order to get ahead.

Now, is there a specific personality that is more prone to cheat? Because I've noticed in certain types of people, like for instance, let's not say we're competing at sports, just a game of chess or checkers or cards. And a person is that type of competitor where when they see that they are about to lose, they start changing the rules or doing something crazy. You know what I mean?

Or their personality changes. Their personality changes. They're like, oh, you can't do that. You can't do that. And you what I mean? Or their personality changes. Their personality changes. They're like, oh, you can't do that. You can't do that. And you're like, whoa, wait a minute. What is going on? So is there, who are these people? Who are these people?

Right. Who are these cheaters? Well, it turns out that cheaters are made. Cheaters are not born. And cheaters are made by the environment that surrounds them. In fact, most cheaters probably don't think of themselves as cheaters are made by the environment that surrounds them. In fact, most cheaters probably don't think of themselves as cheaters because they virtuously see themselves as someone who just worked hard, hustles, does whatever it takes to get ahead. They might not even see their behavior or label it as cheating. So, yes, we call them cheaters. We see from the outside that their behaviors are

impermissible or, you know, rule boundary crossing, but inside their own heads, it's this watertight narrative that they're good people who don't cheat. So they're not only cheaters, they're delusional. Exactly. Oh, okay. So now what really, what you just said, Neil, really sparked something in me. You said you're looking at these people, you're seeing them cheat. And I've had the same experience, not in like rowing, but in just competition. And I don't want to win that way. Like to me, I don't want to win that way like to me i don't want to win that way but that's why you've always been a loser

well played that was good i'm not quite sure what i say at this moment no no that's good so no but here's my point um is it possible if neil were a different person that he would then say, well, I need to cheat now? Oh. You see? Is this a domino effect? Exactly. So it's like, well, look at this. Everybody around me is cheating, so they have a competitive edge, which makes me less competitive.

So I need to cheat now so I can be competitive because I'm actually better than that guy. He's just cheating. That was Lance Armstrong's argument. Was it? Yes. Yeah. Yes. He looked around and saw everybody's cheating.

And the only way he could hang with them is if he cheated too. So he got made in this sense, right? Yeah. That's right. It's the environment that you enter. You become very blindsided by what the norms are. And then what's normal, it just becomes okay, regardless of whether or not the norm is, you know, that everyone cheats to get ahead. So you renormalize it, it is the function is doing something over here instead of over here. So you perform operations on it. Now that's the new place where it is.

And when you do that, you lose all sense of where the thing was or how it used to function. You become anesthetized to the situation around you. So, I mean, and now I think we're desensitized to some of the minor cheating that goes on, not so much performance enhancing, but gaining advantage during an athletic performance or whatever it is. So, how do you fix it? Don't just tell us it exists. Give us solutions here. Absolutely. The solution is that we need to reawaken people to their blind spots. You know, once you're embedded in environments where cheating is the norm, you can't even see outside of that, right? So it does take an external environment or it takes an external actor from an

outside environment to say, wait a minute, these norms are not sustainable. They're not okay. And everyone is being blindsided by the fact that cheating is normalized within this environment. We continuously underestimate just how important the environment is as a driver of our behavior. We tend to think that we're good people, we're motivated to do well and do good, and that it doesn't matter how challenging, how morally challenging the environments we put ourselves into are. But the fact of the matter is sometimes it's the number one driver of our behavior. And it doesn't matter how strongly we believe our standards will never, ever change. We don't even notice them changing. We become morally disengaged without noticing.

I got an important question. Okay. Am I cheating if I figure out a way to gain an advantage over you that the people who make the rules have not yet noticed should be outlawed. Loopholing. A loophole. So let me make this up, for example. Let's say I'm about to go to a swimming contest, and I take a five-minute hit of pure oxygen. Okay?

That's not going to show up in a drug test. No, it's not. But now I have oxygen completely throughout me, and I don't know if that would work, but let's imagine it does. Let's just imagine it does. Imagine it does. And that enhances your performance. And I win. Did I cheat? So it depends on whether we're

going by the definition of the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law. By the letter of the law, you have not cheated. That's the loophole. There's not something that has outlawed you from doing that specific action. But by the spirit of the law, absolutely, you've done something to gain an unfair advantage. So it depends on how we define this for ourselves. And as individuals who are tempted to cheat, we would definitely define this by the letter of the law, right? Okay. I got another example.

In NASCAR, okay, there are very strict rules about the size and proportions and weight and everything and how big your gas tank is, okay? Well, I've read about this. I'm not a NASCAR fanatic, but I know a couple of things. A couple of things. And apparently, they designed the fuel hose from the gas tank to the engine to be really long. A weight distribution. So, no, no, not weight. More gas.

No, no, just more gas. More gas. When you fill it, you got to fill the hose, too. The hose, too. There you go. Now, if you take one less pit stop because of it, that's your rate. So that's engineers being clever. It's their job.

But you're still saying it's not fair. So you have to ask yourself, is it a level playing field? Can anyone else have access to engineers who would, you know, soup up their vehicle? So then I'm going to say that's not cheating then. I'm smarter than you. You're smarter. That's different. Okay.

While we discuss this, is cheating a random act or does cheating come in like a recognizable pattern? Oh, I like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, cheating is not a random act. So I mentioned earlier that cheaters are made.

They are not born cheaters. But once we find ourselves in a situation where we trespass a moral rule, we morally disengage. I mentioned the mental acrobatics earlier. We're able to convince ourselves that our actions are actually moral and ethical and it's okay. And what that represents is the downgrading of your moral standards so that

you don't feel any discomfort with your sketchy actions and the moral code that you think you possess. So over time, we cheat once, then we make excuses for our cheating behavior. We downgrade our moral code of ethics. We think more things are morally permissible. And what this happens is a downward spiral of decreasing ethical standards, more permissible behaviors, and greater greater disregard and a bigger blind spot for moral rule so let me ask you this but what is more what is a more effective means of stopping cheating is it group shame in other words to be found out that you're a cheater amongst your peers and to suffer the embarrassment of them now knowing that you are not what you are, or a police action.

For instance, if we're all on the highway and everybody's doing 85 miles an hour and you feel like, well, everybody's going 85 miles an hour, but then you see flashing lights in the distance, everyone hits their brake because they all know they're doing something wrong. Everybody knows they're doing something wrong. Otherwise, they would continue going 85 miles an hour. Right. So that's the police action. But the group would be

if you're heading down the highway 85 miles an hour, everybody else is doing 60 miles an hour, and they're all beeping their horn at you. Like, you crazy maniac. What the hell are you doing? That's a public shame. That's a public shame. And then you decide, well, clearly I'm doing something wrong. Let me stop. Which is more effective? Public shame is super effective. We are social animals and we've evolved to be. So the most threatening thing that we can perceive is a set of eyes on us, right? So our peer group judging us. So the threat of one police officer, like, all right, I'll pay the fine. But that's really about

avoiding this behavior so I don't get caught. Whereas the threat of public shame is just so visceral. You know, as primates, we are wired to really want to avoid this bad thing, this public shame from our peers. Say, for instance, I've been cheating for 10 years and got away with it for 9.99 part of those years. Would it be the best course of action to actually punish me? Because if you do, you tell everybody in the watching world what I've been doing, how successful I've been at it. And you also tell them where I failed, which then allows them the advantage to be a better shooter than you. Yes. Yes. So is that then punishing always the best course of action? So I think the punishment sets a greater

precedent for the future. And that is really the value of the public domain noticing that cheating is not okay and really sanctioning the behavior. So you're setting a precedent for future groups that this is not excusable, that this is not how we get ahead. Except you only know when he's cheating. You only know that he cheated when you find out. So it's a one-tailed statistical distribution.

Here are all these cheaters, you shouldn't do it. How about all the other people who are actively cheating right now, and you have no clue? Right. There's nothing to do with them because you don't even know who they are. You have an idea. So the argument there would be you make even a greater example of the people that you catch as a warning to the people who are already cheating

in hopes that they may say, look, I got to stop this. Like, what was the woman, the track star? She was beloved. Oh, you don't mean Flojo? Flojo, yes. With the nails.

With the nails. Just hearing you say her name, my heart sunk just a little bit because that's how beloved she was. And she had to disappear. She had to go away because people loved her so much. And when they found out that she cheated and she was like, yes, I'm sorry, I cheated.

What hormone? I mean, testosterone? Yeah, she was taking something. I don't know what it was. It was some kind of substance that she was taking. Now, you're in a business school. So do you also consider, for example, how and why Volkswagen cheated on their emissions standards. Right.

So sometimes companies and individuals within companies tell them that their cheating is tied to a greater good. And corporates, they manage to do this. Oftentimes they say, we're creating value for shareholders. We have a fiduciary duty to take care of- That's the narrative you're talking about. It's rationalizing the end. Exactly. That's the narrative. The mental acrobatics are amazing. It provides this watertight excuse for the individual to justify themselves that

actually my actions are serving a greater good and it would be wrong not to misreport. This is how the psychology of a cheater works. It becomes very cyclical and it really feeds upon itself. I will emphasize that cheaters are made. They are not born. It takes a couple of these iteration loops for cheaters to continue along their downward spiral.

We've got to make sure that our shareholders are able to redecorate their vacation homes. These people need boats. They need boats. Large boats. Large boats. And many. We're doing a public service. That's right. That's right. Are we ever going to cure sport of cheating or do we just say, give up, let them all have a go? Oh, gosh, that's a big one. So let's think about the system that sports sit in. So all the managers, all the partners, all the owners of these sports teams,

will anyone ever just say, we'll just give up on this because it's too messy. Let's just start anew. How are we going to convince all these actors that it's better to walk away, make a fresh start than, you know, all these people who are invested really in doing whatever it takes to get ahead. So

you're talking about reforming an entire system, like overthrowing. So your answer is, it's never going to happen. Thank you. As long as there. So your answer is, it's never going to happen. Thank you. As long as there's this much money involved, it's never going to happen. So I would, I would, I'm going to, I think there's a middle ground, not exactly in the middle, but, but, you know, more in your direction of honesty, but still, I like, I want to leave

open ingenuity. I just want to leave that open. So here are the rules of the sport. And I do, I figure something out really clever. And it gives me an advantage. Don't punish me. Say, hey, that was really cool. That was brilliant.

Maybe it can be shared with others. I don't have a problem with that. The whole sport benefits, right? And then the paying public sees a better performance. Or they shut your loophole down and then go forward without it. That's a tact that I don't know is in the best interest of the sport. If I figure out, think about this. People talk about steroids and everything.

Let's go back in time. If I'm the first to figure out that if I lift weights, I get stronger, thereby making me better at my sport, did I just cheat? No, your lazy ass didn't figure out that that would be something that could work. I figured it out. So I will have a temporary advantage

over a certain amount of time until everybody does. That's kind of how that's been, right? I mean, so, and no one said, weightlifting weights is illegal because you, by the way, you change your body chemistry, which you did. You change your molecular constitution, which you did. Right.

You change your diet because you needed higher protein, which you did, right? This is stuff you did to yourself. No, it's not called steroids. It's called pumping iron. You did it. I don't want somebody to say that I cheated because I figured out that that was something to do. How do you feel about that? So I think what's key to your

argument is that it's a temporary advantage, right? So the idea there is that the tide can rise together and everyone can surf these big waves, these bigger waves than they could surf before. And I think that scenario sounds like innovation more than cheating. Okay. That's good. Whereas the steroids, the problem with the steroids is that, one, they're a health

threat. So you are putting your health at risk, which we can never condone as a sanctioning body for anything. And two, giving you that advantage inspires others to put their health at risk, which we can never condone as a sanctioning body for anything. Yeah. And two, giving you that advantage inspires others to put their health at risk because they now

have to compete with you. Mm-hmm. We got to like wrap up this segment. But do you have any like final thoughts for us? Because you totally bummed us out

this whole segment. Yeah. Give us something hopeful that we can close out this segment with. And take as much time as you want because we're out of time. So that'll be cheating. Well, there's much reason to be hopeful. I think so many organizations, you know, schools, businesses, government are designing their organizations from first principles in mind, right?

So from the very top, they care about the values that they want to see in the behavior of people who work in the organization, I think that's so important that we're making, you know, movement in that direction. The other thing is that I think we're more aware that we all have blind spots, right? Whether that's like biases or just a proneness. You know, I'm a professor. I know that I have a blind spot to one side of the class and I always call on the left side of the classroom. Something as innocuous as that to much greater blind spots, like in our moral decision-making.

I think as a society, we're becoming more and more educated in all the things that we don't see. And that's one of the first steps to noticing these moral trespasses. The first step is just noticing that the organization or the company that you just joined might have morally questionable standards, right? Because without noticing, you would just get pulled into it. So just the fact that we have more education around this, I think is a very hopeful, promising direction for the future.

Everybody be a whistleblower. Eyes wide open. Something for you to think about in the future, the day we then have designer babies, you can design a baby to be exceptional at soccer or basketball. Is that cheating? Wow. Their genetic profile is still human, but we…

But I'll leave that for you. That's our next phone call. Yeah, exactly. Gene editing cheating. Gene cheating. If you're born that way, is it cheating? Yeah, if you're born this way, you're not cheating anybody. You're just you.

It's your parents that did it. My parents cheated. I was just born like this. So, okay, we got to break it there. So, Lisa, thank you for joining us

and we'd love to tap back into your expertise at another time because we think about sports a lot in these editions. Yeah. And we'll definitely to tap back into your expertise at another time because we think about sports a lot in these editions. Yeah. And we'll definitely find you again. Thank you so much for having me.

This has been so much fun. Excellent. Thank you, Professor. Okay. When we come back, on StarTalk. The final segment of cheating in sports. Gary, Chuck. Yes.

That's some serious content that we just went through. We have. I mean, Dr. Lisa Hsu and Lee Eagle were discussing cheating and the forms in which it comes forward. If you cheat, if you don't cheat. I can't believe you took notes. Good for him. Look, it's got cosmic pictures on it.

I know. Very proud of you. Very proud of you. Yeah, you're going to criticize my handwriting. If you don't cheat, you don't win. No, we'll let the world criticize your handwriting. I won't have to. What are you, in third grade?

Just. Go. So, okay. Cheaters are made, they third grade? Just. Go. So, okay. Cheaters are made, they're not born. Right. And they're mostly made by Bill Belichick. Oh, says the Eagles fan. Yes.

Oh, oh. Yes. No, so I think that for me, the big lesson there was honest people can cheat by talking themselves into thinking they're not cheating right and what we in mathematics we call that renormalization renormalization yeah not when reference to cheating but reference to mathematical functions if the function is like in another place right and it has to be sort of scaled properly

you sort of renormalize it to that new place and then all the things reference that all the new parameters. Gotcha. Leaving the old ones behind. So if you renormalize your moral code, you have a new baseline. Right. And now you'll be cheating at that baseline and you won't even call it cheating. That was fascinating to me to learn this.

Yeah. I mean… And the mental gymnastics that people go through. But then again, you lose sight of what was originally considered zero. That's the drift. Yeah. Yeah, that's the slippery slope. The drift away from your moral code, from your compass.

So if everybody around you is cheating, you readapt to become part of that environment because you can't be competitive? That's one motivation, but another one is you just want to win. Right. It's not just because, it's not only if everyone else is doing it, it's because you want to come out ahead of everybody.

If everyone else is doing it, you're doing it just so you don't lose. By as much, yeah. By as much. Right. Yeah, it's any means necessary. Yeah, yeah. And with the ends justified.

Justifies the means. Justified the means. I don't think they had a good answer for me when I noted, suppose you cheat without breaking the rules. Right. So the NASCAR example with the… With the long fuel line.

The long fuel line. I call that… And the first guy who pushed iron. The first guy who lifted weights. That's another one. Right. The person that figures out, if I go to the gym…

Right. And lift weights, I can's another one. Right. The person that figures out, if I go to the gym and lift weights, I can get bigger muscles. Right. And I can kick your ass. It would be faster than you. Right. Or stronger than you. And that gives me an advantage.

And by the way, I am changing the chemistry of my body when I build my muscles. Right. When I lift weights, my body's, oh, shit, I need,

we need, we got to build these muscles. The chemistry changes. It uses the proteins in different ways to build higher crust, more, a bigger muscle tissue. And there you go. Is that cheating? No. I'd say no.

Okay, well, so. I'd say no, because quite frankly, what you're doing is, I call that ingenuity. I don't call that cheating. That's what I call that. Okay, so here we. That's good. I like that ingenuity. I don't call that cheating. That's what I call that. That's good. I like that. Here's the issue. Here's the two sides of the coin.

One is the letter of the law. The other is the spirit. Yes. And this is where you get arguments on both sides, which are valid. Let me play devil's advocate here. I think there's a, I don't really believe this, but let me just put it on the table.

Okay. Okay. Is lifting weights and drinking a cup of coffee in the morning really any different from taking steroids when you're both chemically changing your body to give you an advantage over whatever you would have performed without it? They're both chemical changes in your body, except there happens to be a law against steroids, and there's no law against caffeine or lifting weights. So how arbitrary is this rule? In the big picture. I think the law against steroids has more to do,

because I used to be a person who said, and I think we did a show where I said, I don't care if my athletes are on steroids, because quite frankly, what I want to see is optimum performance on the field. Did you see from the 80s, Saturday Night Live skit with Hans and Franz, the bodybuilders? Yeah.

And so the two of them, in one of the skits, it's an Olympic or some competitive event where all chemical enhancements are allowed. In fact, are encouraged. Okay. So they come out extra big and they go to do a deadlift and he goes and pulls the announcer says oh he pulled his arms off his body and the two arms are stuck on the weight

and blood is spurting out of his shoulders oh too bad see to me that's the way weightlifting should be that's well that's what i'm saying now i'm interested in weightlifting that's all like you know but i i i changed my mind because i forget who we were talking to from nyu university what I'm saying. Now I'm interested in weightlifting. That's all. But I changed my mind because I forget who we were talking to from NYU University who said the real problem is... Arthur Kaplan. Arthur Kaplan. He said the real problem

is not the performance but the fact that it is harmful and you're sanctioning harmful behavior by athletes. Who's Kaplan? I think he was, he probably still is, director of medical ethics at NYU. At NYU. Oh, okay. Director of medical ethics.

All right. So, you know, we had a conversation with him and basically he was like, look, it's about the fact that these are dangerous drugs that you're saying it would be okay for them to use, which means that young people who now get into the sport are also going to use those Suppose the drugs weren't dangerous. Suppose I get to program your DNA in utero. I have no problem with that. Well, then, okay.

See, I think that's perfectly fine. Like, if, you know, I mean, clearly you look at me and you can see that I was designed to be a superior athlete while I was in the room. Then he woke up. That's another show. So then we get to that point where we pull the rug from underneath. Cheaters aren't born.

Oh, right. That changes that phrase. Cheaters aren't born. No. Well, no, no. Well, you're not cheating. You're not cheating. It's your fault that somebody else jeans you up.

Right. Oh, no, but if you do that intentionally. Or if you do it later, even. Yeah, you can retrofit this, apparently, or they're looking towards doing that. Why not? But if you were to be able to construct with this in mind...

But we do that now. We do it with diet and sleep and certain... This is my point. We're doing it. We're already doing it. What do marathon runners do when they carbo-load the night before? Completely changing their chemistry.

Right. Loading basic sugars into their bloodstream, ready and accessible for their muscles. But is that harmful to their body? No. That's the problem. Actually, I can't claim to have ever seen a marathon runner when I say, that's a healthy person. So I'm intrigued at what the future of that will be.

Yeah. That's what intrigues me. Now, here's the thing. Okay, I'm going to set up a new rule. It's the StarTalk rule of competition. Oh, sweet. And let's take our cue from NASCAR. In NASCAR, the car is an exact

prescribed weight. Right. Okay? And I even think if you're a light driver, you've got to carry extra lead in the car so that every car weighs the same, even with driver. Oh, really? If my memory serves, that's true. It's certainly true in horse racing.

Yes. Okay? Handicapped. It's a handicap. Okay, you put the pouches, have carry weights. All right. So, maybe anything is allowed, provided it doesn't harm you in any real way.

Anything is allowed, provided everyone knows what you did. Got you. Then everybody's on the same playing field. So full disclosure. Full disclosure. How about that? Then the spirit of cheating evaporates completely

because cheaters are doing something that you don't know they're doing. Right. They're reading the answers off the palm of their hand they're doing. Right. They're reading the answers off the palm of their hand during the test. Right. They got some earpiece.

Scratching the ball before they pitch it. Scratching it, licking it, whatever. Exactly. Right. Maybe that is why you have to do it. That's one spitball

I want to see thrown. It's where they lick the baseball first. Wait, wait. It's kind of what they do when they lick their finger. That's true. Okay.

You know how they rule where he's from Britain, you know the rule? No. Okay, you can touch your finger. The last I knew the rule. You can touch your finger to your mouth. The pitcher can do that as long as you're not on the mound. Oh, right. So that puts a slight time delay between the spit that's on your fingers.

You got to be able to let that spit dry. You got to really hawk a serious loogie. Oh, thank you. To work your way back to the mound and still have it there when you touch the ball. Ew. I know, I'm just saying. Baseball is nasty.

That's nasty. Nasty. No, no, nasty. So the thing is, if you want to create a change within an environment that you know is rife with cheating, is the change going to come from inside? Or does it have to be an external presence

that changes what is going on in an environment? How about this? Did Fosbury... Dick Fosbury. Dick Fosbury, excuse me. Oh, the Fosbury flop. Did he cheat when he introduced the Fosbury flop to the world? See?

Yeah. Once again, I call that ingenuity. Let me tell you. Somebody who looked at it out of the box and said, why do we have to do it that way? Okay, for those who are not old enough, the high jump was previous to him, always done with your belly curling over the bar.

Yes. Face down. Face down. And then he decided to go backwards over the bar. Now, do you know why that works? I'll tell you why. Please do. All right.

What matters is how much energy does it take to elevate your center of mass, the center of mass of your body. If you're just standing there, the center of mass is like in your navel somewhere, in the center of your body on the other side of your navel. If you curl your body, making sort of a hemicircle, the center of mass leaves your body and is in the air in between the curved of your body. Okay? Uh-huh.

Okay. The center of mass is the center point of where all your mass would, if I rotated you, you'd rotate around that point. Got you. Okay? Since you're curled. So watch. So forward, you can only bend at your waist and a little bit forward on your torso, but

your knees are not bending the other way. They can't bend that way. You can't bend that way. Right. So your knees have to go over straight. Whereas in the Fosbury flop, any flexible athlete can bend backwards from their spine. And they kick. And bend at the base of their spine and bend at the knees.

So they can create a tighter curl over the bar, sending their center of mass below the bar while jumping to a higher bar than ever before. So he figured out the physics. And I have said continuously that the pole vault needs to do that to add another foot to the world record. They're already backwards to the ground. Right. Going up. But what do they do? They twist and turn, do the hokey pokey. Right.

And they go over the— What's up with that? Right. And I have always said that the pole vault should just stop. I think we should stop. Our man, our favorite. How is that a sport? Excuse me.

How is that a sport? Buzz Aldrin pole vaulted when he was in school. Okay? Our man on the moon. Give it to him. Just because he's one of your boys doesn't mean that it's still a good sport. Okay, excuse me. He's everybody's boy.

He's Buzz Aldrin. Okay, that's true. I'm just thinking we get Chuck to do a bubble. What did Buzz Lightyear play in high school? That's what I want to know. So here's what I'm saying. So did he cheat? What should have happened was he should have said to everybody,

I'm going over the bar this way for this Olympics. You can choose to do it or not. Right. As long as it's in the rules, it's doable. No, no, no, no, no, no. The rules aren't smart enough to figure out all the ways you can break the rules. So physics are ahead of the rules is basically what you were saying. Physics are ahead of the rules.

So if he said that, that'd be interesting. Early rowers, all right, they would have a, they would grease a smooth surface and their leather pants would slide back and forth on that grease surface. Until somebody invented a rolling chair.

That's right. All right. Not nearly as sexy as greased up leather pants. But hey, what are you going to do? It's a greased tight end. So all I'm saying is... How did I know you were going to go back to that? Why?

I need more grease. Slap on the grease. Somebody get some more Crisco under my ass. And why did I know you weren't going to leave it alone? So what they'll do is they'll say, we invented this new thing, and here it is. And you can follow us or not, but this is what we're using in this next Olympics,

and it's okay with these rules. And so later on, they want to change the rules. They did another one. Harvard, their track, they got engineers that said, we want the fastest track in the world. How are we going to create that? So they took stroboscopic photos of runners running on pillows

and running on hard concrete. Nice. And they looked at the musculoskeletal response function to that. And they said, we need the best combination of rigidity and softness. And softness. Okay? And they invented a new kind of track

that returns more of your energy to you in the recoil. So the track is like a spring. They're basically tracking like a spring. But it's still your energy. It's still your energy

that you're using. So there's no advantage to any one runner. That's the key. Oh, good one. So now watch what happens. People start breaking records and they say, and the NCAA says,

we're not going to honor records on this track. Right. So when was this track introduced? This was when I was in college, the 70s. Yeah, so they had a thing called a limperine, and then it was, in Britain it was a limperine and then tartan. I remember the tartan track. Yes, yes.

And so, yeah. My father ran track on wooden track surfaces. Indoors, yeah. Indoor. And if you fell, you got splinters all up your leg. So when he discovered it. Should have greased up. When he found a tartan track, he thought he died and went to heaven.

Right. Because it was bouncy, it was springy. You can roll on it. You can fall on it. Because it was just gravel. It's compacted gravel before then. Also, you wouldn't need spikes. You can still use cleats, but not sharp spikes.

No, you just needed the smaller spikes. The smaller ones, exactly. That was it, yeah. Right. Yeah, but… Anyhow, so if you invent a new way to do it, I think disclosure is what it's about. And in that way, everybody has the same rules, and it's up to you whether you want to follow it. That's the new StarTalk cheater rule.

Right. I mean, listen StarTalk cheater rule. Right. I mean, listen, you see that happening. I'll just, I know we got to wrap it up, but you look at football and the amazing catches that these wide receivers makes now, all of them wear these sticky gloves. I've seen those gloves with the red surface. Have you ever touched a football wearing one of those gloves?

What, you can't shake it off? It's like magic. Can't shake it off. No, I think they used to put glue on the hands. Well, they used to stick them. Right, right. But these gloves, it's a very tactile surface. But my point is, everybody has the opportunity to wear the gloves.

There you go. So it's no longer cheating. There you go. Level playing field. That's it! Oh! Thank you. All right.

Can't believe we just spent all this time. To get there. To get right where, and that's really what it's about. The level playing field episode of StarTalk. Gary and Chuck, thanks for doing this. A pleasure.

As always. This has been StarTalk, the Athlete's Cheaters edition. And I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. As always saying, keep looking up.