Ethics in Sports Research Papers (original) (raw)

In a year in which Chris Hoy cemented his place as an Olympic icon, Bradley Wiggins made history on the roads of France and Andy Murray became a Grand Slam champion, the sports story which perhaps had greatest impact beyond the back pages... more

In a year in which Chris Hoy cemented his place as an Olympic icon, Bradley Wiggins made history on the roads of France and Andy Murray became a Grand Slam champion, the sports story which perhaps had greatest impact beyond the back pages was Lance Armstrong’s unseemly fall from seven-time Tour de France champion to serial drugs cheat....

The persistence of doping in professional sports—either by individuals on an isolated basis and by whole teams as part of a systematic doping programme—means that professional sport today is rarely if ever untainted. There are financial... more

The persistence of doping in professional sports—either by individuals on an isolated basis and by whole teams as part of a systematic doping programme—means that professional sport today is rarely if ever untainted. There are financial incentives in place that incentivise doping and there are data that show that doping is often a systematic, organised enterprise (either at team-level, or at state-level). The main question to be answered today in professional sports is whether doping’s repressive anti-doping policies do not have greater negative consequences for society. Whilst some have suggested legitimising safe doping under medical control, in this paper, I argue that doing so will do little to prevent clandestine use of dangerous performance-enhancing substances, and suggest an alternative solution to lifting the ban on doping, i.e. starting from extending liability for doping in sport beyond athletes to those holding power and authority over athletes, to changing winning incen...

H a k e m l i D e r g i (Refereed Journal) Yıl (Year): 2011/2 Sayı (Number): 27

In this article I propose to rescue the importance of seeing sportsmanship as a moral category from the contribution made by Keating in his 1964 article. Expanding the pioneering proposal of Keating with the realization of Feezell, seeing... more

In this article I propose to rescue the importance of seeing sportsmanship as a moral category from the contribution made by Keating in his 1964 article. Expanding the pioneering proposal of Keating with the realization of Feezell, seeing against the distinction between sport and athletics. Focusing on the importance of seeing sportsmanship as a moral category that applies to sport and athletics in a homogeneous way, seeing that above the emphasis of victory, cooperative work is imposed and in a team without which there could be no ethical behavior in sport.

Very often, the reaction to the many scandals that periodically rock the world of sport is simply to make urgent demands to develop a healthy sports culture. If this is the aim, I shall try to outline what the sphere of ethics and... more

Very often, the reaction to the many scandals that periodically rock the world of sport is simply to make urgent demands to develop a healthy sports culture. If this is the aim, I shall try to outline what the sphere of ethics and philosophy might contribute to the debate.

In this article it will be concluded that if a sporting institution is to thrive it must abandon harmful practices and conventions. This inquiry will focus on the harmful practices that enable and preserve female-targeted sexism, paying... more

In this article it will be concluded that if a sporting institution is to thrive it must abandon harmful practices and conventions. This inquiry will focus on the harmful practices that enable and preserve female-targeted sexism, paying particular attention to the Henley Royal Regatta, a British sporting event, and its female counterpart, Henley Women’s Regatta. It will be argued that, in adhering to “cultural preservationism” some sporting institutions perpetuate morally culpable traditions, preferring to place greater value on their historical significance and associated cultural prestige over an egalitarian agenda. In this cultural examination, it will be demonstrated that women are severely disadvantaged—both socially and in sporting aspects—by the practices that Henley Royal Regatta rigidly enforces, while further illustrating that Henley Women’s Regatta does little to rectify the situation. It will be suggested that holding women-only competitions, at least in the context of rowing, reinforces what is referred to as the Beauvoirian concept of “Otherness.” While acknowledging the overall significance of cultural preservation and tradition in British sport, this article will employ the “preservation of moral sport argument,” which suggests that traditions that are morally culpable should be abolished. The overall conclusion will be that, although traditions can be an important part of sport, the abolition of harmful practices and conventions is essential if sport is to remain relevant and reflective of the moral values of the society it represents.

In this article it will be concluded that if a sporting institution is to thrive it must abandon harmful practices and conventions. This inquiry will focus on the harmful practices that enable and preserve female-targeted sexism, paying... more

In this article it will be concluded that if a sporting institution is to thrive it must abandon harmful practices and conventions. This inquiry will focus on the harmful practices that enable and preserve female-targeted sexism, paying particular attention to the Henley Royal Regatta, a British sporting event, and its female counterpart, Henley Women’s Regatta. It will be argued that, in adhering to “cultural preservationism” some sporting institutions perpetuate morally culpable traditions, preferring to place greater value on their historical significance and associated cultural prestige over an egalitarian agenda. In this cultural examination, it will be demonstrated that women are severely disadvantaged—both socially and in sporting aspects—by the practices that Henley Royal Regatta rigidly enforces, while further illustrating that Henley Women’s Regatta does little to rectify the situation. It will be suggested that holding women-only competitions, at least in the context of rowing, reinforces what is referred to as the Beauvoirian concept of “Otherness.” While acknowledging the overall significance of cultural preservation and tradition in British sport, this article will employ the “preservation of moral sport argument,” which suggests that traditions that are morally culpable should be abolished. The overall conclusion will be that, although traditions can be an important part of sport, the abolition of harmful practices and conventions is essential if sport is to remain relevant and reflective of the moral values of the society it represents.

Dear Editor, It is with much interest that I set out to read the article entitled "Personal and psychosocial predictors of doping use in physical activity settings: a meta-analysis" authored by Ntoumanis et al. and published in the... more

Dear Editor, It is with much interest that I set out to read the article entitled "Personal and psychosocial predictors of doping use in physical activity settings: a meta-analysis" authored by Ntoumanis et al. and published in the November issue of Sports Medicine. Furthering the understanding of the factors that feature in a person's decision to engage in potentially dangerous behaviour, which certainly includes self-administered polypharmacy, is undeniably a worthwhile pursuit. It is of direct interest to a range of medical professionals whose practice should be based on evidence, and be driven by patient-specific (and hence subjective) values. Therefore I was pleased to read the aforementioned meta-analysis and found the authors' key contribution interesting and useful. That being said, I felt disappointed to observe that in this article, interlaced with the authors' scientific contribution I found a concerning number of extrascientific statements fraught with a moralistic bias.

Eligibility to compete in sport is organised principally around two binary distinctions: ‘clean/doped’ and ‘male/female’. These distinctions are challenged both by steroid users who wish to return to competition following a period of... more

Eligibility to compete in sport is organised principally around two binary distinctions: ‘clean/doped’ and ‘male/female’. These distinctions are challenged both by steroid users who wish to return to competition following a period of suspension, and trans women athletes who wish to compete in women’s events. Recent empirical work has suggested that steroid users retain an elevated capacity for muscle reacquisition years after they cease to use steroids. I suggest that an analogous worry may arise with respect to certain trans women athletes who wish to compete in women’s events. If sound, this argument would establish an unexpected parallel between eligibility debates surrounding returning dopers and trans women athletes.

Aiming to unearth the Turkish Sports Media’s understanding of morals and ethics, this study was developed by way of compilation. It aims to explain such relevant topics as morals, ethics, relation between morals and ethics, relation... more

Aiming to unearth the Turkish Sports Media’s understanding of morals and ethics, this study was developed by way of compilation. It aims to explain such relevant topics as morals, ethics, relation between morals and ethics, relation between ethics and philosophy, sports ethics, ethics of the sports media, and to infer a conclusion from those explanations. Sports ethics refer to manners, actions and behaviors performed by sportspeople or people involved in sports and accepted in general by the stakeholders. Sports media provides the public with news about sports through the Press and other communication means, and should aim to popularize the sports, ensure more people to be interested in sports, and promote the sports to the masses. In doing this, it is expected to respect both the sports ethics and Media ethics. However, it is observed that the facts that communication technologies spread fast, access to news and information get easier, the Media grows and expands, and new Media means are introduced cause the sports media to develop a number of unethical notions. It was concluded that the root reason of this tendency is the Media’s aim to be more influential for the public and to access more people by means of various communication means in order to increase its income. In the light of these findings, this study emphasizes that it is important for the sports media to adopt and respect the applicable ethical principles and to act in accordance with them.

Comparative judgments abound in sports. Fans and pundits bandy about which of two players or teams is bigger, faster, stronger, more talented, less injury prone, more reliable, safer to bet on, riskier to trade for, and so on. Arguably,... more

Comparative judgments abound in sports. Fans and pundits bandy about which of two players or teams is bigger, faster, stronger, more talented, less injury prone, more reliable, safer to bet on, riskier to trade for, and so on. Arguably, of most interest are judgments of a coarser type: which of two players or teams is, all-things-considered, just plain better? Conventionally, it is accepted that such comparisons can be appropriately captured and expressed by sports rankings. Rankings play an important role in sports arguably because of the conventional acceptance that rankings capture and express all-things-considered relations between the ranked teams or players. Standard ranking practices rely on a number of widely held assumptions. I discuss three of the most important and argue that at least one of them must be false. If this is right, the strong and growing commitment to using rankings to determine participation in tournaments and the awarding of championships is mistaken. At the least, given the conventional wisdom about rankings, my argument provides good reasons to be skeptical that any particular ranking “gets it right.” At the limit, it suggests that our most basic assumptions about all-things-considered athletic quality are wrong.

Comparative judgments abound in sports. Fans and pundits bandy about which of two players or teams is bigger, faster, stronger, more talented, less injury prone, more reliable, safer to bet on, riskier to trade for, and so on. Arguably,... more

Comparative judgments abound in sports. Fans and pundits bandy about which of two players or teams is bigger, faster, stronger, more talented, less injury prone, more reliable, safer to bet on, riskier to trade for, and so on. Arguably, of most interest are judgments of a coarser type: which of two players or teams is, all-things-considered, just plain better? Conventionally, it is accepted that such comparisons can be appropriately captured and expressed by sports rankings. Rankings play an important role in sports arguably because of the conventional acceptance that rankings capture and express all-things-considered relations between the ranked teams or players. Standard ranking practices rely on a number of widely held assumptions. I discuss three of the most important and argue that at least one of them must be false. If this is right, the strong and growing commitment to using rankings to determine participation in tournaments and the awarding of championships is mistaken. At the least, given the conventional wisdom about rankings, my argument provides good reasons to be skeptical that any particular ranking ‘gets it right’. At the limit, it suggests that our most basic assumptions about all-things-considered athletic quality are wrong.

This article is a case study of a question of possible doping and how our insights into our moral judgements about doping are subject to considerations of both moral, but more presciently, epistemic luck. The eternal ambiguity surrounding... more

This article is a case study of a question of possible doping and how our insights into our moral judgements about doping are subject to considerations of both moral, but more presciently, epistemic luck. The eternal ambiguity surrounding the prevalence of doping, and its impact on high-level sport make this question entirely relevant for our discussions about the ethics of performanceenhancement in sport.

The persistence of doping in professional sports—either by individuals on an isolated basis and by whole teams as part of a systematic doping programme—means that professional sport today is rarely if ever untainted. There are financial... more

The persistence of doping in professional sports—either by individuals on an isolated basis and by whole teams as part of a systematic doping programme—means that professional sport today is rarely if ever untainted. There are financial incentives in place that incentivise doping and there are data that show that doping is often a systematic, organised enterprise (either at team-level, or at state-level). The main question to be answered today in professional sports is whether doping’s repressive anti-doping policies do not have greater negative consequences for society. Whilst some have suggested legitimising safe doping under medical control, in this paper, I argue that doing so will do little to prevent clandestine use of dangerous performance-enhancing substances, and suggest an alternative solution to lifting the ban on doping, i.e. starting from extending liability for doping in sport beyond athletes to those holding power and authority over athletes, to changing winning incentives for doping, to making sport sustainable in the longer time by devising ways of providing athletes with a steady income which is not linked to record breaking or sponsorships.

Traditionally, acts of sportsmanship have been upheld as worthy of praise. The purpose of this paper is to discern whether Bernard Suits’ Grasshopper -- in "The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia" -- would share this approval. The paper... more

Traditionally, acts of sportsmanship have been upheld as worthy of praise. The purpose of this paper is to discern whether Bernard Suits’ Grasshopper -- in "The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia" -- would share this approval. The paper begins with a conceptual analysis of good sportspersonship. From this, four action categories are identified including good sportspersonship in the forms of game desertion, changing the game, not trying, and lusory self-handicapping. A strategy for evaluation is derived from the Grasshopper’s theory. Game-playing is defined as action reflecting lusory attitude acknowledgement. Game-spoiling is introduced as action demonstrating lusory attitude abandonment. Three of the four actions categories are characterized as game-spoiling including good sportspersonship in the forms of game desertion, changing the game, and not trying. It is concluded that genuine good sportspersonship is characterized solely by altruistic forms of lusory self-handicapping.