A NYT Op-Ed attempts to undermine the argument that steroids and HGH lead to higher performance figures.
Barry Ritholtz is unconvinced, while accusing the Op-Ed's authors of being Freakonomics wannabees.
Read both and judge. I still thing the onus is on folks to prove that HGH and steroids are in fact performance enhancing drugs and that the statistics put up by the juicers are necessarily the result of juice.
You know where I stand. If Pokey Reese replaced his blood with pure HGH, he still wouldn't hit 73 home runs. And if Barry Bonds had never taken the cream and the clear, nobody doubts that he'd be one of the greatest hitters of all time -- if not the greatest.
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Here's an old post form Sabernomics dubbed "I Don’t Worry about HGH in Baseball, and Neither Should You". Do read.
Actually, it was the 2 profs made the claim that PEDs do not impact the stats of the players who take them.
That may or may not have been the case -- all I tried to show was that they failed to prove their case statistically, and that their usage of mathematics was rather weak.
Posted by: Barry Ritholtz | December 23, 2007 at 07:50 PM
I agree with you on that. Trying to make a conclusive argument from the handful of players in the report is useless.
Posted by: Joe | December 23, 2007 at 08:11 PM