Thursday, January 13, 2005

Drug Testing

So, Major League Baseball has implemented it's new drug testing policies. Let me here and now say I am skeptical as to these methods. The new policy specifies "that suspensions on the first offense will carry a maximum length of 10 games." - ESPN

What about false positive results? Without getting into the math false positive results are bound to occur, whether through cross reactants or just plain random variables. Which means players could be penalized for not taking drugs. You can fix this problem, usually, by having the athlete take a second test for the same drug that reacts to a different indicator. I haven't seen specifics on how they plan to implement the new policy. Do they account for this and similar errors in testing?

I've looked at a few of the articles about these new policies, and none of them seem to raise this question - they more just say that this should clean up MLBs image.

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