Doping,Lying and Ford Motor

"Ruin and recovering are both from within."– Epictetus

"A person who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."– Albert Einstein

Changing the subject for a moment, let’s talk about doping. Levi Leipheimer raced with Lance Armstrong between 2000 and 2011. He finished third in the Tour de France in 2007 and won a bronze medal in 2008 Beijing Olympics. He indicated that when he turned pro “I came to see cycling for what it was: a sport where some team managers and doctors coordinated and facilitated the use of banned substances and methods by their riders. A sport where the athletes at the highest level-perhaps without exception-used banned substances. A sport where doping was so accepted that riders from different teams- who were competitors on the road-coordinated their doping to keep up with other riders doing the same thing.” Source is the Wall Street Journal October 11, 2012

With a glimpse into the cycling culture, one can guess about and understand peer pressure.  If your teammates and competitors are doping, what should you do? When the top cyclists do it, what happens to your expectations about winning and competing? If Lance was doping, then how could you compete with him by not doping?  Would you make the team on ability alone? Could you get a sponsor on ability alone?

Lance, I understand why you did it. I wonder how good you’d be in cycling if everyone was clean. We’ll never know, will we?

The results of this study probably won’t surprise you but confirm what you already believe. A group of Chinese researchers asked young adults to answer questions about themselves and in some cases give false-untruthful answers. The researchers tracked reaction times as a measure of how difficult participants found it to lie. Guess what? Those young adults given practice about lying before a second round of testing were able to get their reaction times for deception down to the shortest or about the same as reaction times when telling the truth. In other words , if you want to become a better liar, practice. You heard the expression practice makes perfect. This apparently correct even when it comes to lying.  At what age do we start practicing lying either to ourselves or others?  Maybe this is where the expression “the truth hurts” comes from.

 Also found in the December 15-16, 2012 Wall Street journal was an article questioning Ford Motor Companies claim that certain hybrids were getting 47 miles per gallon. However, road tests by Consumer Reports magazine found that Ford’s claim was not accurate and in fact differed (less than stated) by 8 to 10 miles per gallon per model. Look for the spin by the Ford   regarding this controversy. Who said it’s not difficult to assess truth –not me?