The Martlet

Sports fans aren’t the only ones who get excited about the Olympics and the NHL playoffs — researchers love sports too; they’re a great source of data and information. The Martlet has sifted through piles of sports research to bring you a snapshot of some the most interesting studies to date.

Arbitrary arbitration

Figure skating judges alter their scores to conform to other judges’ scores, a study in the Journal of Sport Economics claims.

Author Jungmin Lee, a labour economics professor at Florida International University, found that judges try to choose scores close to their counterparts, especially when their scores for the previous skater were very different from their colleagues’. Judges try to pick similar scores because they are responding to criteria used to evaluate their own performance, Lee suggested, adding that this trend hurts the skaters who performed the best.

“The case of figure skating judging clearly shows that there is a bias toward agreement, because the degree of agreement among judges is used as a measure of reliability of the evaluations and to assess individual judges themselves,” the study said. “Judges tend to rank skaters in accordance with preperformance information, putting less weight on the actual competition.”

Lee also found that female judges are more generous on average than male judges, but that male figure skaters tend to receive higher scores than female and pairs skaters. Judges also tend to favour skaters from their own country.

The article, published in April, examined 9,573 scores from the 2001, 2002 and 2003 World Figure Skating Championships.

Move over, steroids

An editorial in April’s Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports cautions against the possibility of “gene doping” — the misuse of gene therapy to enhance athletic performance.

“Since 1998, when the concept of using gene manipulation for doping was first introduced, it has been anticipated that one day we will see athletes exploiting gene modifications to enhance performance,” the article said. “At present, we are still waiting for the first case, but few people doubt that the day will arise.”

Gene doping can be achieved through an injection into muscles, potentially altering genes that regulate hormones, growth, or other attributes that affect performance.

However, while the process is “surprisingly simple,” gene doping would be costly and potentially dangerous since it would be done under the table, the editorial suggests. Author Peter Schjerling, a biomedical professor at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, warns that, since no test exists, “we cannot know if gene doping is already in use,” though he adds that no evidence indicates any athletes are gene doping.

Head trip

A study published in Research in Sports Medicine earlier this year may shed light on the rising rate of head injuries in the NHL. The concussion rate from the 1997-98 to the 2001-02 seasons was triple that of the decade before.

The study found that a player’s time on the ice was a significant predictor of concussions. Those who played more than 15 minutes and 13 seconds per game were almost seven times more likely to get a concussion than those who played less. However, while time on the ice per game was important, playing more minutes over the course of a season was not.

“These findings suggest that there is an in-game fatigue factor that may contribute to concussions, rather than a seasonal fatigue,” the study claimed, adding that the average number of shifts per game and shorthanded or power play time were statistically insignificant in predicting concussions.

The authors suggest that steps such as making helmets mandatory have been ineffective, and factors such as bigger players, harder boards and improved diagnosis may explain the increased rate of concussions.

The article was authored by researchers at Montclair State University, New York University and the University of Montreal, using data from the 2001-02 season.