Among sports fans there is a lot of controversy about the use of performance enhancing drugs by athletes. Of course what exactly an performance enhancing drug is, is often left pretty vague. But most sports fans argue against the use of such drugs because they are, in some form, cheating.
\nSo what do we do, for example, with Erdos. Paul Erdos was, for those who don’t know, one of the twentieth centuries great mathematicians. He was the author, amazingly, of over 1,500 different papers. It was well known, also, that Erdos used amphetamines. There is a famous story that his friends were so worried about his amphetamine use that they bet him that he couldn’t stay off the drugs for a month. Of course Erdos took the bet and successfully stayed off the drugs for the required amount of time. When he went to collect the bet, he reportedly said “You set Mathematics back one month!” (OK, this story is off the top of my head, the details may or may not be correct!) So, in a real sense, Erdos’ productivity was increased in large part by his use of a performance enhancing drug. So, was Erdos cheating? Should we think of his “records” his “theorems” as somehow being “less proved by Erdos” because of his use of amphetamines? Well I certainly would argue against this.
\nAt FOCS this year I was having this conversation, and it came up that perhaps we shouldn’t penalize the result, because the outcome, i.e. the mathematical proofs isn’t really a competitive sport. But what about those who are competing for tenure? Now of course I’m disregarding the legality of the performance enhancing drugs. But disregarding this issue (which may just invalidate the whole argument, but bear with me) should there be drug testing of tenure track professors to make sure they aren’t using amphetamines to increase their productivity?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Among sports fans there is a lot of controversy about the use of performance enhancing drugs by athletes. Of course what exactly an performance enhancing drug is, is often left pretty vague. But most sports fans argue against the use of such drugs because they are, in some form, cheating. So what do we do, … <\/p>\n