{"id":5028,"date":"2025-03-11T11:32:40","date_gmt":"2025-03-11T10:32:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/?p=5028"},"modified":"2025-03-17T10:13:15","modified_gmt":"2025-03-17T09:13:15","slug":"cheating-in-norway-no-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/cheating-in-norway-no-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Cheating in Norway? No way!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

What\u2019s the ultimate use of scientific endeavor? I mean, can serious, hard-working and, above all, truth-loving scientists still expect their findings to be accepted outside the scholarly bubble?<\/p>\n

My faith in the purpose of (sports) science took a fatal blow the other day. As you may or may not have noted, a \u201ccheating scandal<\/a>\u201d erupted in the wake of the Nordic World Ski Championships held in \u2026 well, never mind the location. What matters (strictly speaking, what shouldn\u2019t matter) is that two athletes were disqualified when it emerged that their jump suits had been modified with somewhat excessive zeal.<\/p>\n

Whether the athletes knew about the extra sewing doesn\u2019t concern me. (By their own admission, other team members held the needle and thread.) What should bother every scholar of sport worthy of his\/her doctorate is the media frenzy surrounding the so-called sewing scandal. We are cynically led to believe that not only the diligent sewers ought to be punished, but that they have assisted numerous Norwegian jumpers for a long while, that the Norwegian ski federation is somehow involved and tainted, and that Norway itself is a land of cheaters.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Let me therefore remind the supposedly serious forumbloggen public of academic discoveries centered on the key words \u201ccheating and \u201cNorwegian sport.\u201d In the next paragraph I take the liberty of paraphrasing a 2014 blog post<\/a> of mine; the original offence (forbidden performance-enhancing methods and substances) has merely been replaced with cheating in general.<\/p>\n

As established by more than a handful of Norwegian scholars of sport, \u201ccultural differences\u201d account for systematic cheating in countries such as Russia and, perhaps, Finland. In Norway, by contrast, cheating is perceived as \u201chigh treason against the nation,\u201d and Norway\u2019s role as a \u201cmoral leader with regard to sports ethics\u201d is widely acknowledged. That Norwegian elite athletes are \u201cmost clearly opposed to [cheating]\u201d is also a fact, and it can best be explained by the \u201cclearly articulated public Norwegian anti-[cheating] attitude.\u201d Indeed, Norway\u2019s exemplary anti-cheating mentality ought to be finally adopted by less upright ski nations such as Russia and Finland.<\/p>\n

The science-based findings summarized above were published in respectable academic journals over the past twenty years. None of them has been contested by a double-blind peer-reviewed study. All of them represent the last word of science on the topic at hand.<\/p>\n

I feel immensely sorry for the Norwegian academics whose labor of love is so unceremoniously ignored by the sensation-loving media.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What\u2019s the ultimate use of scientific endeavor? I mean, can serious, hard-working and, above all, truth-loving scientists still expect their findings to be accepted outside the scholarly bubble? My faith in the purpose of (sports) science took a fatal blow the other day. As you may or may not have noted, a \u201ccheating scandal\u201d erupted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5029,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Cheating in Norway? No way!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5028","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-okategoriserade"},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/History-of-sewing-header.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2JbBl-1j6","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5028"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5041,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5028\/revisions\/5041"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}