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The NFL: Anti-Gambling or Anti-Competition?
The NFL and other sports leagues claim that they oppose sports gambling to protect "the integrity of
American athletics." Based on their actions, however, it looks more like that the NFL, NBA and other leagues are trying to protect the integrity of their gambling-based revenues gained through so-called "fantasy" sports.
As explained in The Washington Post, the NFL earns "substantial royalty fees" from fantasy leagues. Fantasy sports also helps boost television ratings since fantasy gamblers have a financial interest riding on player performance in virtually all of a league’s games.
How far will the NFL go to protect their gambling-derived revenues from competition? Very far. First they had the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) slipped into a homeland security bill. The UIGEA contains an explicit exemption for fantasy sports.
Now a "former" NFL lobbyist is involved in a White House political scandal receiving Congressional and media attention. The Washington Post reports that William Wichterman, who until recently was an NFL lobbyist, has been "working on the gambling restrictions in the White House Office of Public Liaison." According to Poltico, a member of Congress has written the White House asking for them "to spell out...the Bush administration’s policy on aides working in issue areas they covered as paid lobbyists."
One question for the NFL, MLB and NBA officials who claim to be concerned about the "integrity" of the game. Do your referees participate in fantasy sports?
See Washington Post article
See Politico article
See Winston’s Column, "The Guardians of the Games' Fantasy Gamble"
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Industry-Funded Research: Qualitatively Superior
There is a dodgy reputation attached to medical research studies receiving industry funding. Bias against industry-funded research has become so ingrained that, as the New York Times explains, JAMA has "cited ‘concerns about misleading reporting of industry-sponsored research’ to justify its stricter standards for any such research to be considered for publication. The new policy, requiring researchers with no financial connections to the sponsor to vouch for the data and perform statistical work, was promptly criticized in an editorial in The British Medical Journal as ‘manifestly unfair’ because it created a ‘a hierarchy of purity among authors.’"
While bias against industry-funded research is widespread and, in the case of JAMA, formalized, it is contradicted by a non-industry sponsored study of research quality. The NIH-sponsored analysis published in the International Journal of Obesity found, in the words of the NYT, that "the quality of data reporting in industry-sponsored research does seem to be different from that in other research: It’s better."
The study "suggests that, while continued efforts to improve reporting quality are warranted, such efforts should be directed at nonindustry-funded research at least as much as at industry-funded research."
The NYT science columnist worries "what will happen if the best scientists become afraid to work with the sponsors that can afford to pay for the most thorough studies. What happens to the quality of future research? And should this new study give pause to JAMA’s editors? By stigmatizing industry-sponsored research, is their ‘hierarchy of purity’ doing more harm than good?" Since unwarranted biases harm the quality of scientific research and policies based on that research, the answer is: yes.
See IJO article "Industry funding and the reporting quality of large long-term weight loss trials"
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