>Why was he so much better than the rest? There are two possible
>explanations:
>
>1. He was on drugs and no-one else was
>
>2. Others were on drugs too but Johnson was better anyway
>
>So you have to argue EITHER that Johnson was truly a great sprinter OR that
>he was the only one who took drugs.
No, there is a third possible explanation: Ben was a better responder to
the drugs. For EVERY drug some people respond well, some poorly, and some
not all. This is true for therapeutic drugs, and it's true for
performance-enhancing drugs. So Ben could have simply been a so-so sprinter
who gained a greater benefit from the drugs than his dirty competitors did.
And of course it was a FAR greater advantage to him than was available to
his competitors who were clean. (And Ben's times when he tried a clean
comeback for a while indicate that he was indeed a so-so sprinter when
clean.)
A fourth possible explanation is that Ben was dirty and so were some of his
competitors, but Ben was better at the cheating: better drugs and/or better
drug protocols. So in this scenario Ben was indeed way beyond everyone
else, but not because he was a truly great sprinter, but rather because he
was a truly great cheater.
Kurt Bray
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