Conclusive proof that HGH improves baseball performance

by Dex on Mar 20, 2008 6:30 PM PDT in News Comment 3 comments

My alternate title: Studies show that HGH doesn't help. Same studies also show that HGH doesn't NOT help. Wait, what?

Here's what happens. Stanford puts together a study and Mercury News reports it. Right there in the article, the researchers admit that this barely applies to professional athletes:

Further work is needed to measure its impact in athletes, Liu said.

"This study summarizes what we know to date," he said. "If we really want to answer the question, 'How do you hit a baseball further,' we need to understand how athletes take this and other agents."

OK. So the generally accepted theory is that professional athletes will combine the HGH regimen with other performance enhancing drugs, like steroids, and then an extremely intensive workout regimen. This study shows that HGH, when taken at moderate levels, will not improve strength in your average person.

But then what happens?

Somebody gets an agenda and then links to some key quotes within the article and titles their own blog post something like... oh... say... The HGH Myth. And then adds commentary like:

Because they allegedly lied about it, the question of whether Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds took HGH will continue to have legal salience, but it's looking more and more irrelevant as it relates to their baseball legacy

So bits and pieces get pulled out to prove the point that one wants to prove until finally it ends up on a site that people trust, like The Hardball Times and the facts of the original study have now telephone gamed their way into:

The HGH Myth
by Bryan Tsao
March 18, 2008

Craig Calcaterra points us to new Stanford study that finds HGH to not improve muscle performance.

And the gist of it is suddenly that HGH didn't really help anybody play baseball any better. I mean, the original study even speaks to the fact that professional athletes take five times as much HGH as what they observed in their group. Maybe they do that because they know that taking a fifth of what they normally take wouldn't actually do anything effective... As the study demonstrated.

Therefore, I'll conclude from reading the same article that HGH absolutely, and obviously, has been scientifically proven to increase performance in baseball players by as much as 73%. You can use that how you like.

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Exactly!

I mean, what? My cousin wasn't growing and then the doctors gave him HGH and he grew and now he is really tall and coaches football at a High School. Get it?

by Sam (sdsuaztec4) on Mar 20, 2008 6:58 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

Bob Costas, Stephen A. Smith, etc., were right...

Blogs just don't operate under the same standards of accountability and professionalism that more traditional forms of media do. Bloggers also live in their mothers' basements.

mlb gameday found here.

by TheGrandHatching on Mar 21, 2008 7:16 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs