Catherine Rampell of the New York Times' "Economix" blog has a post up attempting to quantify the cost-benefit analysis that goes into a baseball player's choice to use PEDs or not and speculates about how the system can be re-jiggered so as to further disincentivize drug use. Anyone who has thought about this stuff for any length of time is aware of the general arguments even if they haven't done any of the actual math, but it's probably worth a read anyway. The best quote, though, is an aside about the assumptions that go into her equations:
Now these numbers are obviously all made up (and no one gets signed to $10 million deals off the street, I imagine). And players surely care about things other than their paycheck — love of the game, fans, Cooperstown, etc.
That sound you hear is Scott Boras firing off an angry letter to the New York Times' editor telling him just how wrong Ms. Rampell is about all of those things.
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Rampell assumes steroid use = belief of a 95% chance of "getting signed" by someone who would otherwise have only a 5% chance?
That right there illustrates the single hugest fallacy about PEDs: that they always bring on success. Perhaps even players are suckered into that urban myth, I don't know, but it seems that if they are, it would be even more important to spread the truth.
Oh and the article isn't even good fodder for sports-talk radio, because it has math.