Until I get the Roberts’ book, I’m not going to spend a lot of time deconstructing the Rodriguez debacle. But since I enjoy finding baseball-related items from non-baseball sources, here are two pieces from The New York Times:
- “As Data Collecting Grows, Privacy Erodes,” Noam Cohen’s “Link-by-Link” column in Monday’s Business section. “The way Mr. Rodriguez’s positive steroid test result became public followed a path increasingly common in the computer age: third-party data collection. We are typically told that personal information is anonymously tracked for one reason — usually something abstract like making search results more accurate, recommending book titles or speeding traffic through the toll booths on the thruways. But it is then quickly converted into something traceable to an individual, and potentially life-changing.”
- “The Voice Was Lying. The Face May have Told the Truth,” by Bill Marsh in the Week in Review section. A fascinating look into truth/falsehood detection (think Lie to Me, the new FOX series). I think this is a fascinating science, but looking for every tic and shiver can take things too far.
“Mr. Rodriguez’s lips stretch in a similar way when he talks of his disappointment with the report.
“On its own, the expression doesn’t carry as much weight to Dr. Ekman as an indicator of submerged feelings. But in combination with repeated half-shrugs and numerous movements at the corner of the lip – sometimes within seconds of one another – his suspicions are stronger. He also noticed that when Mr. Rodriguez denied taking drugs, he was seemingly contradicted by his head, which nodded slightly in the affirmative.
“‘It suggests a higher probability of lying,’ he said.”
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