Use and Abuse of Science in the World of Sport: Two Talks- Livestream

Is Sport a Breeding Ground for Pseudoscience?

In high-performance sport, success and failure are separated by increasingly smaller margins. The will to win has made athletes and coaches ever more experimental, vowing to leave no stone unturned. But blunted critical faculties and lax consumer regulations coalesce, allowing pseudoscience to thrive. Thousands of products and services now flood the market, claiming to improve performance or promote recovery. Some are underpinned by rigorous science, most are not. What are the implications of such an unregulated commercialist culture? What are the solutions? In this talk, Dr. Tiller reframes the sporting world through the critical lens of science.

Speaker: Nicholas B. Tiller, UC Los Angeles

Food for Thought: Tackling Nutrition Science for Sport Performance

Optimal performance in sport requires training coupled with proper nutrition. If you have an interest in food, and who doesn't, you are familiar with the struggle to make good nutritional choices when it comes to what we eat. Outlandish claims about food, nutrition and eating patterns abound. Decisions made about personal nutritional health or performance objectives are at risk of being sidetracked by widely accessible mis- and dis-information. Staying on track requires keeping step with the ever-evolving, evidence-based science.

Speaker: Liz Mansfield, Sports Nutrition Expert

Part of the Trottier Public Science Symposium