2022.02.12如何发现冬季运动裁判中的民族主义

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Olympian judgments
How to detect nationalism in winter-sport judges
Even the ostensibly impartial seem susceptible
FEB 12TH 2022

Imagine hurling yourself down a slope on skis for 100 metres—then running out of ground. You must drop into the frigid air, glide at a speed of 90kmph for five seconds, and somehow land gracefully 100 metres downhill. Winning a gold medal for ski jumping requires fearlessness, a quality very much in keeping with Olympian ideals. But some athletes may be helped by biased judging, which is not.

Ski jumping is scored not just on the distance leapt, but on style, which accounts for around two-fifths of an athlete’s score. That aesthetic judgment is made by a panel of five judges of different nationalities, who assess each jump on a scale of 0 to 20. The best and worst scores are discarded, in an attempt to neutralise individual bias. Yet some still persists. Judges, shockingly, seem to favour athletes from their home countries.


That is the assessment of a recent paper by Alex Krumer of Molde University College in Norway, along with two colleagues, after examining 15,355 ski jumps in men’s competitions held from 2010 to 2017. After controlling for factors such as the leniency of individual judges and the quality of ski-jumpers, they found that nationalist bias was modest but widespread. The average bias was an additional 0.1 points. Nearly half of judges favoured compatriots in a way that was statistically significant.

At the Winter Olympics (which are currently being held in Beijing), patriotism may run especially high, and bias seems to increase. When we augmented the study by adding more Olympic results to the original data, we found that average bias nearly doubled to 0.18 points. The Economist asked the Fédération Internationale de Ski (fis), the sport’s governing body, for comment. fis said it was unaware of the paper and declined further comment.

Bias differs markedly by country. The greatest favouritism, according to the authors of the study, comes from Russian judges, who award an additional 0.2 points on average. Polish and French judges are in the middle of the pack. The typical Norwegian or Finnish judge demonstrates no detectable bias. Interestingly, the bias of a country’s ski-jumping judges is correlated with that country’s overall level of corruption, as measured by Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.


Widespread favouritism rarely affects the results, however. There are two reasons for this. First, the bias is small in comparison with the natural variation in judges’ scores that occurs by chance (roughly 0.3 points). Second, the discarding of the highest and lowest scores means that especially biased scores are often not counted. Our counterfactual analysis of the 203 competitions examined between 2010 and 2017, in which nationalist bias was eliminated, found that only 14 medals (or 2.3%) would have changed hands.

This is hardly the first finding of bias in sport—or even the most egregious. One study on figure skating, another Olympic event, found that nationalist favouritism was roughly 60% larger than it is in ski jumping. Another paper, first published in 2007, found that American referees for the National Basketball Association (nba) called fewer fouls against players of their own race. After widespread media attention, the nba changed its policies for reviewing contested calls. A follow-up paper six years later found that this bias had disappeared entirely. Admission is often the first step to recovery. ■

Sources: “Nationalistic bias amonginternational experts”, by A. Krumer, F. Otto & T. Pawlowski, Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 2021; Getty Images





奥林匹克的判断
如何发现冬季运动裁判中的民族主义
即使是表面上公正无私的人似乎也容易受到影响
2022年2月12日

想象一下，你骑着滑雪板从斜坡上扔下100米，然后跑出地面。你必须落入寒冷的空气中，以每小时90公里的速度滑行5秒钟，然后以某种方式在下坡100米处优雅降落。赢得跳台滑雪的金牌需要无畏的精神，这种品质非常符合奥林匹克的理想。但是一些运动员可能会因为有偏见的评判而得到帮助，这是不可能的。

跳台滑雪的评分标准不仅仅是跳跃的距离，还有风格，这占到了运动员得分的五分之二左右。这种审美判断是由五个不同国籍的评委组成的小组进行的，他们对每一跳进行0到20分的评估。最好的和最差的分数都被舍弃，以试图中和个人偏见。然而，一些偏见仍然存在。令人震惊的是，评委们似乎更倾向于来自本国的运动员。


这是挪威莫尔德大学学院的Alex Krumer和两位同事在研究了2010年至2017年举行的男子比赛中的15355个跳台后得出的评价。在控制了个别裁判的宽松程度和跳台滑雪运动员的质量等因素后，他们发现民族主义偏见不大，但很普遍。平均偏差是额外的0.1分。近一半的裁判偏向于同胞，这在统计学上是显著的。

在冬奥会上（目前正在北京举行），爱国主义情绪可能特别高涨，偏见似乎也会增加。当我们通过在原始数据中加入更多的奥运成绩来增强研究时，我们发现平均偏差几乎翻了一番，达到0.18分。经济学人》要求国际滑雪联合会（fis）（这项运动的管理机构）发表评论。fis说它不知道这篇论文，并拒绝进一步评论。

不同国家的偏见有明显的不同。根据该研究的作者，最大的偏袒来自俄罗斯裁判，他们平均给予额外的0.2分。波兰和法国的法官处于中间位置。典型的挪威或芬兰法官没有表现出可察觉的偏见。有趣的是，一个国家的跳台滑雪裁判的偏见与该国的整体腐败水平相关，这是由透明国际的腐败指数衡量的。


然而，广泛的偏袒很少影响到结果。这有两个原因。首先，与偶然发生的法官分数的自然变化（大约0.3分）相比，偏差很小。第二，放弃最高分和最低分意味着特别有偏见的分数往往不被计算在内。我们对2010年至2017年的203场比赛进行了反事实分析，在消除民族主义偏见的情况下，发现只有14枚奖牌（或2.3%）会易手。

这并不是第一次发现体育界的偏见，甚至是最令人震惊的。一项关于另一个奥运项目花样滑冰的研究发现，民族主义的偏袒比跳台滑雪的偏袒大约大60%。另一篇首次发表于2007年的论文发现，美国国家篮球协会（nba）的裁判员对自己种族的球员犯规较少。在媒体的广泛关注下，NBA改变了审查有争议判罚的政策。六年后的一份后续报告发现，这种偏见已经完全消失了。承认往往是恢复的第一步。■

来源。"Nationalistic bias amonginternational experts", by A. Krumer, F. Otto & T. Pawlowski, Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 2021; Getty Images