What New Pseudoscience Quackery Will We See at the Paris Olympics?

The 2024 Paris Summer Olympics is upon us. Once again, the world’s greatest athletes will gather to get frisky, wow audiences with unforgettable performances, and show off a dizzying array of pseudoscientific nonsense. 

Olympic athletes compete at the pinnacle of human ability. Here, at the limit of what’s physiologically possible, lifting a couple extra pounds or running fractions of a second faster could propel an athlete to gold and glory (not to mention a tidy cash payout). Thus, many turn to untested therapies, bogus supplements, and dubious gadgets to eke out that all-important edge.

In the past, the Summer Olympics has served as the ultimate showcase for pseudoscience in sport. At Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012, audiences noticed a colorful array of tapes plastered upon athletes’ bodies in almost artistic fashion. Since then, sales of “kinesiology tape” have exploded, abetted by eyebrow-raising claims that it “releases natural healing power,” “makes oxygen more available to your cells,” “helps remove waste products, cellular debris, and bacteria,” and “converts your body’s heat into infrared energy.” Studies show that it does none of those things, and is, in fact, just pricey tape.

The Rio Olympics in 2016 put a stranger piece of pseudoscience on display. Watchers couldn’t help but notice that the back and shoulders of swimmer Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time, were splotched with large brown circles. They were bruises left by cupping, an alternative medicine that hails primarily from China. Practitioners apply heated cups to the skin to create local suction, essentially leaving giant “hickeys,” according to Yale neurologist Steven Novella. The practice is claimed to detoxify the blood (not a thing) and prevent it from stagnating (also not a thing), thus improving the flow of life energy called qi (also, also not a thing). In short, cupping doesn’t do what it claims.

Tokyo’s 2021 Summer Olympics was a somewhat muted affair for displays of quackery. Sure, kinesiology tape and cupping reprised their appearances, and competitors jumped out of the summer heat into astoundingly frigid and unevidenced cryotherapy chambers seeking to speed recovery, but there really wasn’t anything new. Perhaps the Covid-19 pandemic, which delayed the Tokyo games a full year, shocked everyone into realizing the value of modern, evidence-based medicine.

But that hangover of rationality will likely have waned when competition gets fully underway in Paris this weekend. So what mumbo jumbo might we see? Kinesiology tape will undoubtedly be more present than ever, considering that leading manufacturer KT Tape now sponsors USA Track and Field. Many competitors in endurance sports might also don nasal dilator strips, claimed to boost airflow, over their noses. Studies find that they don’t boost oxygen uptake or reduce the heart’s workload. 

Dr. Nick Tiller, an exercise scientist and author of The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science, predicts that cupping will also make its perennial return. A few other products trending on social media might also appear.

“Lots of athletes will be using nootropics and adaptogens (trendy supplements marketed as ‘cognitive enhancers’) and lots of wearable sensors (e.g., Aura Rings) monitoring sleep and ‘recovery,’ even though they’re not very effective,” he said via email.

We also might see athletes chugging oxygenated water on the sidelines, which is bottled under extreme pressure to squeeze in extra dissolved oxygen. After all, more is better, right? Dr. Joe Schwarcz, Director of McGill University’s Office for Science and Society, pointed out the glaring error with this gimmicky product: “Most of this oxygen escapes into the air as soon as the pressure is released by opening the bottle. Whatever dissolved oxygen remains is inconsequential since we do not breathe through our gut.”

Finally, the athletic king of pseudoscience himself will probably make a splash. Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic, winner of the most Grand Slam men’s singles titles of all-time, is known for eschewing science. Most notably, he refused the Covid-19 vaccine, earning him a temporary ban from numerous tournaments. Recently, he’s worn something called a TaoPatch – each costing hundreds of dollars – claimed to improve “posture, movement and performance without chemistry”. How can a mere sticker manage that? Via carbon nanotubules and “quantum dots” applying “the principles of acupuncture” to “low level laser therapy” by emitting “biophotons.” 

Can Djokovic find something more blatantly scammy than that? Tune in to the Paris Olympics to find out.