Andrew Sullivan points to a weird trend of professional baseball players wearing magical necklaces whose “titanium nanoparticles” supposedly “help the body’s own energy flow more readily.” There’s zero scientific evidence they do any such thing but there’s a Placebo effect.
My question: Why are these necklaces permitted to be worn? Aside from the fact that they detract significantly from the uniformity of the uniforms, don’t these constitute performance enhancing devices? Players aren’t permitted to take any number of stimulants, use corked bats, or pretty much anything else that gives them an artificial advantage. Yet, clearly, some significant number of players believe they’re deriving one from these devices.
