Tune in, turn on, publish or perish

(Blog entry about a Nature story on the surprisingly prevalent use by scientists' of cognitive enhancers i.e. brainbooster drugs)
This is a big ugly beast slowly stirring in its cage, it seems to me. Consider this: it seems possible that we will discover that cunning use of cognitive enhancement via drugs such as beta blockers is positively correlated to some degree with science quality or pace of innovative output or somesuch. In fact we may know that already - this future is probably just another imperfectly distributed one! Given that, what incentives do you create when you set up a competitive funding process, or require researchers to attain a certain standard before tenure-track, or tie promotion to patents and impact factors? The old academic fallback for creative burnout or impossible success criteria (plagiarism) has been swept away by Google - Plan B is recourse to Ritalin. Far-fetched? I'm not too sure. Nobody's doing the experiment (e.g. monitoring stimulant intake by pre-laureates). The tragedy is that it's the top-tier performers and the up-and-coming who end up fighting to stay clean and stay competitive, morally pushed to take the sucker's payoff and professionally pulled to get jazzed to get successful; witness competitive cycling over the last fifteen years. It also brings to mind the communist bloc countries in the 70s and 80s seeking prestige from the Olympics by whatever pharmaceutical means; in this century, cognitive boosters can give your country--yes, yours!--a more direct and sustained advantage measurable in prestige, dollars, Nobels and economic transformation. And the ethics are less clear. I'm so upset by this I'm going for a coffee!