Against moral panic and citation fiction: a critique of “Panem, Corticoids and Circenses” and a proposal for editorial gatekeeping on reference integrity

The proposed Enhanced Games have become a convenient stage for bioethical sermonising about risk, authenticity, and the “spirit of sport”. This is epitomized by a recent article arguing that institutionalizing pharmacological enhancement under the “pretence of medical supervision and personal autonomy” would redefine human excellence in “purely biochemical terms”, erode ethical norms, normalize doping, and burden public health systems. The present paper offers a two-level response. First, I criticise the argument on its merits. Its central claims rely on rhetorical inflation, false dichotomies, and circular appeals to unspecified ethical norms. The risk argument is selectively paternalistic, treating pharmacological risk as uniquely disqualifying while ignoring the substantial and well-documented risks that elite and even mass-participation sport already normalizes. The treatment of autonomy is reduced to assertions rather than argument; the depiction of medical supervision as mere “pretence” is offered without evidence, despite public-facing claims by Enhanced Games proponents that they seek clinically supervised enhancement. Second, and more seriously, I turn my attention to an audit of the target article's scholarship. Multiple citations in Demas's article appear to be bibliographic fictions presented as high-profile clinical evidence on performance-enhancing drugs. Even when genuine sources are cited, they are invoked for conclusions that those sources do not sustain. This is a serious breakdown of the minimal contract between author, reviewer, and reader, one that demands that cited evidence exists and supports the claims made.