I smell bullshit when even the first sentence of the abstract is not convincing. But it's not really bullshit, it's only common sense.<p>> "Competition is prevalent. People often resort to unethical means to win (e.g., the recent Volkswagen scandal)."<p>The recent "Volkswagen scandal", where the authors probably mean the recent Bosch/Audi scandal who got caught cheating the diesel emission tests, had nothing to do with competition. When everyone is cheating these tests since centuries (starting with the US companies in the 90ies, and then the other car makers later), it is a purely political problem, but has nothing to do with competition. All the engines are using the cheating device, everybody cheats, there's no competition, the game is rigged.<p>So when everyone cheats, just as also in competitive cycling, swimming, athletics, or in politics, it's more a scenario how to play the game properly and just avoid getting caught.<p>But here we went full-cycle, and declare favorable dishonest behavior based on an environment where everyone cheats. The problem is not the winner as declared in this paper, the problem is the whole game, at least the cabal of the top 10 who mostly conspire to keep quiet. But in reality not only the players of the game, also the whole training staff, the media, the judges, the federation.<p>The rest of the paper wants to disprove the false image of the "good sport", which is sometimes based on unfairness. And the new finding is that winning a competition will favor dishonesty, and not only the other way round. Which explains "corruption".