Quote Originally Posted by Mathman View Post
Therefore, in contrast to judges, the tech panel will automatically show less favoritism, be less subject to outside influence, etc.

I wonder how that has worked out in practice.
I don't think it has worked out all that well. It might work better if the tech panel did a random draw for their assignments.
That's a flaw right there.

The tech panel & the judges, for that matter, are appointed to ISU competitions by Cinquanta, with the advice of the VP of figure skating, David Dore, past president of Skate Canada.

http://articles.boston.com/2012-05-2...iberations-isu

This recent article from the Boston Globe says:

A new study from a professor of economics at Dartmouth, however, suggests this has all been for naught or, even worse, for show. He finds that, if anything, a competitor with a compatriot on the judging panel can now expect even more nationalistic bias and vote trading. And he thinks the ISU may be part of the problem: “Some of the actions of the ISU after the 2002 judging scandal can only be rationalized as attempts to reduce the perception of corruption by limiting outside monitoring.”
The paper about to be published is:

Zitzewitz, E., “Does Transparency Reduce Favoritism and Corruption? Evidence from the Reform of Figure Skating Judging,” Journal of Sports Economics (forthcoming).

Apparently Dr. Zitzewitz (a name with three Z's ) would answer, "No."