Nice job, Malmo, you saved the rest of us from having to write a long stupid rant.
If I may add one thing:
"The investigators looked at the average times for the top three men and women, and at the times for the runners who placed 25th, 50th, 100th and 300th."
Hmm, what's wrong with this sentence?
For starters, I suppose that in 1983 the 300th runner was probably faster than the 300th runner today. Well, I could probably check this rigorously across all the marathons if I snooped around more, but check out the ING NY website, and you can easily find the following:
100th guy in 1983:
PETUR SIGMUNDSSON M26 243 530 . ICELAND 100 100 66 2:23:43 5:29
300th finisher was a gal:
CHRISTA VAHLENSIECK F34 F13 563 NO W GERMANY 300 6 3 2:35:59 5:57
How about last year?:
ROLF FREI M35 441 SWITZERLAND 100 82 42 2:39:24 2:39:18 1:16:58 6:04
300th finisher:
GIANLUCA SCARCIA M28 2250 LE ITALY 300 272 69 2:51:48 2:51:33 41:25 1:27:20 6:32
This random data point reinforces what we already have heard from the old farts: back in their day, people were faster.
This is one of the first things that came to my mind when I read about this. Of course, it's altogether possible that the actual _scientists_ knew about this phenomenon, and corrected for it in some way. But if they did, how?
Anyway, random point to demonstrate that so many subtleties are lost by the time you get to the point of reading about our favourite sport in the NYT (or any civilian paper), that it's really pointless to get worked about it.
Love the archived results of the ING marathon, though - that site is fun!