Good article...

donrhummy

I think this raises some very interesting points. Anyone from ProCycling mag here that wants to give some thoughts on this?

http://quickrelease.tv/?p=546

Excerpts:

When WADA says ‘jump’, too many sports journalists ask ‘how high?’
...
Anti-doping agencies, on the other hand, are seen to be white knights, fighting the good fight. They can do no wrong. Mistakes? What mistakes? It’s not possible, we’re scientifically 100 percent sound, say the anti-dopers.

Jacques de Ceaurriz, head of the French anti-doping lab that leaks test results to L’Equipe yet is never sanctioned, once famously said the carbon isotope test, used to find synthetic man-juice, was infallible:

“It’s foolproof…No error is possible in isotopic readings.”

No errors possible? Ever? How many scientists in fields other than anti-doping would get away with such tosh?

The attitude of ‘we’re always right, you’re always wrong’ is one that pervades anti-doping science. Precious few journalists question whether the anti-doping labs might sometimes be wrong. False positives and false negatives exist in the world of medicine but not, apparently, in the world of anti-doping, which uses the exact same scientific tests.

WADA got a lot of global press coverage for its work with Roche to place marker molecules in CERA, the so-called ‘Super-EPO’.

John Fahey, the president of WADA, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp that Roche Pharmaceuticals had placed a special molecule in CERA when it developed the drug:

“In the development of [Micera] close cooperation occurred between WADA and the pharmaceutical company Roche Pharmaceuticals so that there was a molecule placed in the substance well in advance that was always going to be able to be detected once a test was undertaken.”

Well done, WADA.

Except it doesn’t appear to be true. The WADA boss got it wrong. Martina Rupp, a spokeswoman for Roche, told Bloomberg News: “The information that a special molecule has been added to Mircera is wrong.”

So, have journalists widely reported on WADA’s economy with the truth? Of course not. The International Herald Tribune carried the drug company’s denial in the middle of a long article about the Tour in general but the multitude of news sources that rapidly spread Fahey’s molecule claim have been strangely silent on the Roche rebuffal.

AFTER SIX WEEKS of deliberation, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has decided to confirm the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Executive Board’s decision to disqualify Alain Baxter from the men’s alpine skiing slalom event at the Salt Lake City Winter Games.
...
“The panel is not without sympathy for Mr Baxter, who appears to be a sincere and honest man who did not intend to obtain a competitive advantage in the race,” the tribunal concluded.

“Alain has paid a most severe penalty for a modest mistake and it is clear that the principle of strict liability under-scored this decision,” added Simon Clegg, Chief Executive of the BOA.
...
WADA can make mistakes, athletes can’t. Athletes can be banned under the ’strict liability’ rule, but WADA and its accredited labs can mess up left, right and centre and only a tiny minority of people seem to care about such lop-sided justice.

donrhummy

100 comments on Lance and drugs (which is of course old news and has zero effect on pro cycling today) and none on this?

DaveyL

I'll comment. What scientific credibility does the author have? About the same as those links you posted yesterday on Landis and the IRMS test?

DaveyL

And as for them making a big deal about the misinformation from WADA about the phantom molecle being added to Mircera - another smokescreen. This arose due to confusion over the structure of Mircera and the use of the term PEGylated (to denote the addition of poly(ethylene glycol), or PEG, to epo). Oddly enough, the remedy for this is to have a scientifically more literate head of WADA, and a scientifically more literate set of journalists! Still, I guess these guys need something to write about.

Richrd2205

I think this raises some very interesting points

Care to tell us which points it raises that are interesting?
I can't see anything I've not read several thousand times before & it kinda sounds like the Let Levi/Floyd/Tyler/whoever Ride nonsense...
There's plenty wrong with testing labs, however, accusing them of being human is hardly of note, let alone interesting...

donrhummy

Richrd2205 wrote:

I think this raises some very interesting points

Care to tell us which points it raises that are interesting?
I can't see anything I've not read several thousand times before & it kinda sounds like the Let Levi/Floyd/Tyler/whoever Ride nonsense...
There's plenty wrong with testing labs, however, accusing them of being human is hardly of note, let alone interesting...

Three:

1. The idea that they're infallible as are their tests

Certainly the guy's not a doctor or scientist but he's not analyzing their data. What he saying is, "When the rest of the scientific community says that none of their tests or studies are 100% perfect or infallible (including in such important areas as cancer research) why is such infallibility possible only in the scientific field of anti-doping?

“It’s foolproof…No error is possible in isotopic readings.”

No errors possible? Ever? How many scientists in fields other than anti-doping would get away with such tosh?

False positives and false negatives exist in the world of medicine but not, apparently, in the world of anti-doping, which uses the exact same scientific tests.

2. That athletes must never make mistakes and follow the exact LETTER of the rules not the intent of the rules but labs only need follow the intent -- see the ruling against Floyd Landis for more info on this.

3. That journalists question everything the athletes say but don't seem to do the same for WADA/ASO/UCI.

I think all three of those are valid points and don't require a medical degree to speak about.

DaveyL

When the tests are developed, the methodology is published in peer-reviewed literature, and includes information on false positives and false negatives. I guess the author chose to overlook that though.

Adieu