Froome Vuelta salbutamol problem

TheBigBean

Rick Chasey wrote:

I admire your boldness.

Name a GT contender who's won having lost 30+ seconds in the opening prologue?

Part of the challenge is that not many GTs of late have had prologues, but here is one for you. Giro 2012

Taylor Phinney (BMC) 10min 26sec. 50.031 km/hr
Ryder Hesjedal (Garmin-Barracuda) @ 29sec
Joaquin Rodriguez (Katusha) @ 43sec

blazing_saddles

Rick Chasey wrote:

So so far we got 1 rider in the last 10 years.

We'll see, but I think this is not a good sign, and if I was a bookie I'd give Froome fairly long odds today.

Not that prologues are used less these days, mind.
2010 Tour then.
Andy Schleck lost 1'-09"

The_Boy

RichN95 wrote:

In the 2015 Tour Froome was expected to take time in the opening 14km TT - the only TT in the race. But the lost time to Nibali and gained only 8 and 10 seconds on Quintana and Contador, And lost 50 s to the day's winner (Dennis). It was seen as a disaster. But he was in yellow by the time they hit the mountains.

Didn't the wind change direction at some point during that stage? I vaguely recall some surprising outliers performing better than expected who had set off early.

TheBigBean

Blazing Saddles wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

So so far we got 1 rider in the last 10 years.

We'll see, but I think this is not a good sign, and if I was a bookie I'd give Froome fairly long odds today.

Not that prologues are used less these days, mind.
2010 Tour then.
Andy Schleck lost 1'-09"

Armstrong was a star performer in that prologue too.

rick_chasey

Blazing Saddles wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

So so far we got 1 rider in the last 10 years.

We'll see, but I think this is not a good sign, and if I was a bookie I'd give Froome fairly long odds today.

Not that prologues are used less these days, mind.
2010 Tour then.
Andy Schleck lost 1'-09"

And was beaten overall by contador who was 6th in the prologue.

And with all due respect to Andy, and I'm a big fan, you'd expect Andy to suffer in a prologue; Froome, you wouldn't necessarily. Dusseldorf he was right on the pace, for example.

blazing_saddles

Rick Chasey wrote:

Blazing Saddles wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

So so far we got 1 rider in the last 10 years.

We'll see, but I think this is not a good sign, and if I was a bookie I'd give Froome fairly long odds today.

Not that prologues are used less these days, mind.
2010 Tour then.
Andy Schleck lost 1'-09"

And was beaten overall by contador who was 6th in the prologue.

Your goalposts appear to have wheels.

rick_chasey

Why? Schleck didn't win.

TheBigBean

Contador's form that whole tour was poor despite riding a decent prologue. Yes he won initially, but everyone expected it to be much easier.

Are you able to provide an example of where prologue form correlated with a GT result?

blazing_saddles

Rick Chasey wrote:

Why? Schleck didn't win.

Well, he has now.

Anyhow, since you also set a belated time limit on things, there has only been one prologue in the Giro since the 2012 example, one prologue at the Tour and none at all in the Vuelta. So,what was your point again?

bigmat

1. Likely to have come in a bit undercooked aiming to peak for third week;
2. General shift in performance focus from TTs to climbing;
3. He crashed beforehand.

All in all, being 40s down isn't really a disaster. Of the GC contenders, it's only really Dumoulin that has taken anything significant on him anyway.

We'll have a far better idea of where his form lies after the Etna stage, until then the jury's out but he'd still rank him as the most likely winner.

phreak

Rick Chasey wrote:

I admire your boldness.

Name a GT contender who's won having lost 30+ seconds in the opening prologue?

Pantani lost 48 seconds in '98, finishing 181st in the Tour prologue. He also lost 39 seconds to Zulle in the prologue of that years Giro.

CuthbertC

RichN95 wrote:

Mad_Malx wrote:

It's not really one study Rich. It's a model based on several studies, and gives a better assessment of the possibility that a high reading can be gained from a legal dose.

Tucker does make some reasonable points (amongst irrelevant ones), but if further doubt can be thrown at the urine measurement as a surrogate for intake then it's looking good for the defence.

I hadn't actually read the report. I wouldn't understand it.

I wonder if this might end up a bit like the Kreuziger biological passport case where it seems he managed to cast enough doubt on the passport according to his circumstances that UCI/WADA preferred to drop the case rather than risk having the passport undermined.

Apples and oranges.

mididoctors

Rick Chasey wrote:

Why? Schleck didn't win.

norvernrob

larkim wrote:

Ross Tucker has thrown some useful questions / criticism of the paper out there. Worth a read if you can put up with his multi-tweet approach.

Suggests the 1429 reading is the adjustment for specific gravity / dehydration etc./

https://twitter.com/Scienceofsport/stat ... 7204678662

Surely WADA are making their own test look unreliable here? Froome’s reading was 2,000, now they’ve come up with a formula to adjust for dehydration and lowered it by 30%, but can they prove the figure is 100% correct? It’s starting to look like there will be more than enough doubt for Froome to walk away without any sanctions.

tim000

can we stay on topic please . if you want to talk racing go to one of the giro threads , this thread is to talk salbutamol

Lanterne_Rogue

tim000 wrote:

can we stay on topic please . if you want to talk racing go to one of the giro threads , this thread is to talk salbutamol

Reminds me of the old Canadian joke about going to the fight and a hockey match breaking out...

As for Tucker, I think he's out of order implying that the authors have failed to declare a conflict of interest. Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm not a working scientist), but isn't that normally a reason for a paper to be withdrawn, and therefore a pretty serious accusation to be making?

ddraver

underlayunderlay wrote:

isn't that normally a reason for a paper to be withdrawn, and therefore a pretty serious accusation to be making?

Not really... (cf all pharmaceutical research).

The trouble is that the paper is a write up of an (and only 'an') experiment and it's results. That people with no further knowledge have taken it and twisted it wildly out of proportion is not the scientists fault. A similar problem is behind every Daily Mail XXX GIVES YOU SUPER DEATH CANCER headline.

One of the many 'coming of age' moments for any student scientist is realising that just because it's been published, doesn't mean it's worth anything...

Vino'sGhost

ddraver wrote:

underlayunderlay wrote:

isn't that normally a reason for a paper to be withdrawn, and therefore a pretty serious accusation to be making?

Not really... (cf all pharmaceutical research).

The trouble is that the paper is a write up of an (and only 'an') experiment and it's results. That people with no further knowledge have taken it and twisted it wildly out of proportion is not the scientists fault. A similar problem is behind every Daily Mail XXX GIVES YOU SUPER DEATH CANCER headline.

One of the many 'coming of age' moments for any student scientist is realising that just because it's been published, doesn't mean it's worth anything...

Rich hasnt even read it and hes taking it as the silver bullet lolol

RichN95.

Vino'sGhost wrote:

ddraver wrote:

underlayunderlay wrote:

isn't that normally a reason for a paper to be withdrawn, and therefore a pretty serious accusation to be making?

Not really... (cf all pharmaceutical research).

The trouble is that the paper is a write up of an (and only 'an') experiment and it's results. That people with no further knowledge have taken it and twisted it wildly out of proportion is not the scientists fault. A similar problem is behind every Daily Mail XXX GIVES YOU SUPER DEATH CANCER headline.

One of the many 'coming of age' moments for any student scientist is realising that just because it's been published, doesn't mean it's worth anything...

Rich hasnt even read it and hes taking it as the silver bullet lolol

Actually I said "Ultimately it's just one study. Single studies aren't much really much use to anyone unless independently replicated." Which exactly what ddraver is saying. If you want to talk at the big table with the grown-ups you'll need to stop lying.

drhaggis

ddraver wrote:

The trouble is that the paper is a write up of an (and only 'an') experiment and it's results.

No experiment has been performed. The authors of the report have taken data from a single (yes, single) study on dogs. They built a computer model, with parameters then extrapolated to humans, and adjusted to, apparently, reproduce the plasma concentration of another study on humans. Then, they performed 1000 simulations on which the input was somebody taking continuously the maximum salbutamol dose allowed. And then, of those, about 1/6 have virtual urine concentrations worth an AAF. How many of those return concentrations above 1.2 mg/l? And 2.0? That's something I cannot find in that paper, but I've only skimmed through it.

Conversely, look at how many false negatives their model predicts for the single dose that's twice as big as allowed. Essentially, more than 50% of infringers would get away with it, according to this model.

That's about it. There's extra information WADA/UCI has we don't: how ofter do you get results between 1.0 and 1.2 mg/l? What was Froome's concentration the day before? The day after? What about other times when he's had a TUE for asthma?

ddraver

Depends on how you define 'experiment' but ok...

point still stands...

Were dear ATC here I'm sure she'd agree that to a larger extent than it should be, publishing volume can be as important as publishing quality to many peeps. God bless the theory, experiment, trial, field trip that yields a bunch of papers rather than one

Mad_Malx

ddraver wrote:

Depends on how you define 'experiment' but ok...

point still stands...

Were dear ATC here I'm sure she'd agree that to a larger extent than it should be, publishing volume can be as important as publishing quality to many peeps. God bless the theory, experiment, trial, field trip that yields a bunch of papers rather than one

For uk and eu funding and promotion panels volume isn’t really important beyond very early career academics. The big driver now is “impact”, where a paper leads or contributes to some wider societal change, or even just gets some press attention. If an author can point to a change in WADA policy, which is not unlikely even if not due majorly to this work, then they will claim impact, even if it doesn’t meet approval with the BR expert reviewers.

Nb this work is not solely based on one study in dogs, several human studies feed into their model. All these guys are saying is that extrapolating point urine levels to drug input is shaky, and it’s very difficult to argue with that.
In silico pharmacokinetics is widely used and validated, it saves drug companies millions as well as reducing animal usage.

drhaggis

Mad_Malx wrote:

Nb this work is not solely based on one study in dogs, several human studies feed into their model. All these guys are saying is that extrapolating point urine levels to drug input is shaky, and it’s very difficult to argue with that.
In silico pharmacokinetics is widely used and validated, it saves drug companies millions as well as reducing animal usage.

I don't argue against pharmacokinetics per se. However, their model *is* based on one study in dogs. From the paper (page 6)

Several literature data sources were used to synthesise a semi-physiological pharmacokinetic model of plasma and urine salbutamol concentrations [5-7]. In short, a PK model of salbutamol in dogs was used as the basis and extrapolated to humans using allometric scaling [7].

Admittedly, I've no idea how well salbutamol metabolism in dogs extrapolates to humans, or how big the sample size in [7] is to make it reliable. Let's look to what the authors say a bit later, though:

Calibration of the parameters derived from the dog model was required, to better correspond to the Haase et al. data (for further elaboration: see supplement)

i.e. their allometric scaling didn't really match the numbers from Haase, and they fiddle with the parameters. Whether that's the only solution that gives a nice fit to Haase, or the one that, while staying close to Haase produces the largest number of false positives is not clear to me. But then again, pharmacokinetics isn't my strong point.

And finally, they don't just state that this test is "shaky", they claim the situation is "totally unacceptable". I guess this is as unacceptable as when Paula Radcliffe's ABP went from doping to non-doping because with the altitude correction her likelihood of doping went to a mere 99.0% [N.B. yes, this was editorial]

Vino'sGhost

RichN95 wrote:

Vino'sGhost wrote:

ddraver wrote:

underlayunderlay wrote:

isn't that normally a reason for a paper to be withdrawn, and therefore a pretty serious accusation to be making?

Not really... (cf all pharmaceutical research).

The trouble is that the paper is a write up of an (and only 'an') experiment and it's results. That people with no further knowledge have taken it and twisted it wildly out of proportion is not the scientists fault. A similar problem is behind every Daily Mail XXX GIVES YOU SUPER DEATH CANCER headline.

One of the many 'coming of age' moments for any student scientist is realising that just because it's been published, doesn't mean it's worth anything...

Rich hasnt even read it and hes taking it as the silver bullet lolol

Actually I said "Ultimately it's just one study. Single studies aren't much really much use to anyone unless independently replicated." Which exactly what ddraver is saying. If you want to talk at the big table with the grown-ups you'll need to stop lying.

Are you a big boy Ric? You spout cobblers on here most of the time like you’re an authority. If you’d like me to cut and paste your earlier comment I will but I hardly think you are in a position to take a parent child approach to dismiss the growing evidence that you are pro ped use.

You have a revisionist approach to the truth that is almost trumpesque.

ddraver

Am I the only one inwardly squeee-ing at the thought of a bunch of asthmatic labradogs being given inhalers?

bompington

ddraver wrote:

Am I the only one inwardly squeee-ing at the thought of a bunch of asthmatic labradogs being given inhalers?

Would you rather asthmatic labradogs weren't given inhalers?

Vino'sGhost

bompington wrote:

ddraver wrote:

Am I the only one inwardly squeee-ing at the thought of a bunch of asthmatic labradogs being given inhalers?

Would you rather asthmatic labradogs weren't given inhalers?

Mad_Malx

Good model for Froomedogs?

Fenton!

No_Ta_Doctor

Can we have a voluntary self-classification of technical expertise in assessing the science here, especially of this paper? There seem to be some people who have a bit of a better understanding of it than others.... It would be useful to know who really knows what they're talking about and who's making it up as they go along/copy-pasting from twitter.

I suggest the following 0-5 star system:

☆☆☆☆☆ - I don't have the foggiest, can someone please tell me if it means anything interesting?
★☆☆☆☆- I have an academic background outside science, can someone explain it to me please?
★★☆☆☆ - I have an academic background in an unrelated scientific field, I can read it but can someone explain the more technical stuff?
★★★☆☆- I have an academic background in a related scientific field, I think I've got it
★★★★☆ - I have an academic background in this specific field, ask me anything about it
★★★★★ - I am an academic in this field, I have multiple papers on similar topics, and if asked to peer review this paper I could have done

Feel free to award yourselves fractions of stars if you think you've deserved them, though add your reasons.

Me, I'm giving myself a whopping 1.5★ (I couldn't find half star symbols I'm afraid):
Non-scientific academic background with a strong foundation in logic and scientific process, plus I used to proof-read my ex's articles.

Mad_Malx

I've managed to fool my employer into believing I'm ★★★ in this area. There are ★★★★★ people down the corridor, but they are weird. They are also a lot wealthier than me, mostly because they charge people to spout bollox rather then giving it away free on BR.