Fergie Wrote:
When Stephen Swart (a fellow Kiwi) came out and made accusations about
Lance
and EPO I was quite happy to believe him. Then they had an interview
with
Stephen on the Kiwi version of 60 minutes where he was interviewed over
the
allegations. Turns out he was in a team meeting where the Motorola
riders
(Lance was in this meeting) agreed that they were not competitive in
Europe
and that they would have to resort to drug taking to make the grade.
Stephen
admitted to taking a course of EPO himself.

The important thing is that he never saw Lance take EPO. He just
suspects.
Sort of dimmed my view of Stephen and affects his credibility.

Fergie

Why does this affect his credibility? It kind of sets up a catch-22:

The new guys into the sport who immediately get hit with the drug
culture have credibility, because they have not yet used. They get
out, and if they go public, the doping apologists will say "what do
they know about pro cycling? They were in it for a month and washed
out."

The older guys, who have been pressured to dope just to stay
competitive in their profession, come forward and the response from the
doping apologists is "They used -- that affects their credibility."

Scientists use hypotheses to set up a situation where they can test
their observations against the hypothesis and then try to confirm or
deny their hypothesis. I think that if your hypothesis is that "most
pro cyclists dope," your real-world observations will start to look a
lot more consistent with each other.


--
antoineg