The Science of Doping

An article by Donald Barry in the current issue of "Nature" on the
statistical and scientific flaws in dope-testing procedures:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...l/454692a.html .

If you read it and can follow basic math it is quite evident Landis
was unfairly banned.

Some quotes from the article:

"The processes used to charge athletes with cheating are often based
on flawed statistics and flawed logic"

"if conventional doping testing were to be submitted to a regulatory
agency such as the US Food and Drug Administration to qualify as a
diagnostic test for a disease, it would be rejected."

"Landis seemed to have an unusual test result. Because he was among
the leaders he provided 8 pairs of urine samples (of the total of
approximately 126 sample-pairs in the 2006 Tour de France). So there
were 8 opportunities for a true positive — and 8 opportunities for a
false positive. If he never doped and assuming a specificity of 95%,
the probability of all 8 samples being labelled 'negative' is the
eighth power of 0.95, or 0.66. Therefore, Landis's false-positive rate
for the race as a whole would be about 34%. Even a very high
specificity of 99% would mean a false-positive rate of about 8%. The
single-test specificity would have to be increased to much greater
than 99% to have an acceptable false-positive rate. But we don't know
the single-test specificity because the appropriate studies have not
been performed or published."

An accompanying editorial in the magazine (
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...l/454692a.html )
goes on to state: "close scrutiny of quantitative evidence used in
Landis's case show it to be non-informative. This says nothing about
Landis's guilt or innocence. It rather reveals that the evidence and
inferential procedures used to judge guilt in such cases don't address
the question correctly. The situation in drug-testing labs worldwide
must be remedied. Cheaters evade detection, innocents are falsely
accused and sport is ultimately suffering."

The New York Times has now published a piece by John Tierney called
"Let the Games Be Doped" ( http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/sc...ier..html?8dpc
) that asks the question "Why not let athletes be chemically
enhanced?"

I am interested in seeing if people actually read and understand these
pieces before posting the usual knee-jerk comments.

a écrit profondement:

| I am interested in seeing if people actually read and understand these
| pieces before posting the usual knee-jerk comments.
|

Davey, in company of many others, believed thar Flandis was a doper

Now he is not 100 percent sure

However, in light of the bull**** excuses/explanations FLandis tossed
out to anyone who listened, Davey is 99.999999 percent sure.

When confronted with NWO thugs and what passes for police and security
these days, Nationalists have two stock responses.

Two Words and Five:

"**** Off"

and

"I have nothing to say."

Flandis, in a way hammered the nails into his own Coffin

Ita Missa Est

--
Davey Crockett
-
A campaign group calling for the deportation of a man who stabbed a
teenager to death has won the backing of the victim s mother.

The group, which has been set up on social networking site, Facebook,
as of Saturday, already had 908 members and calls for Mahmood
Maksoudian to be deported when he is released from prison.

Maksoudian, aged 22, of Madams Wood Road, Little Hulton, was found
guilty of murdering 16-year-old Andrew Holland outside Ashy s takeaway
in Plodder Lane, Farnworth, last August.

He was sentenced to a minimum of 19 years in prison in February but
has launched an appeal against his conviction claiming he acted in
self-defence.

The group s campaign has attracted the attention of Andrew s
heartbroken mother, Joan, who called for justice for her son after she
heard of Maksoudian s appeal.
-
This is Another Rope and Lamp Post affair

On Aug 12, 7:25*am, Davey Crockett wrote:
a écrit profondement:

| I am interested in seeing if people actually read and understand these
| pieces before posting the usual knee-jerk comments.
|

Davey, in company of many others, believed thar Flandis was a doper

Now he is not 100 percent sure

However, in light of the bull**** excuses/explanations FLandis tossed
out to anyone who listened, Davey is 99.999999 percent sure.

When confronted with NWO thugs and what passes for police and security
these days, Nationalists have two stock responses.

Two Words and Five:

"**** Off"

and

"I have nothing to say."

Flandis, in a way hammered the nails into his own Coffin

Hmmm. Are your explanations of events/technology you don't understand
better?

I blame the media. The athletes are trained to say _something_ when a
microphone is stuck in their face. I can't wait for the day when each
rider is met at the day's finishing line by their briefcase toting
lawyer who's muttering, "No comment. No comment."

R

On Aug 12, 8:59*am, RicodJour wrote:
On Aug 12, 7:25*am, Davey Crockett wrote:





a écrit profondement:

| I am interested in seeing if people actually read and understand these
| pieces before posting the usual knee-jerk comments.
|

Davey, in company of many others, believed thar Flandis was a doper

Now he is not 100 percent sure

However, in light of the bull**** excuses/explanations FLandis tossed
out to anyone who listened, Davey is 99.999999 percent sure.

When confronted with NWO thugs and what passes for police and security
these days, Nationalists have two stock responses.

Two Words and Five:

"**** Off"

and

"I have nothing to say."

Flandis, in a way hammered the nails into his own Coffin

Hmmm. *Are your explanations of events/technology you don't understand
better?

I blame the media. *The athletes are trained to say _something_ when a
microphone is stuck in their face. *I can't wait for the day when each
rider is met at the day's finishing line by their briefcase toting
lawyer who's muttering, "No comment. *No comment."

R- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Nah the future is the Nascar blather. Even Foxworthy has a bit on how
you can't understand half of it, and then when you do, finally, figure
it out they didn't say anything anyway.
Bill C

On Aug 12, 7:25 am, Davey Crockett wrote:
a écrit profondement:

| I am interested in seeing if people actually read and understand these
| pieces before posting the usual knee-jerk comments.
|

Davey, in company of many others, believed thar Flandis was a doper

Now he is not 100 percent sure

However, in light of the bull**** excuses/explanations FLandis tossed
out to anyone who listened, Davey is 99.999999 percent sure.

When confronted with NWO thugs and what passes for police and security
these days, Nationalists have two stock responses.

Two Words and Five:

"**** Off"

and

"I have nothing to say."

Flandis, in a way hammered the nails into his own Coffin

Ita Missa Est

--
Davey Crockett
-
A campaign group calling for the deportation of a man who stabbed a
teenager to death has won the backing of the victim s mother.

The group, which has been set up on social networking site, Facebook,
as of Saturday, already had 908 members and calls for Mahmood
Maksoudian to be deported when he is released from prison.

Maksoudian, aged 22, of Madams Wood Road, Little Hulton, was found
guilty of murdering 16-year-old Andrew Holland outside Ashy s takeaway
in Plodder Lane, Farnworth, last August.

He was sentenced to a minimum of 19 years in prison in February but
has launched an appeal against his conviction claiming he acted in
self-defence.

The group s campaign has attracted the attention of Andrew s
heartbroken mother, Joan, who called for justice for her son after she
heard of Maksoudian s appeal.
-
This is Another Rope and Lamp Post affair

As I said, I am interested in seeing if people actually read and
understand these
pieces before posting the usual knee-jerk comments. You haven't, and
you did.

wrote:

"Landis seemed to have an unusual test result. Because he was among
the leaders he provided 8 pairs of urine samples (of the total of
approximately 126 sample-pairs in the 2006 Tour de France). So there
were 8 opportunities for a true positive — and 8 opportunities for a
false positive. If he never doped and assuming a specificity of 95%,
the probability of all 8 samples being labelled 'negative' is the
eighth power of 0.95, or 0.66. Therefore, Landis's false-positive rate
for the race as a whole would be about 34%. Even a very high
specificity of 99% would mean a false-positive rate of about 8%. The
single-test specificity would have to be increased to much greater
than 99% to have an acceptable false-positive rate. But we don't know
the single-test specificity because the appropriate studies have not
been performed or published."

I'd like to see him explain why LANCE was tested hundreds of times and
never posted a false positive.

Kyle Legate schreef:
I'd like to see him explain why LANCE was tested hundreds of times and
never posted a false positive.

Because he paid for the big expensive blood testing equipment.

wrote:

As I said, I am interested in seeing if people actually read and
understand these
pieces before posting the usual knee-jerk comments. You haven't, and
you did.

I read, I understood, and I disregard his opinion. Anyone who wins a lot
will get tested a lot. LANCE is the obvious example, but there's also
Bettini, Friere, Cipo back in the day, McEwen, Boonen (who tested
positive for a recreational drug, and it was not a false positive),
Petacchi (who tested positive for his 'asthma' meds, but it was not a
false positive). Many of those who were popped this year admitted that
they doped. Those weren't false positives. Where are all the false
positives? According to this guy's math they should be happening a lot
more frequently, and the risk should be high for those who win a lot.
It's not happening. As I mentioned in my previous post, LANCE was tested
hundreds of times, and only tested positive for a saddle sore cream he
admitted using. Was he just lucky?

As a statistician, I don't expect him to understand the science behinds
the tests, so I don't place any importance on his opinion on figure 1.
If the blue dot represents Floyd's samples, he was busted fair and
square. He mentions in his article also the need to publish standardized
testing protocols; this is nice in principle, but ultimately detrimental
to the goal: catch dopers. If every rider's team doctor had access to
how the tests are conducted they will be able to cheat the tests. I am
in favour of publishing data establishing false positive/negative rates,
reproducibility and all that, but the precise details must remain a
trade secret.

You Floyd Landis fanboys really have to get your heads away from his
dick. He doped, get over it.

On Aug 12, 12:44 pm, wrote:
An article by Donald Barry in the current issue of "Nature" on the
statistical and scientific flaws in dope-testing procedures:http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...l/454692a.html.

If you read it and can follow basic math it is quite evident Landis
was unfairly banned.

Some quotes from the article:

"The processes used to charge athletes with cheating are often based
on flawed statistics and flawed logic"

"if conventional doping testing were to be submitted to a regulatory
agency such as the US Food and Drug Administration to qualify as a
diagnostic test for a disease, it would be rejected."

"Landis seemed to have an unusual test result. Because he was among
the leaders he provided 8 pairs of urine samples (of the total of
approximately 126 sample-pairs in the 2006 Tour de France). So there
were 8 opportunities for a true positive — and 8 opportunities for a
false positive. If he never doped and assuming a specificity of 95%,
the probability of all 8 samples being labelled 'negative' is the
eighth power of 0.95, or 0.66. Therefore, Landis's false-positive rate
for the race as a whole would be about 34%. Even a very high
specificity of 99% would mean a false-positive rate of about 8%. The
single-test specificity would have to be increased to much greater
than 99% to have an acceptable false-positive rate. But we don't know
the single-test specificity because the appropriate studies have not
been performed or published."

An accompanying editorial in the magazine (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...l/454692a.html)
goes on to state: "close scrutiny of quantitative evidence used in
Landis's case show it to be non-informative. This says nothing about
Landis's guilt or innocence. It rather reveals that the evidence and
inferential procedures used to judge guilt in such cases don't address
the question correctly. The situation in drug-testing labs worldwide
must be remedied. Cheaters evade detection, innocents are falsely
accused and sport is ultimately suffering."

The New York Times has now published a piece by John Tierney called
"Let the Games Be Doped" (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/sc...tier.html?8dpc
) that asks the question "Why not let athletes be chemically
enhanced?"

I am interested in seeing if people actually read and understand these
pieces before posting the usual knee-jerk comments.

This is basically the point I was making in my "Where's the Science"
post last month. The CAS just confirmed their Landis judgment by
suspending Iban Mayo for 2 years. The Landis case was at best unclear,
but Mayo is so obviously not guilty that it seems amazing that the CAS
board (and the UCI but their incompetence is expected) could support
his suspension. It's a very embarrassing period for sports.

-ilan

On Aug 12, 3:27 pm, wrote:
On Aug 12, 12:44 pm, wrote:



An article by Donald Barry in the current issue of "Nature" on the
statistical and scientific flaws in dope-testing procedures:http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...l/454692a.html.

If you read it and can follow basic math it is quite evident Landis
was unfairly banned.

Some quotes from the article:

"The processes used to charge athletes with cheating are often based
on flawed statistics and flawed logic"

"if conventional doping testing were to be submitted to a regulatory
agency such as the US Food and Drug Administration to qualify as a
diagnostic test for a disease, it would be rejected."

"Landis seemed to have an unusual test result. Because he was among
the leaders he provided 8 pairs of urine samples (of the total of
approximately 126 sample-pairs in the 2006 Tour de France). So there
were 8 opportunities for a true positive — and 8 opportunities for a
false positive. If he never doped and assuming a specificity of 95%,
the probability of all 8 samples being labelled 'negative' is the
eighth power of 0.95, or 0.66. Therefore, Landis's false-positive rate
for the race as a whole would be about 34%. Even a very high
specificity of 99% would mean a false-positive rate of about 8%. The
single-test specificity would have to be increased to much greater
than 99% to have an acceptable false-positive rate. But we don't know
the single-test specificity because the appropriate studies have not
been performed or published."

An accompanying editorial in the magazine (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...l/454692a.html)
goes on to state: "close scrutiny of quantitative evidence used in
Landis's case show it to be non-informative. This says nothing about
Landis's guilt or innocence. It rather reveals that the evidence and
inferential procedures used to judge guilt in such cases don't address
the question correctly. The situation in drug-testing labs worldwide
must be remedied. Cheaters evade detection, innocents are falsely
accused and sport is ultimately suffering."

The New York Times has now published a piece by John Tierney called
"Let the Games Be Doped" (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/sc...tier.html?8dpc
) that asks the question "Why not let athletes be chemically
enhanced?"

I am interested in seeing if people actually read and understand these
pieces before posting the usual knee-jerk comments.

This is basically the point I was making in my "Where's the Science"
post last month. The CAS just confirmed their Landis judgment by
suspending Iban Mayo for 2 years. The Landis case was at best unclear,
but Mayo is so obviously not guilty that it seems amazing that the CAS
board (and the UCI but their incompetence is expected) could support
his suspension. It's a very embarrassing period for sports.

-ilan

Exactly. After the positive A sample at Chatenay-Malabry, the tested
the B sample. By their own rules the case should have been thrown out
when the B sample tested inconclusive at Ghent. But no, they retested
the B sample at Chatenay-Malabry so they could call it positive. Why
does Chatenay-Malabry have so many more positives than other labs?
Mayo is one unlucky rider.

Landis may or may not have doped-- the test results could not show his
innocence, but they certainly did not prove his guilt, and they
violated their own rules in the way they administered the testing.

Maybe it is the difference in Anglo-Saxon common law, versus French
Napoleonic and Roman Law: instead of innocent until proven guilty,
the riders are assumed guilty until proven innocent, something not
really possible without a truly independent and neutral testing
procedure.