Where's the science?

I just sent this to CyclingNews letters:

What worries me the most about the latest round of Tour de France
doping scandals is how pure science, the basis for all doping tests,
is being forgotten in favour of political expediency. Riders are being
fired, teams are leaving the race, and sponsors are withdrawing
because of positive A samples, which in themselves do not provide any
kind of proof of doping. This is not surprising in the current climate
in which WADA head Dick Pound wanted Marion Jones to explain why her
EPO B sample returned negative after a positive A sample, Iban Mayo's
B sample was continually retested until it finally confirmed the
original A sample positive, and millions of L'Equipe readers are
convinced that the newspaper proved Armstrong's EPO use through the
analysis of his supposed frozen A sample.

One wonders whether the B sample will soon be relegated along with
presumption of innocence and I conjecture that most non-scientists
involved in cycling have no clue why the B sample is so important. For
this reason it is important to go over the basic reason for this
confirmation. Since medical science is imprecise due to the
inevitability of experimental error, medical tests such at the EPO
test cannot avoid having a marging or error, so even 1% chance of
getting a false positive is considered reasonable. However, elementary
probability theory shows that if the EPO test is administered 100
times (close to the numbers in this Tour de France), and (for the sake
of argument) the probability of a false positive is 1% for each test,
then the probability of having at least one false positive among the
100 rises to about 63%. In other words, as everyone is saying, more
tests mean more cheaters will get caught, but it also means that more
non-cheaters will get falsely accused from their A sample. That is
just an inescapable result of the inherent uncertainty of medical
science. And that's exactly where the B sample comes in, a falsely
accused clean rider will then have a 99% chance of being exonerated by
his B sample.

One can understand how the non-scientifically trained cycling
community might find the testing protocol labourious and unecessary,
however, there can be no excuse for lack of rigour and breach of
protocol by a scientific testing agency. In particular, the LNDD
laboratory was shown on a number of occasions to lack necessary high
scientific standards. The first example is the USADA Landis panel
which unanimously threw out the original test results for the
testosterone positive (though the CAS panel has since reversed this by
ruling that it was "good faith" incompetence). Secondly, the LNDD
gave a different interpretation of Mayo's B sample from two other
laboratories even though one of the basic principles of scientific
investigation is that an experiment must be repeatable and can be
verified independently. It is also important to mention the LNDD's
role in the fraudulent L'Equipe article on Armstrong's frozen samples
which led to it being chastised both by the IOC and the UCI. Far from
finding and eliminating the person or persons who leaked their results
to the newspaper, the LNDD has continued to leak their tests results
to L'Equipe. This is a clear violation of protocol as was recently
stated by WADA CEO David Howman referring to the LNDD-L'Equipe leaks
in an e-mail quoted on the LA Times website by reporter Phillip Hersh
in his article "What a bunch of cycling dope(r)s" of July 17, 2008
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/olym...-bunch-of.html

"The only organization that can match the anonymous sample to an
athlete is the one under whose jurisdiction the test was conducted.
WADA is disappointed by any breach of confidentiality that may occur
during the results management process. Any breach is unacceptable."

One can only wonder at the WADA definition of the word "unacceptable"
given the many years that these leaks have been going on without there
having been any formal action taken by the WADA on this matter.

Apart from having their jobs unjustly taken away before the
confirmation of their B sample, having their names leaked to the press
by the testing laboratory, the final blow to this year's Tour de
France riders is that they will have the added penalty of having their
B sample tested again at the LNDD due to ASO's rift with the UCI. In
other words, ASO has made sure that the embarassing string of negative
Mayo B samples will not be repeated. It is scary to think that the
riders are not even aware that their rights are being taken from them,
until they test positive that is.....

-ilan

wrote:
I just sent this to CyclingNews letters:

What worries me the most about the latest round of Tour de France
doping scandals is how pure science, the basis for all doping tests,
is being forgotten in favour of political expediency. Riders are being
fired, teams are leaving the race, and sponsors are withdrawing
because of positive A samples, which in themselves do not provide any
kind of proof of doping. This is not surprising in the current climate
in which WADA head Dick Pound wanted Marion Jones to explain why her
EPO B sample returned negative after a positive A sample, Iban Mayo's
B sample was continually retested until it finally confirmed the
original A sample positive, and millions of L'Equipe readers are
convinced that the newspaper proved Armstrong's EPO use through the
analysis of his supposed frozen A sample.

One wonders whether the B sample will soon be relegated along with
presumption of innocence and I conjecture that most non-scientists
involved in cycling have no clue why the B sample is so important. For
this reason it is important to go over the basic reason for this
confirmation. Since medical science is imprecise due to the
inevitability of experimental error, medical tests such at the EPO
test cannot avoid having a marging or error, so even 1% chance of
getting a false positive is considered reasonable. However, elementary
probability theory shows that if the EPO test is administered 100
times (close to the numbers in this Tour de France), and (for the sake
of argument) the probability of a false positive is 1% for each test,
then the probability of having at least one false positive among the
100 rises to about 63%. In other words, as everyone is saying, more
tests mean more cheaters will get caught, but it also means that more
non-cheaters will get falsely accused from their A sample. That is
just an inescapable result of the inherent uncertainty of medical
science. And that's exactly where the B sample comes in, a falsely
accused clean rider will then have a 99% chance of being exonerated by
his B sample.

One can understand how the non-scientifically trained cycling
community might find the testing protocol labourious and unecessary,
however, there can be no excuse for lack of rigour and breach of
protocol by a scientific testing agency. In particular, the LNDD
laboratory was shown on a number of occasions to lack necessary high
scientific standards. The first example is the USADA Landis panel
which unanimously threw out the original test results for the
testosterone positive (though the CAS panel has since reversed this by
ruling that it was "good faith" incompetence). Secondly, the LNDD
gave a different interpretation of Mayo's B sample from two other
laboratories even though one of the basic principles of scientific
investigation is that an experiment must be repeatable and can be
verified independently. It is also important to mention the LNDD's
role in the fraudulent L'Equipe article on Armstrong's frozen samples
which led to it being chastised both by the IOC and the UCI. Far from
finding and eliminating the person or persons who leaked their results
to the newspaper, the LNDD has continued to leak their tests results
to L'Equipe. This is a clear violation of protocol as was recently
stated by WADA CEO David Howman referring to the LNDD-L'Equipe leaks
in an e-mail quoted on the LA Times website by reporter Phillip Hersh
in his article "What a bunch of cycling dope(r)s" of July 17, 2008
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/olym...-bunch-of.html

"The only organization that can match the anonymous sample to an
athlete is the one under whose jurisdiction the test was conducted.
WADA is disappointed by any breach of confidentiality that may occur
during the results management process. Any breach is unacceptable."

One can only wonder at the WADA definition of the word "unacceptable"
given the many years that these leaks have been going on without there
having been any formal action taken by the WADA on this matter.

Apart from having their jobs unjustly taken away before the
confirmation of their B sample, having their names leaked to the press
by the testing laboratory, the final blow to this year's Tour de
France riders is that they will have the added penalty of having their
B sample tested again at the LNDD due to ASO's rift with the UCI. In
other words, ASO has made sure that the embarassing string of negative
Mayo B samples will not be repeated. It is scary to think that the
riders are not even aware that their rights are being taken from them,
until they test positive that is.....

-ilan



I am by no means an expert on clinical laboratory technology, but
anyone who has gotten several medical tests or known someone who's
gotten several medical tests can testify to human and clinical fallibility.
It almost gives me a bit of sympathy for creationists trying to pass
"intelligent design" off as science. They tend to feel that science is
our new religion.
Of course it's not--not to scientists. But if you BELIEVE and have
FAITH in the INFALLIBILITY of the clinical test, maybe science as a
religion really is out there.

Steve

Steven Bornfeld wrote:
Of course it's not--not to scientists. But if you BELIEVE and have
FAITH in the INFALLIBILITY of the clinical test, maybe science as a
religion really is out there.

Not really. More a case of people who want to believe something without
having to think for themselves. That's what makes religions popular.

On Jul 19, 10:17 pm, Donald Munro wrote:
Steven Bornfeld wrote:
Of course it's not--not to scientists. But if you BELIEVE and have
FAITH in the INFALLIBILITY of the clinical test, maybe science as a
religion really is out there.

Not really. More a case of people who want to believe something without
having to think for themselves. That's what makes religions popular.

I just managed to connect my wife's Nintendo DS to our Wifi. I can do
ANYTHING!

-ilan

In article
,
wrote:

On Jul 19, 10:17 pm, Donald Munro wrote:
Steven Bornfeld wrote:
Of course it's not--not to scientists. But if you BELIEVE and have
FAITH in the INFALLIBILITY of the clinical test, maybe science as a
religion really is out there.

Not really. More a case of people who want to believe something without
having to think for themselves. That's what makes religions popular.

I just managed to connect my wife's Nintendo DS to our Wifi. I can do
ANYTHING!

-ilan

Translation: ilan just turned off the WPA security on his access point.
Free internet if you're in the neighbourhood!

I do anything for a living,

--
Ryan Cousineau http://www.wiredcola.com/
"In other newsgroups, they killfile trolls."
"In rec.bicycles.racing, we coach them."

On Jul 19, 2:51*pm, wrote:

Apart from having their jobs unjustly taken away before the
confirmation of their B sample, having their names leaked to the press
by the testing laboratory, the final blow to this year's Tour de
France riders is that they will have the added penalty of having their
B sample tested again at the LNDD due to ASO's rift with the UCI. In
other words, ASO has made sure that the embarassing string of negative
Mayo B samples will not be repeated. It is scary to think that the
riders are not even aware that their rights are being taken from them,
until they test positive that is.....

This sounds like a a a con con conspira cy.

Conspiracy. Not "Conspiracy Theory".

"Let's get a positive reader in here!"

There's a strong element of revenge for the failure of past attempts
to intimidate in all of this.

IOW, some athletes are still getting Pounded. --D-y

| Apart from having their jobs unjustly taken away before the
| confirmation of their B sample, having their names leaked to the press
| by the testing laboratory, the final blow to this year's Tour de
| France riders is that they will have the added penalty of having their
| B sample tested again at the LNDD due to ASO's rift with the UCI. In
| other words, ASO has made sure that the embarassing string of negative
| Mayo B samples will not be repeated. It is scary to think that the
| riders are not even aware that their rights are being taken from them,
| until they test positive that is.....
|
| -ilan

I understand the point you're trying to make, but the timing is awful.

There appears to be plenty of evidence, including confessions & confiscated materials, to indicate that doping is, indeed, going on. And that at least some of those caught are dead-to-rights guilty as charged. That being the case, arguments such as yours may simply reinforce the mindset of those who believe that doping must be stopped regardless of the costs, regardless of how many innocents are caught up in the net. Why? Because you're making your case at a time in which nearly everyone believes in the guilt of those charged, and thus you come across similar to a defense lawyer for a client that everyone knows is guilty, and trying to get the client off on a technicality.

This is not the time for technicalities, in my opinion.

--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReactionBicycles.com


wrote in message ...
|I just sent this to CyclingNews letters:
|
| What worries me the most about the latest round of Tour de France
| doping scandals is how pure science, the basis for all doping tests,
| is being forgotten in favour of political expediency. Riders are being
| fired, teams are leaving the race, and sponsors are withdrawing
| because of positive A samples, which in themselves do not provide any
| kind of proof of doping. This is not surprising in the current climate
| in which WADA head Dick Pound wanted Marion Jones to explain why her
| EPO B sample returned negative after a positive A sample, Iban Mayo's
| B sample was continually retested until it finally confirmed the
| original A sample positive, and millions of L'Equipe readers are
| convinced that the newspaper proved Armstrong's EPO use through the
| analysis of his supposed frozen A sample.
|
| One wonders whether the B sample will soon be relegated along with
| presumption of innocence and I conjecture that most non-scientists
| involved in cycling have no clue why the B sample is so important. For
| this reason it is important to go over the basic reason for this
| confirmation. Since medical science is imprecise due to the
| inevitability of experimental error, medical tests such at the EPO
| test cannot avoid having a marging or error, so even 1% chance of
| getting a false positive is considered reasonable. However, elementary
| probability theory shows that if the EPO test is administered 100
| times (close to the numbers in this Tour de France), and (for the sake
| of argument) the probability of a false positive is 1% for each test,
| then the probability of having at least one false positive among the
| 100 rises to about 63%. In other words, as everyone is saying, more
| tests mean more cheaters will get caught, but it also means that more
| non-cheaters will get falsely accused from their A sample. That is
| just an inescapable result of the inherent uncertainty of medical
| science. And that's exactly where the B sample comes in, a falsely
| accused clean rider will then have a 99% chance of being exonerated by
| his B sample.
|
| One can understand how the non-scientifically trained cycling
| community might find the testing protocol labourious and unecessary,
| however, there can be no excuse for lack of rigour and breach of
| protocol by a scientific testing agency. In particular, the LNDD
| laboratory was shown on a number of occasions to lack necessary high
| scientific standards. The first example is the USADA Landis panel
| which unanimously threw out the original test results for the
| testosterone positive (though the CAS panel has since reversed this by
| ruling that it was "good faith" incompetence). Secondly, the LNDD
| gave a different interpretation of Mayo's B sample from two other
| laboratories even though one of the basic principles of scientific
| investigation is that an experiment must be repeatable and can be
| verified independently. It is also important to mention the LNDD's
| role in the fraudulent L'Equipe article on Armstrong's frozen samples
| which led to it being chastised both by the IOC and the UCI. Far from
| finding and eliminating the person or persons who leaked their results
| to the newspaper, the LNDD has continued to leak their tests results
| to L'Equipe. This is a clear violation of protocol as was recently
| stated by WADA CEO David Howman referring to the LNDD-L'Equipe leaks
| in an e-mail quoted on the LA Times website by reporter Phillip Hersh
| in his article "What a bunch of cycling dope(r)s" of July 17, 2008
| http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/olym...-bunch-of.html
|
| "The only organization that can match the anonymous sample to an
| athlete is the one under whose jurisdiction the test was conducted.
| WADA is disappointed by any breach of confidentiality that may occur
| during the results management process. Any breach is unacceptable."
|
| One can only wonder at the WADA definition of the word "unacceptable"
| given the many years that these leaks have been going on without there
| having been any formal action taken by the WADA on this matter.
|
| Apart from having their jobs unjustly taken away before the
| confirmation of their B sample, having their names leaked to the press
| by the testing laboratory, the final blow to this year's Tour de
| France riders is that they will have the added penalty of having their
| B sample tested again at the LNDD due to ASO's rift with the UCI. In
| other words, ASO has made sure that the embarassing string of negative
| Mayo B samples will not be repeated. It is scary to think that the
| riders are not even aware that their rights are being taken from them,
| until they test positive that is.....
|
| -ilan

Mike Jacoubowsky wrote:

I understand the point you're trying to make, but the timing is awful.

There appears to be plenty of evidence, including confessions & confiscated materials, to indicate that doping is, indeed, going on. And that at least some of those caught are dead-to-rights guilty as charged. That being the case, arguments such as yours may simply reinforce the mindset of those who believe that doping must be stopped regardless of the costs, regardless of how many innocents are caught up in the net. Why? Because you're making your case at a time in which nearly everyone believes in the guilt of those charged, and thus you come across similar to a defense lawyer for a client that everyone knows is guilty, and trying to get the client off on a technicality.

This is not the time for technicalities, in my opinion.

--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReactionBicycles.com

Wow, the "Kill 'em all and let god sort it out" argument!
B samples are not technicalities, they are the real evidence. Positive
"A" samples are (from a scientific inquiry point of view) only the
suggestion to look further, not actionable data.
It's unconscionable, and I'm surprised that it's been legally
defensible, that ANY action including a press release, can be taken on
the result of a test of a single sample.


Shawn

"Shawn" wrote in message . ..
| Mike Jacoubowsky wrote:
|
| I understand the point you're trying to make, but the timing is awful.
|
| There appears to be plenty of evidence, including confessions & confiscated materials, to indicate that doping is, indeed, going on. And that at least some of those caught are dead-to-rights guilty as charged. That being the case, arguments such as yours may simply reinforce the mindset of those who believe that doping must be stopped regardless of the costs, regardless of how many innocents are caught up in the net. Why? Because you're making your case at a time in which nearly everyone believes in the guilt of those charged, and thus you come across similar to a defense lawyer for a client that everyone knows is guilty, and trying to get the client off on a technicality.
|
| This is not the time for technicalities, in my opinion.
|
| --Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
| www.ChainReactionBicycles.com
|
| Wow, the "Kill 'em all and let god sort it out" argument!
| B samples are not technicalities, they are the real evidence. Positive
| "A" samples are (from a scientific inquiry point of view) only the
| suggestion to look further, not actionable data.
| It's unconscionable, and I'm surprised that it's been legally
| defensible, that ANY action including a press release, can be taken on
| the result of a test of a single sample.
|
|
| Shawn

I'd feel very differently... and have, in the past felt very differently... if it appeared that those caught were likely innocent. But so far, that hasn't been the case. We have equipment confiscated from one riders room, and confessions from the team mate of another. Beltran remains, so far as I know, the only rider without substantial corroborating evidence that the "A" sample's result is indicative of doping.

I cannot and will not defend the manner in which the ASO disregards basic decency by allowing test results to be leaked to L'Equipe; that's inexcusable, and casts doubt on the motivations and devotion to science of those in the lab.

--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReactionBicycles.com

On Jul 19, 12:51*pm, wrote:
And that's exactly where the B sample comes in, a falsely
accused clean rider will then have a 99% chance of being exonerated by
his B sample.

Unfortunately no, this will only happen if false positives can be
attributed entirely to variability in the testing procedure. If that
were the case, we could just develop a highly expensive test to
eliminate variability in the test procedure, and no B sample would be
needed.

In reality, test results are contaminated by the variability of the
test subject's physiology. Since A and B samples are taken at the same
time, and tested under the same criteria, testing of a B sample cannot
achieve anywhere near 99% exoneration of false positives.

In diagnostic medicine, when you get a positive result on one test,
you don't repeat the same test on a frozen and thawed portion of the
same sample as though that would help. Rather, you confirm or
disconfirm the diagnosis by performing a *different* test (that is
affected by different sources of variability in the patient's
physiology.).

-pm