Alpe73 said:
It's often the uniqueness of cases, including those (legal cases) that go to superior/supreme courts, that change procedure/practice/law ... hence the ruling that the PKS was deemed to be of no force or effect.
From what has been made public about the decision, I see no justification for not having that study. The main argument relevant to that was the effect of hdehydration, and since the alleged evidence that this is a significant factor in fact comes from lab studies, there's no reason why a controlled study of Froome couldn't have duplicated those conditions. The most important argument seems to have been the degree of variability, and a controlled study could have addressed this directly, rather than take Froome's word on the doses he used.
How strong is your suspicion that the decision was corrupt? How strong is your evidence for such a suspicion?
I don't think the decision was corrupt, if by that you mean WADA/UCI declared Froome exonerated while strongly believing he wasn't. I think they were probably convinced, though given that the decision came right before the Tour, there are certainly some grounds for thinking that the timing might have been a factor. Perhaps it was a sort of tie-breaker in a case that could have gone either way.
My main objection to the decision is that it wasn't transparent. We don't know the details. I understand the position that many people may not appreciate the science, and therefore, if the decision were published, it would be attacked, regardless. It probably would not convince a lot of Froome's critics. But when you are in the entertainment business--and all pro sports are about entertainment--you are supported by the public, which means IMO you have an obligation to be forthright with the public, regardless of the consequences. It's hypocritical to say, on the one hand, please continue to follow our sport, while on the other, trust us, we know what we're doing but we can't provide the proof of that. This isn't like classified information, where a government has a legitimate reason for not telling the public everything that is going on. And even in that situation, the public has representatives who can see those details.
There's another point that has gotten lost in all this. Even if Froome was fairly exonerated, if the arguments supporting the decision were sound, it doesn't mean he was innocent. In other doping cases, particularly involving blood manipulation, many guilty riders get off because they satisfy a minimum criterion that is set in a way that will knowingly result in many false negatives. That may have been the case with Froome, but because of the secrecy, we can't even make a judgment on that. From what I have learned from Austin, I tend to think that was the case--that the odds of his reaching that level were quite low, but high enough to justify exoneration on the grounds of avoiding a possible false positive--but I haven't seen enough to be sure of that.