Publicus said:
I believe that was a reference to the AMOUNT of cattle that were subject to the clen test. That is not, to my knowledge, the sampling error that I was discussing. When you are trying to draw inferences from small sample sizes, there is a significant error that should be disclosed as part of the analysis. So far as I've gleaned, that sampling error, for the entire test or each of the localities, has not be disclosed. I'm not a statistician, but as a lawyer, I would spend a great deal of time pointing out the error in relying on those statistics to draw inferences regarding the prevalence of clen in the Spanish meat supply. Without the meat he actually ate, he can't prove that the cow was treated with clen, but he can certainly demonstrate that it is much more likely to have occurred in that province than the broader EU statistics suggest otherwise. And once you accept that logic...
Again, Bert's team noted that about 8500 cattle had to be tested for a 1% error (see various discussions on this subject for the meaning of error in this context). Far more cattle are tested in Spain than this number. It is not a "small sample size", unless you mean small relative to the total number of cattle present. But sampling is always small in this sense. Thus the argument of Bert's lawyers that 99.75% of the cattle were not tested is disingenuous. In any sampling procedure, the vast majority of subjects are not tested.
The locality argument is a red herring. Of course one can always point out that in a large sample size, any particular locale within the sampling area will have a much smaller sample size. But the probability of that locale having a different pattern of contamination (which, to repeat, is essentially zero) than the area as a whole, is very small. Unless, " he can certainly demonstrate that it is much more likely to have occurred in that province than the broader EU statistics suggest otherwise."
Has Bert demonstrated this? Not to my knowledge. Supposedly the brother of one of the suppliers who might have produced the meat Bert ate was busted several years ago. How do you suppose he was busted? I would assume by failing a test. I don't believe it was because they found bottles or whatever of CB in his barn, though if someone knows otherwise, I would be very interested. But assuming it was from failing a test, that bust is part of the statistics, and to use this argument is to imply support for the statistics.
But the results of more recent tests from this area were 0 for 100. This, again, is a number provided by Bert's team. Not a very promising start to making the claim that this area is different. In fact, the % of positives in this area in this more recent survey. was exactly the same as in Spain or the EU.
As many here are quick to point out, there may be a lot more information out there that we are not privy to. Based on what the RFEC did make public, I tend to doubt that. But even if it's true, RFEC at the least can be faulted for lack of transparency. If they have some magic bullet that clears Bert, shouldn't cycling fans be allowed to see it? Don't people have a right to know why someone is cleared?
To me that is another piece of evidence with everything that is wrong with doping witch hunt. 
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