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Re: Re:
Respectfully Alex,
What can ASADA do? Nothing. The federation has authority. Remember Armstrong's ban was a recommendation from USADA to the UCI.
If you didn't know this, now you do.
Alex Simmons/RST said:
Respectfully Alex,
What can ASADA do? Nothing. The federation has authority. Remember Armstrong's ban was a recommendation from USADA to the UCI.
If you didn't know this, now you do.
Re: Re:
All I'm saying is if there is evidence of doping, then take it to ASADA. If there is not, then it's mostly pub hyperbole.DirtyWorks said:
Re:
And so much easier than in cycling, where everything is skewed in favor of the richer teams. The more scrutiny a race is under - and the tougher the local laws against drug use - the more resources you need to have the infrastructure in place. That is why it is easier for a big team to dominate the Tour than certain other races.Freddythefrog said:
One thing I noticed from the IAAF statement just released. They use comments from Giuseppe D'Onofrio.
http://www.iaaf.org/news/press-release/statement-response-ard-sunday-times-anti-dopi
Yet who was on Dutch TV a couple of years back analysing the blood profiles of Juventus players and pointing out the likelihood of them blood doping.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3a2DmUYSAEQ
http://www.iaaf.org/news/press-release/statement-response-ard-sunday-times-anti-dopi
Yet who was on Dutch TV a couple of years back analysing the blood profiles of Juventus players and pointing out the likelihood of them blood doping.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3a2DmUYSAEQ
Re: Re:
Of course not - These guys reached the state level at 1500m, so are essentially amateur athletes - there is noo incentive for them to report to ASADA.
And I doubt that anyone will report to ASADA after the Essendon/Cronulla debacle.
And of course Dave Culbert has been silent on twitter about The Times report - Surprising seeing how much crap he's thrown out in the last 2 years about Australian athletes being as pure as snow.
Alex Simmons/RST said:
Of course not - These guys reached the state level at 1500m, so are essentially amateur athletes - there is noo incentive for them to report to ASADA.
And I doubt that anyone will report to ASADA after the Essendon/Cronulla debacle.
And of course Dave Culbert has been silent on twitter about The Times report - Surprising seeing how much crap he's thrown out in the last 2 years about Australian athletes being as pure as snow.
Re: Re:
Its not pub talk, though the Dave Culbert's of this world, AOC and the Athletics Australia want you to believe Aussie Olympic Athletes are clean. And you can include he whole Aussie Olympic Movement. They preach about ' being clean ' when this is far from the truth.
Alex Simmons/RST said:
Its not pub talk, though the Dave Culbert's of this world, AOC and the Athletics Australia want you to believe Aussie Olympic Athletes are clean. And you can include he whole Aussie Olympic Movement. They preach about ' being clean ' when this is far from the truth.
Well, what I've read and heard so far about the recent publications on doping in Athletics boils down roughly to two sides. One is the classic "Armstrong defence", no athlete has tested positive (see the IAAF statement). The other side, the doping accusers (or maybe those who are tired of being fooled), are asking why the individuals involved are not prosecuted. I think both sides are, quite possibly deliberately, ignoring the (empirical/statistical) methodology used, focusing erroneously on individual cases. I think the methodology does not allow that, but still tells us a telling tale.
Let me explain:
In 1986, the Chernobyl disaster released a radioactive cloud that spread radioactive material over an estimated 40% of Europe's mainland. Long story short, after the event, there was a noticeably increased incidence of thyroid cancer in children in regions of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. Due to the lack of other possible explanations and given the fact that exposure to radioactive material is linked to thyroid cancer, it is generally accepted that the Chernobyl disaster was the cause of the cancer spike. However, that does not mean that every individual case of thyroid cancer was caused by the exposure, as thyroid cancer has other caused as well. The reverse is also not true: Despite not being able to prove, for any single case, that the thyroid cancer was caused by the Chernobyl disaster, the sheer unlikelihood of the total number of cases occurring "naturally" gives credibility to the conclusion that at least some of the cases (most likely most of the cases) were caused by the Chernobyl disaster.
The same is true for the report on the number of abnormal blood values in Athletics. The vast number of abnormal values makes it unlikely that they are all naturally occurring, so the conclusion that something is going on (e.g., doping) is likely. However, while "abnormal" or "unlikely", we do know that those values occur naturally as well, in relatively rare cases. So while the total number suggest something is going on, we cannot use that fact to say that any individual case must be caused by something unnatural, just like we can't say that all of the thyroid cancer case were caused by the Chernobyl disaster.
This, in turn, show that the "defence" of the IAAF is besides the point: This report does not try to prove for any single case that doping was the cause of the abnormal values, so saying that it cannot prove what it does not pretend to prove ("no single athlete has tested positive") is no defence at all against the claim that the sheer number of abnormal values point to an unnatural cause (e.g., doping). The total number of athletes with abnormal values shows that something is going on, so their statement only makes it worse for them: They were not able to catch a single one of the dopers.
However, unfortunately for the accuser, the reverse it also true: While we know that something sketchy is going on, it is quite probable that for some individuals those numbers are in fact natural. So, just like with the thyroid cancer cases, while we know that a lot of the cases were probably caused by doping, we have no way of discerning which.
In a perfect world, we would now update the prior probability of doping use for the suspect individuals in their ABP (athlete's biological passport). However, we're currently bound to the "innocent until proven guilty" principle, thus artificially setting the prior probability of doping use to zero. Still, I would have liked to know if changing the parameters of the Bayesian network would highlight some "interesting" individuals.
Let me explain:
In 1986, the Chernobyl disaster released a radioactive cloud that spread radioactive material over an estimated 40% of Europe's mainland. Long story short, after the event, there was a noticeably increased incidence of thyroid cancer in children in regions of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. Due to the lack of other possible explanations and given the fact that exposure to radioactive material is linked to thyroid cancer, it is generally accepted that the Chernobyl disaster was the cause of the cancer spike. However, that does not mean that every individual case of thyroid cancer was caused by the exposure, as thyroid cancer has other caused as well. The reverse is also not true: Despite not being able to prove, for any single case, that the thyroid cancer was caused by the Chernobyl disaster, the sheer unlikelihood of the total number of cases occurring "naturally" gives credibility to the conclusion that at least some of the cases (most likely most of the cases) were caused by the Chernobyl disaster.
The same is true for the report on the number of abnormal blood values in Athletics. The vast number of abnormal values makes it unlikely that they are all naturally occurring, so the conclusion that something is going on (e.g., doping) is likely. However, while "abnormal" or "unlikely", we do know that those values occur naturally as well, in relatively rare cases. So while the total number suggest something is going on, we cannot use that fact to say that any individual case must be caused by something unnatural, just like we can't say that all of the thyroid cancer case were caused by the Chernobyl disaster.
This, in turn, show that the "defence" of the IAAF is besides the point: This report does not try to prove for any single case that doping was the cause of the abnormal values, so saying that it cannot prove what it does not pretend to prove ("no single athlete has tested positive") is no defence at all against the claim that the sheer number of abnormal values point to an unnatural cause (e.g., doping). The total number of athletes with abnormal values shows that something is going on, so their statement only makes it worse for them: They were not able to catch a single one of the dopers.
However, unfortunately for the accuser, the reverse it also true: While we know that something sketchy is going on, it is quite probable that for some individuals those numbers are in fact natural. So, just like with the thyroid cancer cases, while we know that a lot of the cases were probably caused by doping, we have no way of discerning which.
In a perfect world, we would now update the prior probability of doping use for the suspect individuals in their ABP (athlete's biological passport). However, we're currently bound to the "innocent until proven guilty" principle, thus artificially setting the prior probability of doping use to zero. Still, I would have liked to know if changing the parameters of the Bayesian network would highlight some "interesting" individuals.
Re: Re:
Don't mind some posters. If you don't have a video of an athlete injecting or an actual positive test from a WADA accredited lab they will seek to disparage any discussion or insinuation of doping. Period.
Despite the location of the discussion.
Some people can see, some people are blind. It's just the way things are.
yaco said:
Don't mind some posters. If you don't have a video of an athlete injecting or an actual positive test from a WADA accredited lab they will seek to disparage any discussion or insinuation of doping. Period.
Despite the location of the discussion.
Some people can see, some people are blind. It's just the way things are.
Re:
You're right. Especially the way the information has been covered by the media, Seppelt's message of the content of the suspicious list is being seen as an accusation on athletes ("It's a famous British runner!" "Red tape block's the release and won't let justice happen" "Thank god it's not Bolt or Farah!")
The message is the IAAF's corruption, and the ineffectual execution of their anti-doping policy. That so many suspicious values went un-investigated, that federations' patterns of suspicion went unacknowledged is the message of the documentary.
Luckily, as Athletics Kenya, IAAF, and Russia respond, the outrageousness of their denials and responses is bringing the attention back onto the failure of the system, rather than reaching at "the list" for some sanctions.
And while I laugh at athletes trying to defend their possible appearance on The List with things like "a cold could change your values to make you suspicious", because the system is built to avoid false positives to its own fault, I have know that I really have no idea. The 1/1000 chance of a suspicious sample being natural is a long shot, but with 5000 samples being suspicious (I think? I lost track of the numbers), that is 5 athletes too many hung out to dry. I find myself backpedaling from my normal stance. The huge scale of bad values makes that 1/1000 more likely, in a worrying way. Luckily I don't have the list, because I wouldn't know what to do with it when I got past the known and obvious dopers and down to those "okay, a little suspicious, but..." kind of athletes.
WillemS said:
You're right. Especially the way the information has been covered by the media, Seppelt's message of the content of the suspicious list is being seen as an accusation on athletes ("It's a famous British runner!" "Red tape block's the release and won't let justice happen" "Thank god it's not Bolt or Farah!")
The message is the IAAF's corruption, and the ineffectual execution of their anti-doping policy. That so many suspicious values went un-investigated, that federations' patterns of suspicion went unacknowledged is the message of the documentary.
Luckily, as Athletics Kenya, IAAF, and Russia respond, the outrageousness of their denials and responses is bringing the attention back onto the failure of the system, rather than reaching at "the list" for some sanctions.
And while I laugh at athletes trying to defend their possible appearance on The List with things like "a cold could change your values to make you suspicious", because the system is built to avoid false positives to its own fault, I have know that I really have no idea. The 1/1000 chance of a suspicious sample being natural is a long shot, but with 5000 samples being suspicious (I think? I lost track of the numbers), that is 5 athletes too many hung out to dry. I find myself backpedaling from my normal stance. The huge scale of bad values makes that 1/1000 more likely, in a worrying way. Luckily I don't have the list, because I wouldn't know what to do with it when I got past the known and obvious dopers and down to those "okay, a little suspicious, but..." kind of athletes.
Seppelt on Off the Ball tonight.
http://www.newstalk.com/podcasts/Off_The_Ball/Off_The_Ball_Highlights/100071/
http://www.newstalk.com/podcasts/Off_The_Ball/Off_The_Ball_Highlights/100071/
Re: Re:
The football example isn't a reasonable analogy. That was about those involved with doping not wanting to give evidence.
* I can understand it might not be easy (e.g. it's your friend or team mate), but no incentive at all? Jeepers, I can see a very big incentive if you care about your sport. Otherwise you are accepting it's OK for a doping culture to persist.
I don't understand why there is no incentive* for a clean athlete or support person to provide clear evidence about individuals who are doping to ASADA? Not doing so means you are just another part of the culture of omerta, or you really don't have the evidence.yaco said:
The football example isn't a reasonable analogy. That was about those involved with doping not wanting to give evidence.
* I can understand it might not be easy (e.g. it's your friend or team mate), but no incentive at all? Jeepers, I can see a very big incentive if you care about your sport. Otherwise you are accepting it's OK for a doping culture to persist.
Re: Re:
but step back for a second and take a look at the premise.
you have just exposed 1000 individuals, but one has a false positive, the other nine hundred and ninety nine are positives exposed.
lets take 1000 clean athletes. Ask those one thousand clean athletes, if it is a risk to expose one false positive, whilst securing an indictment to nine hundred and ninety nine?
I think the clean athletes behind a wall of ignorance, will accept this compact everyday of the week.
they do not seek to deny a persons liberty. they do not seek to prevent them earning a living. They are preventing them to compete in a hypothetical fair sport.
More Strides than Rides said:
but step back for a second and take a look at the premise.
you have just exposed 1000 individuals, but one has a false positive, the other nine hundred and ninety nine are positives exposed.
lets take 1000 clean athletes. Ask those one thousand clean athletes, if it is a risk to expose one false positive, whilst securing an indictment to nine hundred and ninety nine?
I think the clean athletes behind a wall of ignorance, will accept this compact everyday of the week.
they do not seek to deny a persons liberty. they do not seek to prevent them earning a living. They are preventing them to compete in a hypothetical fair sport.
The latest Seb Coe interview is embarrassing.
Calling Ashenden and Parisotto "so-called experts".
Whatever little confidence I've had before about him is totally gone after tonight.
Calling Ashenden and Parisotto "so-called experts".
Whatever little confidence I've had before about him is totally gone after tonight.
Re: Re:
I'm not saying throw it away. I don't even know what data the list represents. There is mixed information that for some athletes it is just a single data point, but on the other hand, an off-score can't be generated without some longitudinal data.
I'm saying that being on this list should not be an automatic sanction. I don't think anyone was suggesting that, but my post was just echoing the previous post saying the same thing. I think the egregious off-scores, that are longitudinal in the normal BP protocol, could be sanctioned right away (and who knows, that might be the only situation for these suspicious athletes). I think that the athletes should be target tested, and samples retested.
But as our knowledge of what it represents stands right now...
I haven't been blood tested, so the IAAF would not have any of my data. But if they had one sample or two, I would be worried about what a single data point or two would represent on this list. Because, like I said, we don't know what it represents. I absolutely trust the experts' opinions, and trust their certainty that the suspicious label is a 1000:1 indicator of doping. But that's why I'm worried. because it is 1000:1, with several thousand samples and athletes being evaluated.
Kill one to save a thousand? I'm not willing to take that hit, nor would want to see my friends and competitors whom I trust to have take that hit.
blackcat said:
I'm not saying throw it away. I don't even know what data the list represents. There is mixed information that for some athletes it is just a single data point, but on the other hand, an off-score can't be generated without some longitudinal data.
I'm saying that being on this list should not be an automatic sanction. I don't think anyone was suggesting that, but my post was just echoing the previous post saying the same thing. I think the egregious off-scores, that are longitudinal in the normal BP protocol, could be sanctioned right away (and who knows, that might be the only situation for these suspicious athletes). I think that the athletes should be target tested, and samples retested.
But as our knowledge of what it represents stands right now...
I haven't been blood tested, so the IAAF would not have any of my data. But if they had one sample or two, I would be worried about what a single data point or two would represent on this list. Because, like I said, we don't know what it represents. I absolutely trust the experts' opinions, and trust their certainty that the suspicious label is a 1000:1 indicator of doping. But that's why I'm worried. because it is 1000:1, with several thousand samples and athletes being evaluated.
Kill one to save a thousand? I'm not willing to take that hit, nor would want to see my friends and competitors whom I trust to have take that hit.
Re:
That guy must have called Verbruggen for some advice on crisis management. Now you know that guy is deeply dirty, Verbruggen/Blatter dirty.
gooner said:
That guy must have called Verbruggen for some advice on crisis management. Now you know that guy is deeply dirty, Verbruggen/Blatter dirty.
Re: Re:
depends on the ratio of clean competitors to doped competitors.
depends on the barrier to entry that doping comprises.
depends on the amount of improvement that doping provides.
depends on what the professional sphere means in comparison to an amateur and rec competition.
depends on how you define "hit", or "take that hit", and the real world penalty.
A hypothetical case where this regulation, can maintain a sport where no one takes PEDs, but one person gets a false positive, where there is otherwise 999 doped PED taking athletes, I think athletes could make a commitment to the sport which requires a collective sacrifice. the 1/1000th sacrifice. Otherwise, they can be a clean athlete and go head to head with 999 PED athletes.
More Strides than Rides said:
depends on the ratio of clean competitors to doped competitors.
depends on the barrier to entry that doping comprises.
depends on the amount of improvement that doping provides.
depends on what the professional sphere means in comparison to an amateur and rec competition.
depends on how you define "hit", or "take that hit", and the real world penalty.
A hypothetical case where this regulation, can maintain a sport where no one takes PEDs, but one person gets a false positive, where there is otherwise 999 doped PED taking athletes, I think athletes could make a commitment to the sport which requires a collective sacrifice. the 1/1000th sacrifice. Otherwise, they can be a clean athlete and go head to head with 999 PED athletes.
Re: Re:
Only when said pseudo * are questioning the sportsmen's performance. Plenty of journos have defended said sportsmen from a pseudo logical POV and had no disagreement at all.
franic said:
Only when said pseudo * are questioning the sportsmen's performance. Plenty of journos have defended said sportsmen from a pseudo logical POV and had no disagreement at all.
Re:
Here is the full article:
Lord Coe: allegations against IAAF are declaration of war on my sport
http://gu.com/p/4b96y?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard
It beggers belief.
gooner said:
Here is the full article:
Lord Coe: allegations against IAAF are declaration of war on my sport
http://gu.com/p/4b96y?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard
It beggers belief.
Ever the politician the slimy so-and-so, he's courting favour with the federations. Votes are more important than catching frauds.
He's just repeated it all on Radio 4's Today programme. It's available on iplayer later if you want to,shout at your radio. God, he is an odious man.
Pretenders like Ashenden that don't, as Seb notes, have sufficient credentials, should just shut up and let the real experts like Seb share their insights:
lol
Blood Doping Expert Coe said:
lol
I listened to it this morning. Seb mentioned three experts they had working with them. Were any of these 3 the Monaco based doctor who works for both sides ? Who were these three who he thinks are so much better than Ashenden and Parisotto ?
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