RownhamHill said:
Any chance you can summarize your own view? I'm trying to follow this conversation as there's some interesting stuff in it, but I think you've got lost in trying to 'win' something.
My view should be clear in earlier posts, I'm not going to summarize it yet again.
There seems a fair level of agreement between you and Franklin that:
- Eating contaminated CB meat in Europe is highly unlikely
That's my view, but I'm not sure it's Franklin's.
- But there is clearly nothing infallible about the European meat supply chain
This gets back to the distinction between significant and plausible. My view is that there is not a significant chance of testing positive from eating contaminated meat in Europe. Significant being defined as greater than 0.01 for any particular rider.
- And eating contaminated CB in Europe is possible ('one in a million/lottery winner' - 730 million people in Europe. . .)
Again, if this is one's view, then one should be worried about being wrongly targeted in the bio-passport. No doping test can guarantee there will be no false positives.
Neither of these statements seems particularly controversial, right?
They are controversial if one first acknowledges that the possibility of testing positive from contaminated meat is below the standard used on other doping tests, then continues to argue that the CB test is unfair.
So Franklin's view seems to be that despite the former, the latter point (and hence the possibility of false positives) means putting the burden of proof on the athlete is fundamentally unjust.
And my view is that to be consistent he should argue the same with other doping tests, and also the criminal justice system, which occasionally puts an innocent person in jail. All he has to do to refute that criticism is present some specific numbers showing that the odds of testing positive for CB are much higher than that. So far, he hasn't done this.
Frankly you seem to be intent on arguing about some of the semantics he's used to make his case
Because his argument hinges on semantics. He's trying to blur the distinction between significant, which again, has a fairly precise meaning to scientists, and plausible, which does not. I will stop arguing semantics just as soon as Franklin starts presenting some specific numbers. Same thing with the Contador case. i posted in great detail back then, with specific numbers. Now he wants to argue against those conclusions, without addressing those numbers at all. When this is the tack someone takes, one is reduced to arguing semantics.
I'm interested in your view on the underlying point about justice - given the problems you yourself have pointed out with interpreting the source of a Clen positive from the test itself, is a positive test for this particular drug in and of itself still a useful tool in isolation?
To repeat yet again what I've already posted here, I agree with WADA that a threshold is not very useful. Currently, the best way to argue contamination is to provide--surprise!--evidence of contamination. As I further noted, a test for racemates might provide a better way to distinguish contamination from intentional use.
Should there be a burden of proof on the prosecutor to at least demonstrate a plausible scenario for how the positive might be the result of doping?
Are you serious? Any time someone tests positive for CB, there is almost always a plausible scenario for doping. I say almost, because the Contador case was exceptional, in that he tested negative for it not long before he tested positive. That put a limit on how long it could have been in his system, which in turn put a limit on how low his level could have been. This is why everyone on both sides acknowledged that he didn't intentionally take CB during the TDF--hence the transfusion scenario.
But this situation rarely occurs. Far more often, as with Rodgers AFAIK, there is one test in isolation. If that is the case, then of course there is a plausible (whatever that means) scenario for doping. Why wouldn't there be?
If everyone could be tested for CB every week, then if a positive occurred, one could estimate a maximum--based on testing negative a week earlier--that could have been ingested. If this maximum were well below the level one would need to take for PE, this would be strong evidence of contamination. But testing weekly would be hard to implement, I imagine.
Should Clen be treated as a drug like Caffeine (which as I understand it definitely has a pharmacological effect, but is so common in our culture as to make any kind of testing threshold absurd, so de facto it is a permitted PED?)
Again, this doesn't sound serious. CB has performance enhancing effects to a degree that caffeine does not. However, in any case where reasonable doubt exists about the source, I'd advocate reducing the penalty, just as often is done with contaminated supplements.
Should we just ignore the possibility of false positives as 'collateral damage' in the fight against PEDS (if so, why?)
All science can do is try to reduce false positives to a minimum.
Whatever, these are just questions for discussion; because at the moment this discussion currently is becoming increasingly sterile, and could be so much more interesting!
I thought it was sterile and redundant quite a long time ago. I reply to Franklin occasionally not because I have any illusion the discussion is going anywhere, but just as a way of refreshing myself on CB issues.