Pseudo-science

[sniper]

shouldn't it be time for sports scientists to start addressing the impact of doping on performance?
i still see too few articles on that topic, though i'd love to gather some links in this thread.

meanwhile we get tons of sports physiological pieces about the impact of nutrition, certain training schemes, and god knows what on performance, where the possible role of doping by the subjects is completeley, and i mean COMPLETELY, ignored.
To me that's the real pseudo-science going on right now, disconnected from the reality of doping in topsport.
Physiological data that seems to become totally meaningless in the face of that reality.

Take this piece from Swart for instance (i happened to be looking into his articles, but could have taken tons of other examples from other authors, and might provide more examples as the thread goes along, if it goes along that is):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19204572

He doesn't seem to have a clue (or doesn't seem to care, or both) whether his test persons are/have been doping or not and what impact that might have had on the test results.
What is the value of the results of such physiological tests done on persons of whom we don't know which (illegal) substances they took/have been taking let alone what effect those substances may have on physiological parameters?

Additionally disappointing is that such pieces don't even make room for a methodological caveat addressing the possibility of the test results being influenced by PEDs. As far as I know, making note of such caveats is common practice, even obligatory, in most science, and the caveats usually do not reduce the value of the results/claims. Quite on the contrary.

Anyway, I mean jeez, we're at least 3 years (or 5, taking Floyd's emails as terminus post quem, or even 10, if we take common sense into consideration) since it is widely known that that article was scientifically misleading, to put it mildly.
Isn't it time for sports science to catch up with reality?

any other thoughts?

 

[sniper]

As I added in editing my post, >5% of body mass in both cases. The World Champion (female) ended up visually being leaner (I'd say the female equivalent to someone like Froome), but the actual change was more apparent for cat. 1 (male).

do you have any idea whether or not she was doping in order to achieve that weight loss?
Or was it a matter of good faith?

No idea.

thanks for confirming.
great science!

Not science, just an anecdote.

backtrack noted.

edit: if you don't mind, i copy this exchange into the thread on pseudo-science. it's a perfect case in point.

 

[acoggan]

Re:

edit: if you don't mind, i copy this exchange into the thread on pseudo-science. it's a perfect case in point.

Well as a matter of fact, I do mind, because once again you're attempting to tar me by distorting facts. To wit: I'm not a sports scientist, and the anecdotal observation I shared was never more than that, i.e., an anecdotal observation. It therefore has no more to do with the field of sports science than any statements someone like you might make.

 

[sniper]

Re:

...........where a sports scientist was seen to know everything about PEDs ........they would

quickly be labelled as a supplier/enabler wherever they had contact with sporting teams?

Mark L

it's an important point you raise.

the pharma industry suffers from similar conflicts of interest, where scientists are often simply bought to support pseudo-scientific claims.

imo a sports scientists has two possibilities: they should either decide to commercialize their knowledge and stay clear of science, or they stay in science and avoid conflicts of interest.

I admit this is idealistic. There will never be a strict separation.
But that doesnt dismiss any sports scientist from his/her obligation to (a) address the issue of doping and (b) make clear note of any possible conflicts of interest.

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

edit: if you don't mind, i copy this exchange into the thread on pseudo-science. it's a perfect case in point.

Well as a matter of fact, I do mind, because once again you're attempting to tar me by distorting facts. To wit: I'm not a sports scientist, and the anecdotal observation I shared was never more than that, i.e., an anecdotal observation. It therefore has no more to do with the field of sports science than any statements someone like you might make.

didn't you provide it as a scientific argument though? (in the context of whether Froome's alleged weight loss is plausible)

 

[acoggan]

Re: Re:

edit: if you don't mind, i copy this exchange into the thread on pseudo-science. it's a perfect case in point.

Well as a matter of fact, I do mind, because once again you're attempting to tar me by distorting facts. To wit: I'm not a sports scientist, and the anecdotal observation I shared was never more than that, i.e., an anecdotal observation. It therefore has no more to do with the field of sports science than any statements someone like you might make.

didn't you provide it as a scientific argument though? (in the context of whether Froome's alleged weight loss is plausible)

No. Nothing scientific about an anecdotal observation like that (i.e., there's a lot more to science than just measuring things).

Of course, that also doesn't mean that said observation is incorrect.

 

[sniper]

i think we agree.

still, for the record, you seem to be contradicting yourself there.
you say "there's a lot more to science than just measuring things". So an anecdote could also be used in a scientific context, right? In support of a scientific argument?
but then you say there's "nothing scientific about an anecdotal observation like that".

just saying, you seemed to use the anecdote in a scientific context, so maybe it would have been good to add the caveat that you dont know if the test person was doping.
(to be sure, you did add that caveat for Froome)

 

[42x16ss]

Re: Re:

...........where a sports scientist was seen to know everything about PEDs ........they would

quickly be labelled as a supplier/enabler wherever they had contact with sporting teams?

Mark L

it's an important point you raise.

the pharma industry suffers from similar conflicts of interest, where scientists are often simply bought to support pseudo-scientific claims.

imo a sports scientists has two possibilities: they should either decide to commercialize their knowledge and stay clear of science, or they stay in science and avoid conflicts of interest.

I admit this is idealistic. There will never be a strict separation.
But that doesnt dismiss any sports scientist from his/her obligation to (a) address the issue of doping and (b) make clear note of any possible conflicts of interest.

The problem is, unless an active athlete admits that they're doping (and honestly, who is going to do that) or the test results are way off in bizzaro land you would be kind of obliged to take their word at face value to a good extent unless you've already got a very good reason to be cynical.

 

[Arrowfarm]

as far as pseudo science goes, cherry picking is often mentioned. So I was thinking maybe this "Froome has always had a big engine, because some guy said it years ago and besides look what we found... an 8 years old test"-argument for Froome's cleanliness is also a kind of cherrypicking.
Is Froome the only one or is he just the only one we're hearing about?
How many pros has had a former coach say exactly the same about them?
Maybe there's a whole world of excellent testresults and coaches praising the next one-of-a-kind, only to find they didn't become more than doms?

Anyway, I havent looked into it. it was just a thought

Arrow

 

[djpbaltimore]

What indication is there that any of the volunteers in the study cohort are doping? It is not like they are drawing from the professional peloton. And in referencing that kind of paper, it should be referenced as 'they' not 'he' because it is a collaborative effort.

Subjects
Twenty-one well-trained men cyclists (13) (mean ± SD; age = 31 ± 6 years; stature = 1.82 ± 0.07 m; mass = 74.9 ± 8.8 kg) volunteered for this study. After being fully informed of the risks and stresses associated with the study, all subjects completed a Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire (4), had their training logs analyzed, and had a personal interview about their cycling history. All subjects gave their written informed consent to participate in the study. The experimental protocol was approved by the ethics and research committee of the Faculty of Health Sciences of the University of Cape Town.

 

[Fearless Greg Lemond]

Re:

as far as pseudo science goes, cherry picking is often mentioned. So I was thinking maybe this "Froome has always had a big engine, because some guy said it years ago and besides look what we found... an 8 years old test"-argument for Froome's cleanliness is also a kind of cherrypicking.
Is Froome the only one or is he just the only one we're hearing about?
How many pros has had a former coach say exactly the same about them?
Maybe there's a whole world of excellent testresults and coaches praising the next one-of-a-kind, only to find they didn't become more than doms?

Anyway, I havent looked into it. it was just a thought

Arrow

A very good thought. What happened to the Chinese guy who was also at the UCI Centre and beat Froome at the B-worlds?

Pseudo science doesnt exist. There is science and non - science, yet it is too abstract, you dont have to have a degree of competence to have the gift of CRITICAL thinking.

I am not a scientist, but, are the people who are saying some are pseudo scientists scientists? Having an MDA in landscaping doesnt give one the right to call others pseudo scientists; that was a joke Brian, I know you read here.

 

[Alex Simmons/RST]

shouldn't it be time for sports scientists to start addressing the impact of doping on performance?
i still see too few articles on that topic, though i'd love to gather some links in this thread.

meanwhile we get tons of sports physiological pieces about the impact of nutrition, certain training schemes, and god knows what on performance, where the possible role of doping by the subjects is completeley, and i mean COMPLETELY, ignored.
To me that's the real pseudo-science going on right now, disconnected from the reality of doping in topsport.
Physiological data that seems to become totally meaningless in the face of that reality.

Science of cycling (or athletic) performance that doesn't look at the impacts of doping is still science. That's because in general it seeks to identify and isolate what if any impacts certain interventions have, and sometimes if one is able, to also explain why such interventions have the impact they do.

The fact that a study that e.g. investigates the impact of say heat on performance doesn't consider doping, does not make it pseudoscience. A study that investigates e.g. the reliability of testing methodologies or measurement equipment or techniques that doesn't consider doping does not make it pseudo-science. That's because doping in many cases isn't a relevant variable.

To study the impact of doping on performance, one needs to have reliable data. If your data is fuzzy on the details of exactly what doping if any a test subject does, then how on earth can you expect scientists to do any real science on it?

Do you really think a scientist starting with a survey of pro riders is going to get precise details of what if any doping regime they use and all their performance data and conduct physiological testing to make statistically significant conclusions able to isolate the doping variable from all the other performance impact variables? That's the problem since performance is an integral of many many variables.

Pseudoscience is defined as

a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method

Whether or not doping is a topic of or a consideration in science research isn't relevant to the application of the scientific method.

As to the question of performing actual science wrt to impact of doping, I did a quick pubmed search query and found about 40 links on the topic, and they appeared to be 4 broad categories:
- attitudinal studies,
- prevalence assessment/commentary,
- testing of the impact of specific substances (performance, health, other), and
- effectiveness of detection techniques.

That quick search would not by any stretch be comprehensive.

I think the use of the term pseudoscience is incorrect in this context. I think that it's more an examination of the logical fallacies employed by those engaging in the discussions, either knowingly or otherwise. Many people are unaware they use or resort to logical fallacy in their arguments.

 

[acoggan]

Re:

as far as pseudo science goes, cherry picking is often mentioned. So I was thinking maybe this "Froome has always had a big engine, because some guy said it years ago and besides look what we found... an 8 years old test"-argument for Froome's cleanliness is also a kind of cherrypicking.
Is Froome the only one or is he just the only one we're hearing about?
How many pros has had a former coach say exactly the same about them?
Maybe there's a whole world of excellent testresults and coaches praising the next one-of-a-kind, only to find they didn't become more than doms?

Anyway, I havent looked into it. it was just a thought

Arrow

It would only be cherry-picking if other VO2max test data on Froome himself were ignored.

As for the Chinese rider, maybe he found a more lucrative profession?

 

[thehog]

The thread reminds me of quote on objectivity in measurement and qualification;

"The weather in Birmingham, UK was 'very hot' to the average Brit and 'very cold' to the average Mexican but they'll both accept it was 21c".

Comes down to independence and perspective. In Swart's case he wants to say it's "clean" regardless if it's hot or cold

 

[The Hitch]

The thread reminds me of quote on objectivity in measurement and qualification;

"The weather in Birmingham, UK was 'very hot' to the average Brit and 'very cold' to the average Mexican but they'll both accept it was 21c".

Comes down to independence and perspective. In Swart's case he wants to say it's "clean" regardless if it's hot or cold

Kerrison claims it was 15 degrees. Got to have that 6% margin of error

 

[thehog]

The thread reminds me of quote on objectivity in measurement and qualification;

"The weather in Birmingham, UK was 'very hot' to the average Brit and 'very cold' to the average Mexican but they'll both accept it was 21c".

Comes down to independence and perspective. In Swart's case he wants to say it's "clean" regardless if it's hot or cold

Kerrison claims it was 15 degrees. Got to have that 6% margin of error

'Variance' is a scientist best friend within the public eye. Behind closed doors it's very precise.

 

[Arrowfarm]

Re: Re:

as far as pseudo science goes, cherry picking is often mentioned. So I was thinking maybe this "Froome has always had a big engine, because some guy said it years ago and besides look what we found... an 8 years old test"-argument for Froome's cleanliness is also a kind of cherrypicking.
Is Froome the only one or is he just the only one we're hearing about?
How many pros has had a former coach say exactly the same about them?
Maybe there's a whole world of excellent testresults and coaches praising the next one-of-a-kind, only to find they didn't become more than doms?

Anyway, I havent looked into it. it was just a thought

Arrow

It would only be cherry-picking if other VO2max test data on Froome himself were ignored.

As for the Chinese rider, maybe he found a more lucrative profession?

Yeah, I know it's not real cherrypicking. The only reason we ever got to hear about Froome is because he suddenly became the best in the world, after being not-even-close-to-being-the-best-in-the-world for all of his career.
We only hear about him. Not others. Surely there are others. A kind of narrative cherry-picking, if you will

 

[Jacques de Molay]

Re:

Maybe there's a whole world of excellent test results and coaches praising the next one-of-a-kind, only to find they didn't become more than doms?

Jonathan Vaughters on the enigmatic Tom Danielson

Dr Inigo san Millan has been a friend of mine for years. He’s been working in breaking edge technology with training, free radical monitoring, and fatigue evaluation. He’s tested hundreds of top level professional riders, and has the most complete database of physiological data of any physiologist working in the professional peloton.

Dr Millan’s testing methods are groundbreaking, in that they try to evaluate what real physiological values are relevant in road cycling, not just looking at VO2 and other parameters that very often do not correlate to actual performance or talent.

This winter, when he called me from our training camp in New Mexico, his excited tone was something I’d never heard before. In his funny Basque accent, he blurted out with glee, “Jonathan, I have discovered that you have one of the most talented riders in the world on your team. His values are incredible, like Contador. He can win some very big races, I am sure.”

I assumed he was talking about Christian Vande Velde, but he soon corrected me.

“No, Tom Danielson. You must be very careful with this rider, he has an incredible engine. He is so very talented.”

And then Inigo stopped and said, “I don’t understand why I have not heard of him before in the bigger races.”

So there's that...

 

[Lyon]

The thing is that we live in very unscientific times and very few people even want to consider what goes into scientific thinking, which leads to scientists becoming very self-aware and the scientific community as a whole somewhat cult-like. It is very difficult to engage with outsiders in a meaningful way.

At the same time this actually increases the authority that scientists and scientific research holds over most people, creating a different kind of cult and you often see scientist throw their weight around in areas where it should matter less or none at all, be it in a different field than their own or completely outside the sphere of science.

In the case of Swart vs The Clinic we have all of this. We have the people out to get the scientist, the scientists discussing in a corner by themselves, the people who engage the scientist and his findings in a manner that is different than the scientific one, creating a lot of confusion, and finally the scientist using his authority in areas outside his chosen field of expertise, also creating a lot of confusion.

 

[Chipist]

Lyon, what makes you think clinicians are not scientific? Some of us certainly are. There has been very little (if any) criticism of the 2015 tests. Swart's comments on the 2007 tests hold little validity though, same a any other person of a scientific bent looking at them.

 

[Benotti69]

Unless sports scientists have tested athletes clean (very difficult) and know the gains the PEDs the athletes has taken give they can never be sure that results of any tests are legit.

 

[GW15something]

If Swart at any time said he thinks Froome is doping, this whole attack and fraud calling of Swart would never be happening. Basically he is saying what no one here wants to here other than hanging Froome by a stake for doping. Ross on the other hand is a hero cause he is saying he believes Froome dopes.
Its like choosing your friends based on your similarities.

 

[Spawn of e]

Has any study been done with athletes actually administered PEDs? Would that be legal from a medical POV, IOW administering drugs to subjects outside of their intended use?

That way you could compare to their allegedly clean data set and see the affect PEDs have on performance. This doesn't even have to be professional athletes to give a sense of the impact. All we have now are times up mountains and conjecture on % increase in performance.

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

...........where a sports scientist was seen to know everything about PEDs ........they would

quickly be labelled as a supplier/enabler wherever they had contact with sporting teams?

Mark L

it's an important point you raise.

the pharma industry suffers from similar conflicts of interest, where scientists are often simply bought to support pseudo-scientific claims.

imo a sports scientists has two possibilities: they should either decide to commercialize their knowledge and stay clear of science, or they stay in science and avoid conflicts of interest.

I admit this is idealistic. There will never be a strict separation.
But that doesnt dismiss any sports scientist from his/her obligation to (a) address the issue of doping and (b) make clear note of any possible conflicts of interest.

The problem is, unless an active athlete admits that they're doping (and honestly, who is going to do that) or the test results are way off in bizzaro land you would be kind of obliged to take their word at face value to a good extent unless you've already got a very good reason to be cynical.

true, that's a huge problem.
as a possible solution i'd propose nothing short of a paradigm change.
Sports science should really massively and collectively shift their focus to doping, on two levels simultaneously:
- PED detection
- influence of PEDs on performance.

That should be the priority.

Currently sports science is pseudoscience producing an epic quantity of totally unreliable results.
(cf. benotti's post above, have to agree).

Ironically, however, instead of focusing on doping (detection + physiological effects), what we see currently is that doping seems to be a huge taboo, which is understandable as it directly conflicts with the interests of the sports scientist's employers and sponsors. Don't bite the hand that feeds.

With a few exceptions like Ross Tucker and Michael Ashenden.

 

[sniper]

Re:

Has any study been done with athletes actually administered PEDs? Would that be legal from a medical POV, IOW administering drugs to subjects outside of their intended use?

That way you could compare to their allegedly clean data set and see the affect PEDs have on performance. This doesn't even have to be professional athletes to give a sense of the impact. All we have now are times up mountains and conjecture on % increase in performance.

last year there were two TV programs (one french, one from the BBC) where the effects of EPO were investigated.
ironic, innit, journalists doing the work that sports scientists should be doing.