Pseudo-science

[sniper]

Re:

no, not just for that.
learn to read before getting hotheaded, John.
and thanks for confirming that it was a commercial dressed up as science.

 

[ScienceIsCool]

Re: Re:

no, not just for that.
learn to read before getting hotheaded, John.

Go on...

John Swanson

 

[sniper]

science is cool, john, so let's stay cool.
*cool*

 

[ScienceIsCool]

Re:

science is cool, john, so let's stay cool.
*cool*

I'm cool. Please, go on.

John Swanson

 

[djpbaltimore]

Here is part of an abstract from a position paper that Dr. Spriet was an author on. He doesn't sound like a doping Dr. to me... It looks like yet another example where a physiologist is held to an impossible standard in the clinic. Guilty of pseudoscience if they do not talk about doping. Guilty of doping if they do research in an area that could benefit performance of elite athletes. He has 180 papers in pubmed and the vast majority are not about blood doping FWIW.

It is the position of the American College of Sports Medicine that any blood doping procedure used in an attempt to improve athletic performance is unethical, unfair, and exposes the athlete to unwarranted and potentially serious health risks.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8926864

 

[Aragon]

Re:

Evidence of what? That Lawrence Spriet is a blood doping specialist and that he experimented with blood doping on athletes? Just google the guy.
Or let me help you out:
Buick, F., N. Gledhill, A. Froese, L. Spriet and E. Meyers 1978 “Double-blind study of
blood boosting in highly trained runners.”
Yes, that's 1978.
And it's just one of several similar studies in which he's been involved.

You are at least partly right, that in some instances, the line between research on exercise physiology and PED "know-how" is very difficult to establish. This is even more difficult with the paper you referred to, as according to one historian, the research by the Canadian research team in late 1970s could've caused the US cycling team to adapt blood doping as a part of their preparation to the 1984 Summer Olympics:

John Gleaves: (Manufactured Dope: How the 1984 US Olympic Cycling Team Rewrote the Rules on Drugs in Sports", The International Journal of the History of Sport, Sept/2014)
[Edmund] Burke, a trained physiologist and familiar with scientific journal articles, had read an article written by Norman Gledhill published in The Physician and Sports Medicine September 1983 issue, which he shared with team head coach [Eddie] Borysewicz. The Gledhill article made a persuasive case for using transfusions. Not only did the article cite research on the procedure's positive effects, but also explained the process, including storage temperature, and pointed out that such a procedure was undetectable in blood tests and not included on the IOC'c doping control programme. For anyone looking for a good reason to use blood transfusions, this article certainly provided it.

My impression still is that the group of Canadian researchers were sincere in their research and it should be emphasized that Lawrence Spriet (who coauthored only two blood doping studies [1980, 1986]) wasn't the foremost specialist on the issue, but that the specialist was Norman H. Gledhill of the York University was. Dr. Gledhill had informed IOCs Arnold Beckett already in 1978 that in contrary to some research, blood doping actually does improve performance but only if the blood has been stored properly. In 1988 he was cautious that blood doping had been used in the Winter Olympics of Calgary and told that he had wanted the authorities to adapt a first version UCI's "health check", ie. a mandatory hematocrit limit:

Norman Gledhill: (Toronto Star, 2/19/1988)
Before the Olympics started in Calgary the IOC could have established the level of haemoglobin (red blood cells) it would allow in all athletes at 16 grams per 100 millilitres of blood. This could be done with blood taken through a finger-*** test... Any level higher than the imposed level would disqualify an athlete from competing in the Olympics. Rest or having blood withdrawn would return the haemoglobin level to the prescribed level... I have proposed this means of testing numerous times only to have it dismissed.

A year later in 1989 he testified under oath during the Dubin inquiry that coach Chuch DeBus had asked him for information about blood doping and whether "it was possible to bring his athletes to Toronto and have them tested for blood doping". Gledhill declined the offer.

 

[sniper]

Great contribution, Aragon. Thanks for making that link to Gledhill and the 1984 games.
Excellent.
There is a thread on blooddoping. This post belongs there as well. When i have more time I'll copy this exchange into that thread.

 

[ScienceIsCool]

Re:

Great contribution, Aragon. Thanks for making that link to Gledhill and the 1984 games.
Excellent.
There is a thread on blooddoping. This post belongs there as well. When i have more time I'll copy this exchange into that thread.

The link being that Gledhill warned authorities about the possibilities surrounding blood doping. Honestly, sniper.

John Swanson

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

Great contribution, Aragon. Thanks for making that link to Gledhill and the 1984 games.
Excellent.
There is a thread on blooddoping. This post belongs there as well. When i have more time I'll copy this exchange into that thread.

The link being that Gledhill warned authorities about the possibilities surrounding blood doping. Honestly, sniper.

John Swanson

honestly what, John?
You keep reading too much into my posts.

It's an excellent bit of context that Aragon provided. That's what I said and that's what I mean.

I have already argued in the US cycling thread that Burke must have been on to blood doping well before 1983 and that he used that Gledhill 1983 article merely as a smokescreen. Burke had already published a paper together with Ekblom before that and had worked together with the likes of Hagerman and Costill and so basically was pretty well embedded in the circles that knew about blood doping at the time.

But regardless, the anecdote that the Gledhill paper inspired Burke is an interesting one and it nicely serves to illustrate Aragon's wider point that "the line between research on exercise physiology and PED 'know-how' is very difficult to establish".

 

[djpbaltimore]

And yet, you have previously expressed the opinion that more work on PEDs should be done in the research community, blurring the line even further. I would make the claim that the vast majority of those doing physiology research never cross the line into doping athletes, so why are physiologists and their reputations constantly being tarred with that very accusation? As noted many times before, tying Hagerman to blood doping is incredibly tenuous.

 

[sniper]

You have a fair point and I recognize the dilemma. Have little time now but will expand a bit later.

 

[sniper]

Re:

And yet, you have previously expressed the opinion that more work on PEDs should be done in the research community

yes I have, and don't you agree that it should be? I don't see the problem here.
I don't criticize hagerman or costill or spriet for having done research on the effects of peds.

 

[sniper]

Re:

I would make the claim that the vast majority of those doing physiology research never cross the line into doping athletes, so why are physiologists and their reputations constantly being tarred with that very accusation?

similarly
I would argue that the vast majority of athletes are clean. Just not the ones at the top. Which is a tiny minirity, but it's the minority that interests us.

Also note that hagerman Herman and Sprite (autocorrect is a ***) did their research in a different period when the ethical status of doping was rather different from what it is now.
And while I applaud spriets work on blooddoping (in as far as he wasn't helping athletes to cheat), it doesn't excuse the pseudoscience hes currently involved in. Google spriet and Gatorade and you get the picture. He's a sell out.

 

[sniper]

And again. I recognize the dilemma/ precarious situation of doing research on doping in athletes and trying not to be accused of helping athletes to dope.
But it's not *my* dilemma to solve.
Sports science and exercise physiology are currently producing a whole shitbunch of disposable research data, because they don't control for the doping variable. It's their problem to solve. Right now I'm not seeing any attempts being made to solve it.
Do I have the solution? No I don't.
But as I've said many times: those who fail to remove themselves from obvious COIs will open themselves up to criticism and distrust. That's where some should start: removing themselves from obvious cois.

 

[sniper]

Re:

As noted many times before, tying Hagerman to blood doping is incredibly tenuous.

No it's not tenuous at all. It's merely plausible, although of course far from proven.
We've gone through his CV at length, you really wanna go there again? Well fine. From top of head:
- worked for the US army in the late 60s as an expert on the effects of altitud on soldiers.
- wrote papers citing works by ekblomm and astrand.
- worked with US olympic rowing team for many years
- was appointed by NASA as exercise physiologsphysiology.
- ties to us ski federation.
- appointed by Ariel and darkidarkin at the OTC.
- did physiological testing together with ed Burke.
- is still cited as one of the foremost altitude training specialists in the field.

Apologies for typos.

 

[sniper]

I now understand better why jeukendrup is linking to Spriet so often on Twitter.
Both are ambassadors for Gatorade. (Spriet Sprite in Canada askerasker In UK).
The Gatorade link also explains at least in part askeraskers incessant attempts to sell carbohydrate intake as pivotal ( something that is disputed in the literature)

 

[djpbaltimore]

Re:

And again. I recognize the dilemma/ precarious situation of doing research on doping in athletes and trying not to be accused of helping athletes to dope.
But it's not *my* dilemma to solve.
Sports science and exercise physiology are currently producing a whole shitbunch of disposable research data, because they don't control for the doping variable. It's their problem to solve. Right now I'm not seeing any attempts being made to solve it.
Do I have the solution? No I don't.
But as I've said many times: those who fail to remove themselves from obvious COIs will open themselves up to criticism and distrust. That's where some should start: removing themselves from obvious cois.

You know how they solve that one in the vast majority of cases? By not using professional athletes as their study cohort. You yourself just admitted that doping is not rife in that demographic. As long as COIs are disclosed, there is really no issue IMO. Anti-vaxxers accuse certain scientists of making vaccines for profit all of the time. Doing good science and profiting from it are not mutually exclusive propositions.

 

[djpbaltimore]

Re: Re:

As noted many times before, tying Hagerman to blood doping is incredibly tenuous.

No it's not tenuous at all. It's merely plausible, although of course far from proven.
We've gone through his CV at length, you really wanna go there again? Well fine. From top of head:
- worked for the US army in the late 60s as an expert on the effects of altitud on soldiers.
- wrote papers citing works by ekblomm and astrand.
- worked with US olympic rowing team for many years
- was appointed by NASA as exercise physiologsphysiology.
- ties to us ski federation.
- appointed by Ariel and darkidarkin at the OTC.
- did physiological testing together with ed Burke.
- is still cited as one of the foremost altitude training specialists in the field.

Apologies for typos.

IMO, if that is the extent of it, that is the very definition of tenuous. What you leave out is that the rowing team performed much poorer than it did before he was around. The rest is all flimsy guilt by association. As a scientist, I can cite papers that show how influenza can be weaponized to make a superbug, but that doesn't mean that is what I am doing in my free time. Unless there is a firsthand account that Hagerman was actively involved in doping, I think it is unfair to associate his name with it. Especially because he is no longer alive to defend himself. No matter what you think was happening at the OTC, I believe there were people working there exclusively in a non-doping capacity.

 

[sniper]

...
You know how they solve that one in the vast majority of cases? By not using professional athletes as their study cohort. You yourself just admitted that doping is not rife in that demographic.

fair point.

As long as COIs are disclosed, there is really no issue IMO. Anti-vaxxers accuse certain scientists of making vaccines for profit all of the time. Doing good science and profiting from it are not mutually exclusive propositions.

they are not mutually exclusive indeed. But it warrants suspicion. When a COI occurs, it doesn't mean the people involved will commit fraud; it merely means the people involved *are in a position* to commit fraud. So again, suspicion is warranted. And then we should take into account that sports science is not just any kind of science: it's a branch of science that is particularly prone to fraud. Just like pharmacy.
For pretty obvious reasons (the money involved), those branches are more prone to fraud than [insert any branch of humanities] or, say, biology, or mathematics.
So those branches being more prone to fraud, there is more reason to be weary of COIs.

As for hagerman, what u say thats certainly fair enough although I disagree about how to interpret his expertise in altitude training. History has shown that in topsport, 'altitude training' is often nothing else than a eupjemism for blood boosting (and/or techniques to circumvent the passport etc.).
Or maybe Ive just grown too cynical.

 

[Aragon]

Re: Re:

As noted many times before, tying Hagerman to blood doping is incredibly tenuous.

No it's not tenuous at all. It's merely plausible, although of course far from proven.
We've gone through his CV at length, you really wanna go there again? Well fine. From top of head:
- worked for the US army in the late 60s as an expert on the effects of altitud on soldiers.
- wrote papers citing works by ekblomm and astrand.
- worked with US olympic rowing team for many years
- was appointed by NASA as exercise physiologsphysiology.
- ties to us ski federation.
- appointed by Ariel and darkidarkin at the OTC.
- did physiological testing together with ed Burke.
- is still cited as one of the foremost altitude training specialists in the field.

Apologies for typos.

Just a precursory look through the PubMed-database reveals that the academic "guilty-by-association" connections of Hagerman to blood doping research are very thin, almost non-existent. He could've quoted material by Björn Ekblom and Per-Olof Åstrand, but it has been nearly impossible to write a paper on exercise physiology without referring to some contributions or working papers by the latter.

There is a link to the Swedish research through his occasional coauthor David L. Costill, who was in 1970s a visiting scholar in the Gymnastik- och Idrottshögskola (GIH) in Sweden, exactly the same institution where the vast amount of blood doping research was performed from mid 1960s onward.

Costill coauthored several research papers with late Bengt Saltin. While Saltin didn't publish anything on blood doping in 1970s, the limiting factors of maximal oxygen uptake were of great interest to him and he was a couauthor on some working papers on blood doping detection in recent decades. As there was interest on the subject of blood doping in Scandinavia, it is unlikely that Costill wasn't at the heart of the academic debate.

That having been written, the blood doping "know-how" wasn't that a big secret, as a bulk of the material was published in academic journals beginning in 1972, when the first breakthrough study by Björn Ekblom and his team was published in the prestigious Journal of Applied Physiology. There was some revisionist material that seemed to show the inefficacy of induced polycythemia following the Swedish research, but the concencus shifted quickly in early 1980s with a few well-conducted double-blind studies with sophisticated blood storage techniques that at least seemed to proof that the method indeed worked.

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

Nice post, Aragon, most informative.

...
Just a precursory look through the PubMed-database reveals that the academic "guilty-by-association" connections of Hagerman to blood doping research are very thin, almost non-existent. He could've quoted material by Björn Ekblom and Per-Olof Åstrand, but it has been nearly impossible to write a paper on exercise physiology without referring to some contributions or working papers by the latter.

I never primarily linked Hagerman to blood doping. I linked him to steroids in the first place.
That said, I think it's a plausible guess that he was at least acquainted with the effects of blood doping, too. There is at least one paper (75 or 76) where he does 'cardio-respiratory' testing on adolescents, and then goes on to propose future physiological testing along the lines of the research conducted at the time in Sweden.
I think it's obvious what he's referring to.
Then there is the altitude research he conducted for the US army and wrote his dissertation about (late 60s), which, indeed, you are unlikely to find on pubmed
Blood doping was introduced in the US military in the late 40s, so if Hagerman did altitude research for the military in the late 60s, there's no way he did that without knowing and reviewing the potential of blood doping.

Still in the late 90s Hagerman is cited as a renowned altitude training specialist for top-endurance athletes (mainly rowing of course). As far as I am aware, 'altitude training' in topsport is and never was anything other than a euphemism for blood doping.
(btw, I posted about this in some time ago in another thread and will provide links to those posts later)

There is a link to the Swedish research through his occasional coauthor David L. Costill, who was in 1970s a visiting scholar in the Gymnastik- och Idrottshögskola (GIH) in Sweden, exactly the same institution where the vast amount of blood doping research was performed from mid 1960s onward.

I (superficially) looked into Costill myself not too long ago in the context of his work at the US Olympic Training Center in the late 70s/early 80s, but I didn't know about the bolded. Most salient, if you ask me.

Costill coauthored several research papers with late Bengt Saltin. While Saltin didn't publish anything on blood doping in 1970s, the limiting factors of maximal oxygen uptake were of great interest to him and he was a couauthor on some working papers on blood doping detection in recent decades. As there was interest on the subject of blood doping in Scandinavia, it is unlikely that Costill wasn't at the heart of the academic debate.

I couldn't agree more.

That having been written, the blood doping "know-how" wasn't that a big secret, as a bulk of the material was published in academic journals beginning in 1972, when the first breakthrough study by Björn Ekblom and his team was published in the prestigious Journal of Applied Physiology. There was some revisionist material that seemed to show the inefficacy of induced polycythemia following the Swedish research, but the concencus shifted quickly in early 1980s with a few well-conducted double-blind studies with sophisticated blood storage techniques that at least seemed to proof that the method indeed worked.

Indeed. Even the effects of steroids were played down in the literature at first, but then of course the benefits became bloody hard to deny.


Later I will post some links to the posts and threads in which we discussed Costill, Hagerman, Ekblom, Burke, and some others in the context of the OTC and (blood) doping.
Who knows you find some spare time to read through them and comment.

 

[djpbaltimore]

You are being obtuse IMO if you think that study was referring to blood doping. The evidence does not support that assertion.

 

[sniper]

Re:

You are being obtuse IMO if you think that study was referring to blood doping. The evidence does not support that assertion.

i replied to this in the lemond thread.

 

[sniper]

unparalleled levels of pseudoscience from the hands of Victor Popov, Salzwedel's colleague at RusVelo, and physiotherapist to several Australian topathletes including endurance athletes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_Hdcxn1yAQ
7 minutes.
no comment needed.

 

[Aragon]

Re:

unparalleled levels of pseudoscience from the hands of Victor Popov, Salzwedel's colleague at RusVelo, and physiotherapist to several Australian topathletes including endurance athletes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_Hdcxn1yAQ
7 minutes.
no comment needed.

I'd like some comments, as I didn't notice any "unparalleled levels of pseudoscience" even when there could be some scientific debate about certain aspects of the claims.