The Froome Files, test data only thread

[Semper Fidelis]

Re: Re:

Collecting the data is always part of the manuscript preparation in science. There is no ambiguity.

No it is not.
And so yes there is ambiguity.
But it's an irrelevant footnote in the wider scheme of things, so don't get your knickers in a twist about it.
As has been said previously, he should've gotten paid for the testing.

How can you say that when you are clearly not a scientist? You don't have any credibility. The money part is the collection of the data. Writing the manuscript doesn't cost anything.

Its irrelevant? Yet the financial motivation has come up again and again in this thread, including what you just wrote up thread.

Attack Dr. Swart, attack me. Keep it classy, Sniper.

He should not have gotten paid for the tests. It was part of his job as a researcher. The university pays his salary in that capacity. That is how academia works.

I don't like these

Akah
denamics.

:lol:

 

[sniper]

As I said it's a formulation thing. The way they formulated it is ambiguous. It's not your fault, or mine.
So really you're getting all wound up here for no reason.
As I said it's a footnote and it's no big deal in the wider scheme of things.
Sorry if the "knickers in a twist" comment offended you. Didn't mean to.

 

[ScienceIsCool]

Re: Re:

good spot.
In addition, Froome himself has referred to the tests in several interviews as a direct means to support his claim of cleanliness.
So that is science being abused to mislead the audience. End of.

Such an action is not the fault of those doing the study / publishing the data. The science stands.
How people then choose to interpret and report on it is an entirely different matter.

Again you're showing terribly low ethical/scientific standards.
If my science were being abused by third parties in a misleading way, I would seek damages.
Swart and GSK, otoh, have never even for a second tried to distance themselves from Froome's/Moore's misleading statements and reporting.
On the contrary (as gillan's link also shows).

What!? You can't "abuse somebody's science"- at least not in a way that causes damage to the authors. Look at climate change deniers. They "abuse" the facts gathered by scientists all day long. In no way does that harm the authors. The paper and the science within it stands on its own.

You might not like the fact that Froome is getting away with something. That he will use this paper to boost his credibility. That he will lie and spin a narrative around this data. But that does NOT reflect in any way on the paper or its authors. The only way that would occur is if there were undisclosed relationships between the authors and Froome. Donations to the University/Lab from Sky, for example.

John Swanson

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

...

What!? You can't "abuse somebody's science"- at least not in a way that causes damage to the authors. Look at climate change deniers. They "abuse" the facts gathered by scientists all day long. In no way does that harm the authors. The paper and the science within it stands on its own.

You might not like the fact that Froome is getting away with something. That he will use this paper to boost his credibility. That he will lie and spin a narrative around this data. But that does NOT reflect in any way on the paper or its authors. The only way that would occur is if there were undisclosed relationships between the authors and Froome. Donations to the University/Lab from Sky, for example.

John Swanson

Maybe my "seeking damages" was a bit too strong.
But of course science can be abused.
E.g. if car producers claim that my hypothetical work on car gasses shows that car gasses aren't harmful, whereas my work doesn't actually show that, I'd object to that in some way, e.g. by publicly distancing myself from it.

Now, two of the Froome testers work for antidoping agencies. Antidoping is a priority to them, just like avoiding global warming is a priority to me. So if they see Froome/Sky/Moore wrongfully using their testing to promote the idea of a clean Froome, then they should be objecting and/or distancing themselves from that.

And did you see this? viewtopic.php?p=1999678#p1999678
That's highly dubious from GSK. Major CoI there.

 

[gillan1969]

Re: Re:

good spot.
In addition, Froome himself has referred to the tests in several interviews as a direct means to support his claim of cleanliness.
So that is science being abused to mislead the audience. End of.

Such an action is not the fault of those doing the study / publishing the data. The science stands.
How people then choose to interpret and report on it is an entirely different matter.

Again you're showing terribly low ethical/scientific standards.
If my science were being abused by third parties in a misleading way, I would seek damages.
Swart and GSK, otoh, have never even for a second tried to distance themselves from Froome's/Moore's misleading statements and reporting.
On the contrary (as gillan's link also shows).

What!? You can't "abuse somebody's science"- at least not in a way that causes damage to the authors. Look at climate change deniers. They "abuse" the facts gathered by scientists all day long. In no way does that harm the authors. The paper and the science within it stands on its own.

You might not like the fact that Froome is getting away with something. That he will use this paper to boost his credibility. That he will lie and spin a narrative around this data. But that does NOT reflect in any way on the paper or its authors. The only way that would occur is if there were undisclosed relationships between the authors and Froome. Donations to the University/Lab from Sky, for example.

John Swanson

Maybe my "claiming damages" was a bit too strong, admittedly. But if my hypothetical work on global warming were wrongfully used to promote the car industry, I'd object to that.
E.g. if car producers claim that my work shows that global warming isn't happening, whereas my work doesn't actually show that, I'd object to that in some way, e.g. by publicly distancing myself from it.

Now, two of the Froome testers work for antidoping agencies. Antidoping is a priority to them, just like avoiding global warming is a priority to me. So if they see Froome/Sky/Moore wrongfully using their testing to promote the idea of a clean Froome, then they should be objecting and/or distancing themselves from that.

And did you see this? viewtopic.php?p=1999678#p1999678
That's highly dubious from GSK. Major CoI there.

yeah but these guys are great sniper...it's all smoke and mirrors...that is on GSK's web page but appears to be written in the third person....it's them...but it's not them....

all good stuff

 

[Electress]

Re: Re:

Collecting the data is always part of the manuscript preparation in science. There is no ambiguity.

No it is not.
And so yes there is ambiguity.
But it's an irrelevant footnote in the wider scheme of things, so don't get your knickers in a twist about it.
As has been said previously, he should've gotten paid for the testing.

How can you say that when you are clearly not a scientist? You don't have any credibility. The money part is the collection of the data. Writing the manuscript doesn't cost anything.

Its irrelevant? Yet the financial motivation has come up again and again in this thread, including what you just wrote up thread.

Attack Dr. Swart, attack me. Keep it classy, Sniper.

He should not have gotten paid for the tests. It was part of his job as a researcher. The university pays his salary in that capacity. That is how academia works.

Plenty of scientists do consultancy work outside their university remit. For which they and/or the department would expect to get paid. I have employed many many scientists on jobs with lots of different business models and therefore lots of different mechanisms for their being paid.

Several times those scientists have been paid to do a job including data collection but had an interest in the data beyond our strict scope of work. Assuming we (as client) release the data, they've done that manuscript preparation in their own time. So my interpretation is very clear: no payment for preparation of the manuscript means just that and only that. Saying 'prepping a manuscript' always includes collecting the data isn't accurate. (Obviously, however, I have no idea about this case; nor do I particularly care).

I am a former academic scientist btw. Now a scientist in the private sector.

 

[djpbaltimore]

Re: Re:

Collecting the data is always part of the manuscript preparation in science. There is no ambiguity.

No it is not.
And so yes there is ambiguity.
But it's an irrelevant footnote in the wider scheme of things, so don't get your knickers in a twist about it.
As has been said previously, he should've gotten paid for the testing.

How can you say that when you are clearly not a scientist? You don't have any credibility. The money part is the collection of the data. Writing the manuscript doesn't cost anything.

Its irrelevant? Yet the financial motivation has come up again and again in this thread, including what you just wrote up thread.

Attack Dr. Swart, attack me. Keep it classy, Sniper.

He should not have gotten paid for the tests. It was part of his job as a researcher. The university pays his salary in that capacity. That is how academia works.

Plenty of scientists do consultancy work outside their university remit. For which they and/or the department would expect to get paid. I have employed many many scientists on jobs with lots of different business models and therefore lots of different mechanisms for their being paid.

Several times those scientists have been paid to do a job including data collection but had an interest in the data beyond our strict scope of work. Assuming we (as client) release the data, they've done that manuscript preparation in their own time. So my interpretation is very clear: no payment for preparation of the manuscript means just that and only that. Saying 'prepping a manuscript' always includes collecting the data isn't accurate. (Obviously, however, I have no idea about this case; nor do I particularly care).

I am a former academic scientist btw. Now a scientist in the private sector.

I also consult outside of my academic appointment as well. All academics where I work have to declare this on a yearly basis.

Please give an actual example of a paper where that is not the case though. You can't prepare a manuscript without collecting the data. That is not physically possible in science. And remember, Swart was the corresponding author on a manuscript and not some contractor involved in writing or collecting some of the data as in your example. That is an apples and oranges comparison. If he was receiving money from GSK, it would've been declared in the same footnote.

EDIT. On closer examination, the first author Bell was actually the corresponding author too.

The instructions on the journal website,

Conflicts of Interest
Authors must state all possible conflicts of interest in the manuscript, including financial, consultant, institutional, and other relationships that might lead to bias or a conflict of interest. If there is no conflict of interest, this should also be explicitly stated as none declared. All sources of funding should be acknowledged in the manuscript. All relevant conflicts of interest and sources of funding should be included after the acknowledgments section of the manuscript with the heading "Conflicts of Interest and Source of Funding".

 

[gillan1969]

rearrange the following words:

"not the you trees wood for seeing are the"

or in the case - tree

 

[thehog]

"In summary, this is the first study to report physiological characteristics of a multiple Tour de France champion in close to peak condition and suggests what may be the prerequisite physiological and thermoregulatory capacities for success at this level."

However, despite having these prerequisite physiological and thermoregulatory capacities, and despite being a full-time professional cyclist cyclist, the subject was unable to utilise them for around 6 years. The authors are seeking funding to find out what allowed the subject to suddenly unleash this potential. If such 'talent' can effectively hide in a professional environment, how many other medal winners are hiding in the general population. This we hope to answer and is the big 'take-away' from the study.

The Coyle study on Armstrong was over a number of years/tests days.

Maybe GSK will do this with Froome once a year? (time permitting). In saying that, due to the SRM data being available for all training and races they could just use that to compare into the lab testing.

Submit all that data to Swart and releaser a paper. That would actually be very interesting.

What we have currently is a snapshot in time, that is all. Very hard to draw many conclusions especially when they lost the max heart rate data,

 

[bigcog]

Re:

fair points, Amaru.
And Swart knows I don't have a beef with him in particular, but more with sports science / exercise physiology in general. Swart is just one of many quacks.

A true paradigm change is needed for that discipline, because as it stands, the vast majority of exercise and performance studies are disposable viz. meaningless, as the studies don't control for the variable of doping which is arguable the single most determining factor in exercise and performance.
The truly deplorable part is that people like Swart and Jeukendrup don't even *attempt* to control for that variable, although they know darn well how impactful it is.
But since their principal money making business is the coaching of athletes and selling nutritional products, it's in their interest to pretend that doping doesn't matter. And so they don't talk about it.
Check out Jeukendrup's twitter feed. It's a truly astonishing cabinet of disposable pseudoscience.

Jeukendrup and Swart are true quacks, harmful to (the development of) true sports science.

Yep I bet Swart and Jeukendrup can't sleep at night knowing you think they are quacks. I bet they wish they had achieved all you had in the realm of sport science

 

[bigcog]

Re: Re:

Reading this thread it appears that various people think GSK are going to risk their reputation for Froome. Utterly laughable. Don't you see that is beyond credible. Clearly the pharmaceutical industry is not profitable enough lol.

 

[gillan1969]

Re: Re:

Reading this thread it appears that various people think GSK are going to risk their reputation for Froome. Utterly laughable. Don't you see that is beyond credible. Clearly the pharmaceutical industry is not profitable enough lol.

reputation and the pharmaceutical industry????????

 

[Amaru]

Re: Re:

If there is funding, then yes.
Is the absence of funding usually indicated, too? Not in my branch. But if it is in yours, then I stand corrected.

It usually is in the medical field though.

Reading this thread it appears that various people think GSK are going to risk their reputation for Froome. Utterly laughable. Don't you see that is beyond credible. Clearly the pharmaceutical industry is not profitable enough lol.

Of course not but even tough it can be interesting from a certain point of vue and their methods seems good, this is a pretty weak research, especially if you're going to use it to claim that Froome is a clean rider.

 

[bigcog]

Re: Re:

If there is funding, then yes.
Is the absence of funding usually indicated, too? Not in my branch. But if it is in yours, then I stand corrected.

It usually is in the medical field though.

Reading this thread it appears that various people think GSK are going to risk their reputation for Froome. Utterly laughable. Don't you see that is beyond credible. Clearly the pharmaceutical industry is not profitable enough lol.

Of course not but even tough it can be interesting from a certain point of vue and their methods seems good, this is a pretty weak research, especially if you're going to use it to claim that Froome is a clean rider.

I'm not claiming he his clean, and neither are they from what I've read. They just said he has a rare combination of VO2max and GE haven't they ? Now apparently they are going to perjurer themselves for Froome. I'm surprised this place hasn't run out of tin foil..

 

[bigcog]

I am surprised Tucker hasn't said anything about this or has he ? Or has he decided it's probably not a good idea to look like a tit amongst sports science community ?

 

[thehog]

Re: Re:

If there is funding, then yes.
Is the absence of funding usually indicated, too? Not in my branch. But if it is in yours, then I stand corrected.

It usually is in the medical field though.

Reading this thread it appears that various people think GSK are going to risk their reputation for Froome. Utterly laughable. Don't you see that is beyond credible. Clearly the pharmaceutical industry is not profitable enough lol.

Of course not but even tough it can be interesting from a certain point of vue and their methods seems good, this is a pretty weak research, especially if you're going to use it to claim that Froome is a clean rider.

I'm not claiming he his clean, and neither are they from what I've read. They just said he has a rare combination of VO2max and GE haven't they ? Now apparently they are going to perjurer themselves for Froome. I'm surprised this place hasn't run out of tin foil..

Perjury only pertains to a false statement under oath, generally in a court of law. Not within a scientific report. Coyle being an obvious example that little would occur for expressing opinion, even if that opinion is vastly incorrect.

Please keep your statements in realty.

 

[Merckx index]

Re:

Peak power output is not VO2max. PPO in this report was the 30-sec mean maximal power power from an incremental test to exhaustion with power demand increasing at 30W/min, and accordingly would include a sizeable contribution from anaerobic work capacity.

Yes, but PPO was determined in the same way as V02max. Both parameters were measured at the same point in the step test. So PPO should be the power put out when the rider is at V02max. The anaerobic contribution means that his aerobic power is not all that contributes to his power. So aerobic power should underestimate his climbing times, right?

The power estimates based on V02max, GE and utilization by the well-known formula used in your graph seem to correspond to what others refer to as critical power (CP). In this study,

http://www.fietsica.be/Grand_Tour_Champions.pdf

Dauwe defines CP empirically, and determines it by plotting climbing times at various distances, but it’s clear he believes it's directly proportional to V02max. In his Table 1, he assumes 23% GE and 80% utilization for all the elite riders in his study. The total power put out for any particular length of time is then estimated by adding in the anaerobic component.

Obviously, differences in GE among riders will affect these estimates, but since he assumes 23%, which is just what Swart found (under normal conditions, with a slightly higher value under hot/humid conditions), his calculations seem to apply well to Froome. So consider the anaerobic component. You say the 11-12 kJ you get by assuming all the power above 4 mM lactate is anaerobic is a typical value. For Froome, that would be about 0.17 kJ/kg. I assume that would not be his total anaerobic component, though. From his climbing times graph, Dauwe estimated a value for Froome about ten times that, 1.58 kJ/kg. This was one of the highest values he estimated, but Contador during one period was estimated to have an even higher value, and the other riders were at least about half of Froome's value.

Moreover, studies of non-elite athletes have found values in the range of 0.2 – 0.4 kJ/kg.

http://facstaff.bloomu.edu/jandreac/class_notes/575/Labs/Wingate%20paper.pdf

http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/22382171

If we use the 1.58 kJ/kg value for Froome, this would add nearly 1 watt/kg to his power over 30 minutes (Dauwe shows the power added for 20 and 60 minute climbs). Even if we use the upper end of the range for non-elite athletes, one would add roughly 0.20 watts/kg. OTOH, Dauwe's estimate of Froome's CP (5.16 watts/kg) is quite a bit lower than the aerobic power estimate one gets from Swart's data, a minimum of 5.8-5.9 watts/kg., even using the heavier body weight and 4 mM lactate as threshold. But if we take Swart's data seriously, then Froome's aerobic power is anywhere from 5.9-6.5 watts/kg, depending on the weather conditions and his weight, and even if Dauwe has grossly overestimated his anaerobic component, it would seem one could add at least several tenths of a watt/kg for sustained climbs.

 

[bigcog]

Re: Re:

[quote="

Please keep your statements in realty.

Haha that's bit rich on this forum ...

 

[thehog]

Re: Re:

[quote="

Please keep your statements in realty.

Haha that's bit rich on this forum ...

Has nothing to do with the forum but your statements with regards to "perjury". Perjury has nothing to do with a scientific report.

I get the sense you were trying to make it a bigger issue that it really is. Coyle expressed an incorrect opinion on Armstrong in his testing and the same could occur here. Nothing to do with tinfoil or perjury as you stated.

If your expectation if fact, then perhaps try to present some of your own, yes?

 

[bigcog]

Re: Re:

[quote="

Please keep your statements in realty.

Haha that's bit rich on this forum ...

Has nothing to do with the forum but your statements with regards to "perjury". Perjury has nothing to do with a scientific report.

I get the sense you were trying to make it a bigger issue that it really is. Coyle expressed an incorrect opinion on Armstrong in his testing and the same could occur here. Nothing to do with tinfoil or perjury as you stated.

If your expectation if fact, then perhaps try to present some of your own, yes?

Ok wrong word to use if you want to be pedantic about it. How about complicit ? Anyway I get the impression you are trying to deny or undermine the idea that some posters on here think GSK are 'in on it' in some way? Do you think they are or not ?

 

[thehog]

Re: Re:

[quote="

Please keep your statements in realty.

Haha that's bit rich on this forum ...

Has nothing to do with the forum but your statements with regards to "perjury". Perjury has nothing to do with a scientific report.

I get the sense you were trying to make it a bigger issue that it really is. Coyle expressed an incorrect opinion on Armstrong in his testing and the same could occur here. Nothing to do with tinfoil or perjury as you stated.

If your expectation if fact, then perhaps try to present some of your own, yes?

Ok wrong word to use if you want to be pedantic about it. How about complicit ?

Complicit in what? Illegal activity? Unlikely.

Perhaps some other questions...

Did they cooperate together? did Froome and Swart know each other before the testing, did they share tweets together as far back at 2010, then the answer is "yes" to all those questions.

 

[bigcog]

Re: Re:

[quote="

Please keep your statements in realty.

Haha that's bit rich on this forum ...

Has nothing to do with the forum but your statements with regards to "perjury". Perjury has nothing to do with a scientific report.

I get the sense you were trying to make it a bigger issue that it really is. Coyle expressed an incorrect opinion on Armstrong in his testing and the same could occur here. Nothing to do with tinfoil or perjury as you stated.

If your expectation if fact, then perhaps try to present some of your own, yes?

Ok wrong word to use if you want to be pedantic about it. How about complicit ?

Complicit in what? Illegal activity? Unlikely.

Perhaps some other questions...

Did they cooperate together? did Froome and Swart know each other before the testing, did they share tweets together as far back at 2010, then the answer is "yes" to all those questions.

So you think Swart is dodgy and part of a doping conspiracy ? How about the view on GSK ?

 

[thehog]

Your questions reads like "When did you stop beating your wife?". You're too obvious sometimes.

What matters is how he conducted himself before, during and after the testing. On that basis he can judged per the report presented.

Judging by some of his tweets post testing he did seem rather "emotionally" involved in the entire endeavor, beyond what I would expect a impartial scientist to be in his test subject. It was also like there a bond to protect the subject and less the actual testing.

 

[bigcog]

Your questions reads like "When did you stop beating your wife?". You're too obvious sometimes.

What matters is how he conducted himself before, during and after the testing. On that basis he can judged per the report presented.

Judging by some of his tweets post testing he did seem rather "emotionally" involved in the entire endeavor, beyond what I would expect a impartial scientist to be in his test subject. It was also like there a bond to protect the subject and less the actual testing.

Why thank you but I'm not sure about your metaphor I think you are beating around the bush. I guess you have to be a bit circumspect... Perhaps he is convinced he is clean, and in your eyes is somewhat naive and misguided, if you want to be generous about it. Or are you a bit more cynical about it than that and think he has invested too much in it now to be seen as changing tune ?

 

[sniper]

Your questions reads like "When did you stop beating your wife?". You're too obvious sometimes.

What matters is how he conducted himself before, during and after the testing. On that basis he can judged per the report presented.

Judging by some of his tweets post testing he did seem rather "emotionally" involved in the entire endeavor, beyond what I would expect a impartial scientist to be in his test subject. It was also like there a bond to protect the subject and less the actual testing.

"There's absolutely nothing on Sky" (Swart 2015 during 1st of two podcasts he did with Tucker)
He was also defending Walsh in that same podcast.
And had remarkable trouble admitting he oversaw a rather obvious error in the 2007 fax (the BMI didn't correspond with the weight) and then pretended it didn't matter.
All that's very little to do with scientific objectivity.
Coming from a member of SA antidoping, it's pretty darn iffy.