An absolute annihilation of CAS' Shelby Houlihan decision

Hooligan booligan

to stay on topic, my casual understanding of hydration and urine particulate concentration in other non-sports areas leads me to believe that urinating at different times could absolutely yield different concentrations of the substance in her urine.

Again, this doesn’t really pass muster as enough of a critical counter argument to really convince me. Placing the author’s theory in context, for review, I would have to:

1) accept every possible implication of shelby’s story regarding the burrito. That the pork sourced for the truck for the specific burrito in question, not pork from September, was pork of the tainted variety in question. Said pork would have to be tainted, which is still relatively rare for the pork in question to have these substance markers (although the fair point argument is that it hasn’t been measured much). Then the burritos (her ordered burrito and the tainted burrito) would have to be switched without her knowing. She also has to have eaten this pork burrito at a time perfectly laid out prior to competition so that she spikes her nandrolone concentration at a specific and significantly measurable level when she is actually tested.

2) Even if the test is miscalibrated - I don’t believe it is - the above contrivance around her story, combined with the presence of the drug in her system, isn’t enough to prove on a basis of strict scrutiny that she erroneously ingested the supplement.

3) urine particulate concentration doesn’t vary that widely unless there’s a testing or measurement error. As stated earlier in the thread, my deeper dives into the articles and outlier points that he cites to me appear as a statistical or recording error, not necessarily and indicator or error of measurement. Further, asking us to discount the sum total of previous testing literature on the basis of a few mismeasurements would likely ask us to discount science as an endeavor entirely. I find Shelby Houlihan’s test results to be legitimate.

Any route we attempt to find a different conclusion than the ones already drawn by the people in charge will be for naught. It is generally believed and supported by records that Houlihan failed a drugs test last December. Do you have access to information contrary to this?

For the person that can’t spell “Nandrolone” (I got a screenshot Hideki Rojo don’t worry):

The measurement is by concentration not by volume. A solid being diluted into a liquid would be at a smaller concentration if the same amount of solid matter were diluted into a larger volume of liquid.

Sha’Carri has two cups. The first cup has a gram, the second cup has an eighth. If I grind in an eighth of tobacco to each cup, there will more of something in the spliffs I make from the second cup than the first.

ecoAnPac wrote:

to stay on topic, my casual understanding of hydration and urine particulate concentration in other non-sports areas leads me to believe that urinating at different times could absolutely yield different concentrations of the substance in her urine.

Agreed. So, while her tests resulted in comparable numbers of 5.2 - 5.8 ng/ml, way above the "allowed" 2.0 ng/ml, the actual maximum could have been 15 - 20 ng/ml, depending on the urination pattern. And that is assuming that she ingested the nandro about ten hours before. If she ingested the nandro much earlier, it could have been a couple of 100 ng/ml.

gumpyrunner wrote:

Any route we attempt to find a different conclusion than the ones already drawn by the people in charge will be for naught. It is generally believed and supported by records that Houlihan failed a drugs test last December. Do you have access to information contrary to this?

Lmao no, but I’ve worked in food service and I think a busy burrito truck (one that social media influencers know about, re: quig) would go through meat between September and December. It’s a hunch and another potential hole in her story. She’s just an affluent white woman and is now surprised that people aren’t trusting her at face value. The story is bunk on almost every conceivable level. As a result, she remains as guilty as she was because the test is legitimate.

800 dude

The case was airtight. What you seem to be complaining about isn't the strength of the case but rather the strict liability standard for having banned substances in your system. But if we abandon that approach, and force anti-doping authorities to prove bad intent (rather than allowing athletes to prove lack of bad intent as an affirmative defense), then we are effectively giving up on anti-doping because proving intent will almost never be feasible.

The strict liability standard is not compatible with the probabilities associated with the random testing of 278,000 samples. Any arguments against Houlihan based on low probability are simply not valid mathematically. I feel like most reasonably educated people understand the problem of false positives when it comes to Covid tests, but when it's WADA testing, they're like, nope, the test must be correct 100% of the time.

I don't know about proving "intent" per se, but it really is not that difficult to investigate positives and identify the source or observe a pattern of use. For example, instead of reporting the positive right away, why not wait to see if other positives, and try to find out where it might have come from. If the source is a supplement, or a physio, or a teammate, or a truck, it's worth figuring out since other athletes could be affected as well. Unfortunately, WADA does not want to know the truth, and there is no doubt that in many true cases of doping the athletes themselves are not aware of the substances being ingested. Like racehorses, these athletes -- once caught -- are the victims, and should not be punished.

This desire for a "silver bullet" approach to cheating is actually the base problem. When it comes to fairness and justice, you need human judgment for it to be taken seriously. These banned substances can be found in many different sources, and some countries' athletes will be always be at a disadvantage because of their relative abundance, which also needs to be taken into consideration.

Besides the bogus probability arguments, I wish we could at least dismiss with these inaccurate claims. To repeat,

Nandrolone can exist in more than just a mature boar. It can be present in cryptorchid, intersex, sow, barrow, or gilt, depending on the circumstances. Nandrolone can exist in meat alone, not just offal, and the truck served pork sausage as well as pork stomach (carnitas, too, I believe). Even commercial pork can be pasture-raised, and hence have low C13 values. In fact, the Chipotle chain of restaurants, four of which are in Beaverton, requires their pigs to be pasture-raised or raised in deep-bedded pens (their primary supplier is Niman Ranch) so I guess elite athletes can't eat there. And what is the mass of Chipotle burrito? A massive 669.4 grams. Who says you couldn't have 300 grams of offal in a burrito?

Primo Numero Uno

My favorite line was at the end where he decided all previous studies of Nandrolone in pork products must be discarded because of Shelby's urine pattern, which he has no way of knowing.

The fact that her urine was laboratory-proven to be rather concentrated supports her statements that she was dehydrated the next morning. I know from experience that after a full running workout in warm weather, it is almost impossible to drink so much that I have to get up in the middle of the night, especially after a large meal, and I assume the same was true for a much younger Houlihan.

ecoAnPac

I've received complaints for being overly wordy

Not a problem!

The stated intent in this article regarding the court's founding is a falsity and aggrandizement.

This paper (more like a book) - "Is the Court of Arbitration for Sport Really Arbitration?" - is where I drew my impression of CAS's founding. I haven't made it all the way through, but it's quite illuminating. [Please just google it. I tried including the link, but it takes a long time to download into the window.]

As stated earlier in the thread, my deeper dives into the articles and outlier points that he cites to me appear as a statistical or recording error, not necessarily and indicator or error of measurement. Further, asking us to discount the sum total of previous testing literature on the basis of a few mismeasurements would likely ask us to discount science as an endeavor entirely.

With respect to how all the previous research has been done, I want to make it clear I don't believe there was any error; just that they were gathering samples in a way that could result in quite a different set of results. It's not just that they were taking more samples, but that the subjects were allowed (and probably encouraged) to drink fluids throughout in order to make it easier to create the samples. I think we should also ask:

1. Why were the researchers interested in studying this type of excretion?

2. Who were the researchers who wrote the study?

1: The researchers studied this question specifically for the purpose of improving doping control, and in response to criticism that WADA testing did not take ingestion of naturally-occurring nandrolone in pork into account. Almost universally, the research lilterature that has been quoted was created with the intention to defend and strengthen WADA testing procedures.

2: Most of the key researchers who wrote the studies have worked in the field of doping control, the most widely cited being Christiane Ayotte. Even Frank Hülsemann's great 2020 study displays oddities; such as why didn't he mention the possibility of wild boar meat being female in his 2020 study, and why no mention of pasture-raised pigs, and why does his Figure 1 graph (with data from other studies) contain no description and is mislabeled?

One doesn't need to resort to conspiracy theory to see how their self-interest in protecting their testing procedures could manifest as conclusions favorable to them. Namely, we have the lab directory acting as her own witness citing her own research. How is this conflict of interest not apparent to everyone?

hobbyjogger1

BTW when you have a gallbladder removed. You avoid fatty foods because it causes complications. There was no complaints from Shelby about any digestive problems or occurrences reported.

Well, she and her friend literally couldn't eat the whole thing which, as a runner, is quite surprising, so she must have felt some kind of digestive discomfort.

Little Dicky Pound

If you're an athlete in an Olympic sport, or any other sport that had decided to adopt the World Anti-Doping Code, then you've consented to this sort of arbitration (you may not know it, but that's a different matter).

I don't think it's logically possible to agree to something one doesn't know about.

moultonk wrote:

hobbyjogger1

BTW when you have a gallbladder removed. You avoid fatty foods because it causes complications. There was no complaints from Shelby about any digestive problems or occurrences reported.

Well, she and her friend literally couldn't eat the whole thing which, as a runner, is quite surprising, so she must have felt some kind of digestive discomfort.

Give it up you Nike shill.

griles17 wrote:

https://keithmoulton.com/the-cas-report-on-shelby-houlihan-a-case-of-misleading-analysis-false-statements-bogus-evidence/

The report by twoggle was, too. If you think Shelby actually doped, you lack the capacity to reason and are probably, well, not very bright.

Hardly an annihilation, and pretty clearly a Nike shilling dullard. The reason the CAS gave little time or effort to the food possibility was that in Shelby’s case food was never a possible source. The testing made it clear the carbon isotope ratio present in the nandrolone was from fossil fuels: aka synthetic.

Shelby can provide all the food excuses she wants, but unless she has a way of magically explaining away synthetic nandrolone being in her system in illegal quantities then 4 years isn’t enough. They let her off light, but this still has her coaches, teammates and sponsors running scared.

moultonk wrote:

Besides the bogus probability arguments, I wish we could at least dismiss with these inaccurate claims.

LOL, no. Neither bogus nor inaccurate, that's straight from CAS.

You can condemn the scientists + CAS + Tyson + the farmers + the Mexicans all you want on your twitter, but that won't change any of the facts.

Oh, and neither do any of your obfuscations about e.g. "the Chipotle chain of restaurants".

At the end of the day, CAS has ruled unanimously that Houlihan committed an intentional anti-doping rule violation with nandrolone, and therefore, this drug cheat will fortunately remain banned until January 2025.

casual obsever wrote:

moultonk wrote:

Besides the bogus probability arguments, I wish we could at least dismiss with these inaccurate claims.

LOL, no. Neither bogus nor inaccurate, that's straight from CAS.

You can condemn the scientists + CAS + Tyson + the farmers + the Mexicans all you want on your twitter, but that won't change any of the facts.

Oh, and neither do any of your obfuscations about e.g. "the Chipotle chain of restaurants".

At the end of the day, CAS has ruled unanimously that Houlihan committed an intentional anti-doping rule violation with nandrolone, and therefore, this drug cheat will fortunately remain banned until January 2025.

But what do you think?

obsever independente wrote:

casual obsever wrote:

LOL, no. Neither bogus nor inaccurate, that's straight from CAS.

You can condemn the scientists + CAS + Tyson + the farmers + the Mexicans all you want on your twitter, but that won't change any of the facts.

Oh, and neither do any of your obfuscations about e.g. "the Chipotle chain of restaurants".

At the end of the day, CAS has ruled unanimously that Houlihan committed an intentional anti-doping rule violation with nandrolone, and therefore, this drug cheat will fortunately remain banned until January 2025.

But what do you think?

Was not unanimous!

No evidence of intent so not a cheat.

sanootage wrote:

obsever independente wrote:

But what do you think?

Was not unanimous!

No evidence of intent so not a cheat.

I know, but haters gonna hate.

sanootage wrote:

obsever independente wrote:

But what do you think?

Was not unanimous!

No evidence of intent so not a cheat.

Once accidental contamination is ruled out intent is presumed. Moron.

Only on a site populated largely by white Americans do we find 4000 posts defending a white American runner convicted of a doping violation.