Is the sport cleaner than ever?

rekrunner wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

No, he isn't. That is a stupid but predictable inference. But we are now seeing performances that match or exceed those in the past when doping controls were scarcely existent in the sport. It is a significant coincidence that these latter-day performances have occurred during the pandemic, when OC testing has been reduced. Athletes are finding new ways to dope and get away with it.

So it’s wrong because drugs aren’t working now either?

Maybe we are seeing what can happen when athletes are not over-raced, combined with new shoes and new tracks and new lights. Pandemic means regular competitions have been cancelled or reduced, so athletes are fresher and not injured.

As you say, doping exists today and has always existed.

So athletes are running faster because they have been racing less? That didn't seem to impede the rate of record breaking in previous decades. If there have been fewer opportunities to race you might also think they wouldn't be as sharp.

You always manage to come up with the most spurious reasons for sudden performance increases around the globe - but rule out the most obvious. If athletes have found ways to beat the testers (quite easy when there has been less testing during the pandemic) and to get around the biopassport they will run faster. And they are.

When youre watching tv,and seeing numerous women with adams apples,wierd jaws and five oclock shadows,men and women covered in acne spots,and male and female bodies lean and gaunt,yet densely muscled,,then yes,sport has a big problem.I have a large tv,and i saw it all......

jeff tallon wrote:

When youre watching tv,and seeing numerous women with adams apples,wierd jaws and five oclock shadows,men and women covered in acne spots,and male and female bodies lean and gaunt,yet densely muscled,,then yes,sport has a big problem.I have a large tv,and i saw it all......

You should tell WADA about your tv. They could use it.

No, not at all.

rekrunner wrote:

Down with the IDMC wrote:

This year the men's shot put record that was about 30 years old was broken, the men's 400M hurdles was beaten twice and the second time the record was taken to Steve Austin/Usain Bolt land, the women's 400m hurdles record was beaten in a similar Bionic Woman way and another record from the 90's was beaten in the women's triple jump.

Unless it's one of the great coincidences of all time then something is up.

Are you suggesting that drugs didn’t work for 30 years, but now they do?

No there could be a new clear type cocktail which allows better doping. Doping has evolved because of testing and trial and error.

Why couldn't get it get better.

casual obsever wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

So you are saying the authors didn’t know it was non-sense, but just speculated that hasty responses and mechanistic responses could lead to something they described as a “serious problem” and “potentially significant overestimate”.

They did not think it was non-sense. That was simply one of their speculations ("sensitivity analyses"), which - when ignoring all the other potential problems - led to your preferred 31% of dopers. And yes, the IAAF PR focuses on the "at least 31%" for obvious reasons.

You haven’t addressed the fact that the authors explicitly chose “at least 30%” as a “Key Point” — see quote above.

They did not choose “43.6%” or “63%” as a “Key Point”.

Your interpretation of the abstract you keep quoting contradicts this “Key Point”.

All of these quotes about things that “would have led to an underestimate” is not ignored, but incorporated into what I just said — that after removing, or dismissing, all the positive biases, that all that is left are negative biases which suggest 30% is likely not an over-estimate. I don’t ignore these effects which may have led to an underestimate — I understand that that is why they put “at least” before their lower bound of 30% (or 29% or 31% — they study uses all three at various points). They never say “at least 43.6%”.

You are still conflating the theoretical models of non-compliance, based on some input factor they did not measure, with the independent “response time” analysis, based on the relation of responses and response time, something they did measure. With the theoretical models, there is no reason beyond gut feeling and some prejudiced notions of plausibility, to chose 0%, 10%, 20%, 30% or even more. We could chose 30% for “dopers lying”, and arrive at 63%, but there is no data based reason to do so.

For the response time analysis, they had a data based reason to perform the exercise of filtering out the 30% — because that is the amount that removed the visible positive bias, not completely, but to a level they found acceptable. They even made a dedicated graph for that. Anything less than 30% would visibly be biased and become a “serious problem” because it would lead to a “substantial overestimate”. Unlike the theoretical models, where the degree of each specific form of non-compliance is speculative, the only speculation with the “response time” analysis was the cause of the positive bias, not the bias itself.

Armstronglivs wrote:

Your academic papers do not answer the question of how dirty the sport is. As I said above - they can't. When they can't identify who is doping they cannot presume to measure its incidence. They do not have the data. You only have your "hope and belief" that many aren't doping.

Oh your poor sad man. I’ll repeat it again.

No they don’t answer the question — that is why I said we are exchanging opinions without data.

Some of these academic papers show a deterrent effect when new testing is introduced. They had that data.

My opinion was based (in part) on this scientifically observed and measured deterrent effect, at least reducing the dosage, if not the prevalence.

That’s a new approach. I don’t know whether to LOL or SMH.

When you start comparing authors and journals, this looks like a clear acknowledgement that you’ve run out of arguments of merit.

Don’t they have peer reviews to weed out the bad stuff?

The fact is that it is not all that hard to do a UQM survey, and the results of UQM, SSC, “social projection” and “network scaleup” speak for themselves, and against UQM, for this sensitive question of doping.

1) The 2017/2018 publication was famously delayed. Even so, it is surprising that the later paper did not address the fundamental failures of UQM, or use a superior methods which can detect “dishonest responses”.

3) I thought Rolf Ulrich was the lead author. So does Roger Pielke Jr. Pope looks like he write a lot about psychiatry, and also the adverse effects of steroids, neither of which seem that particularly important for this instant study.

5) Read the “Key Points” — all of the authors readily accepted, as a “Key Point”, the result of their analysis that filtered out the nonsense: “at least 30%”

6) In a commentary, Roger Pielke Jr. praised RRT, and not specifically UQM. He thought that the paper was important as a Proof of Concept. I agree, if they can address all the known faults and refine the methodology — something the authors included in the “2018” conclusion.

rekrunner wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

Your academic papers do not answer the question of how dirty the sport is. As I said above - they can't. When they can't identify who is doping they cannot presume to measure its incidence. They do not have the data. You only have your "hope and belief" that many aren't doping.

Oh your poor sad man. I’ll repeat it again.

No they don’t answer the question — that is why I said we are exchanging opinions without data.

Some of these academic papers show a deterrent effect when new testing is introduced. They had that data.

My opinion was based (in part) on this scientifically observed and measured deterrent effect, at least reducing the dosage, if not the prevalence.

The only correct part of that comment is your admission you are "exchanging opinions without data". The deterrent effect of anti-doping is guesswork because the exact extent of doping is not known. Doping may well be increasing at a greater rate than it is being deterred. No data can answer that point.

Armstronglivs wrote:

The only correct part of that comment is your admission you are "exchanging opinions without data". The deterrent effect of anti-doping is guesswork because the exact extent of doping is not known. Doping may well be increasing at a greater rate than it is being deterred. No data can answer that point.

Maybe you are not the best judge about what is correct, since you can only think in generalizations.

It is guesswork supported by data.

Recall I repeatedly said “dosage”. We don’t know the exact extent, but that doesn’t mean we don’t know anything.

For example, with blood testing, we do know the characteristics of abnormal results.

One academic paper is: “Biological passport parameters” - Zorzoli, 2010.

We can see a clear response in the blood parameters following the introduction of EPO testing in cycling, and once again following the introduction of the ABP in cycling. A similar thing happened with the introduction of the 50% rule.

This shows, at least in cycling, the cyclists are keenly aware of changes in anti-doping landscape and adapt accordingly.

Of course, in this thread “the sport” is not cycling, so the this phenomenon may or may not be applicable.

If anti-doping is as truly ineffective as you want to believe, perhaps its time to rethink how scarce resources are distributed.

Dosage can be reduced - as with microdosing of drugs like testosterone - in response to antidoping methods, but as they enable the athlete to escape detection or to trigger abnormalities in the biopassport this can enable the practice of doping, and so the overall level of doping in any given sport may thereby increase.

You like to discount observations that I have referred to by expert sources such as David Howman but he says doping continues to be more sophisticated than anti-doping. Dosages are part of that picture. If doping remains ahead then more athletes are able to dope. And will dope.

Armstronglivs wrote:

Dosage can be reduced - as with microdosing of drugs like testosterone - in response to antidoping methods, but as they enable the athlete to escape detection or to trigger abnormalities in the biopassport this can enable the practice of doping, and so the overall level of doping in any given sport may thereby increase.

You like to discount observations that I have referred to by expert sources such as David Howman but he says doping continues to be more sophisticated than anti-doping. Dosages are part of that picture. If doping remains ahead then more athletes are able to dope. And will dope.

I don’t discount the things that David Howman says.

I discount the extra things you say in addition, i.e. “the sport is dirtier than ever” and “dosages are part of that picture”.

rekrunner wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

Dosage can be reduced - as with microdosing of drugs like testosterone - in response to antidoping methods, but as they enable the athlete to escape detection or to trigger abnormalities in the biopassport this can enable the practice of doping, and so the overall level of doping in any given sport may thereby increase.

You like to discount observations that I have referred to by expert sources such as David Howman but he says doping continues to be more sophisticated than anti-doping. Dosages are part of that picture. If doping remains ahead then more athletes are able to dope. And will dope.

I don’t discount the things that David Howman says.

I discount the extra things you say in addition, i.e. “the sport is dirtier than ever” and “dosages are part of that picture”.

Garbage. You discount anything that doesn't suit what you want to believe. Your endless tedious disputes with Casual obsever proves that. He completely wastes his time.

While you prepare another response, or not, I will remind you, and everyone, once again what all of these same scientists have also readily accepted, even blessed by the Pope, were the Key Points of the paper. On my copy of the study, I find this in the 2018 published paper, in a box that appears after the abstract, and before the Introduction:

As I mentioned earlier, take note that there is no mention of 43.6%, nor 63% anywhere in the list of “Key Points”, but your list of classy researchers, in the classy journal, with classy collaboration, explicitly made the effort to say their finding was “at least 30%”, as a “Key Point”.

Armstronglivs wrote:

Garbage. You discount anything that doesn't suit what you want to believe. Your endless tedious disputes with Casual obsever proves that. He completely wastes his time.

I believe David Howman, and I believe the “Key Points” in a study, and I believe that UQM has major flaws, identified in both the “2018” and “2012” studies, and I believe the conclusions that, as a proof-of-concept, it is important, and that further studies using a refined protocol should be conducted.

What does Al Jazeera think about that?

Rekrunner you crack me up. Indeed I decided against lecturing you about the importance of the impact factor for the peer review, my yearly salary increase, and my chances to get grants etc., and why Pope's email is the only one mentioned in that paper.

However, I am well aware and have no problem with your preferred "at least 31.4" as a "hypothetical scenario" under two conservative assumptions, as explained in the main text. So you don't need to keep repeating that.

I do on the other hand find your unsupported claim of the 43.6% being "non-sensical" hilariously wrong. To prove how wrong that is,

1) I quoted the results part on page 1 stating that the 43.6% are likely not "overestimated":

2) I reminded you that other scientists (you misunderstood that, not just the authors who obviously went with the 43.6%) quoted 43.6% or 44% or 1 in 2 etc. in later publications:

Pielke Jr.; Sports Medicine 2018:

Faiss et al.; Frontiers in Physiology 2020:

3) And here your nice sportsintegrity:

But, then here you are, a self-proclaimed engineer with a masters degree from 25 - 30 years ago:

I’m glad you spared me all that, because it would have just reeked of more desperation without merits.

I’m not all that interested in any of that, because, in this case, the data and the models are not all that complicated, and the data and the method they used, speaks for itself. I don’t need any of these scientists to interpret it for me.

Likewise, I don’t need you to keep mis-interpreting the abstract for me. The discussions in the paper, and its appendix, simply don’t support any likelihood, aggregating positive and negative biases, that the survey result of 43.6% is an under-estimate, even under two conservative assumptions. The discussion does support that their finding of “at least 30%”, after their value-added sensitivity analysis, is likely an under-estimate, not because they assessed likelihood, but because only negative biases remain. (Ignoring for the moment that UQM can lead to highly inflated estimates — a problem that needs to be addressed in future refinements of the survey method.)

I didn’t say that 43.6% was non-sensical, but that the prevalence of the top-30% that the authors proposed to delete is nonsense that they knew they had to delete.

Have you looked at the data for each “decile” slice?

The estimated prevalence of just the top-10% is 96%. How does that make any sense to keep? These scientists would lose all credibility.

The estimated prevalence of just the top-30% is 72%.

While the estimated prevalence of the bottom-70% is 31.4%.

Do you have a better word than “nonsense” for the 40% spread between the fastest 30% of responses and the slowest 70% of responses, with no plausible non-artifactual explanation? They didn’t speculate that this 40% was genuine prevalence, although one of the “conservative” assumptions was that this “surfeit” was fully artifactual, rather than partly “genuine”. As causes, they speculated: carelessness, hasty, automatic/mechanistic yes, didn’t read instructions, etc.

If I can see that from the study, with my puny science masters degree, I’m sure the classy PhD authors knew it as well too — likely beforehand, as it is a known problem with these kinds of surveys.

I can’t tell if your external scientists actually read the paper, or just copy/pasted the figures. Though Pielke Jr. is correct to say “43.6% admitted to taking banned performance enhancing substances”.

Hahahahaha - this whole discussion was solely about your nonsense from three days ago, which you kept repeating too:

Wow you are funny - not.

And all your obvious trolling for a full three days came although I was so kind to avoid citing the abstract, for I know very well how much facts like that annoy you. In brief, with no interpretation whatsoever:

In full so you don't accuse me of leaving out important facts:

Look what I read today; more scientists seeing the 43.6% as the result, what a surprise:

10.1016/j.peh.2018.01.001

Bye bye.

BTT, "is the sport cleaner than ever"? These scientists of this 2019 paper, presumably new enough, do not think so: DOI 10.1249/JSR.0000000000000577

The global antidoping testing figures published by WADA (46) reveal that the number of ABP blood tests has increased from 6082 in 2009 to 29,130 in 2017, whereas the number of overall adverse analytical findings has increased by just 0.35%. This small increase in the number of adverse analytical findings suggests that: 1) the ABP could detect the majority of those doping in 2009, 2) the sensitivity of the ABP has not increased despite a significant investment of financial resources, 3) the number of athletes doping has not changed significantly in 8 years, or 4) the current implementation of the ABP does not have the specificity required to detect current doping practices. The latter explanation is supported by an anonymous survey in 2017 which found a 45% to 49% prevalence of doping, many times greater than that estimated from the ABP (47).

"45% to 49% prevalence of doping" - well the sport hasn't exactly improved.