You say Shorter and AW and literature "and so on and on" without any quote or link.
You are the one who referred to a 7 week old conversation, for no apparent reason, to answer a question that wasn't asked.
Recall I said "I received a wide variety of responses, some of them conflicting with each other, but there was no consensus response, not to mention no compelling explanation ..."
You said "Here's my take" explained it to me, when he echoed his belief in this novel hypothesis proposed by "casual obsever(sic)". He is one of several I referred to when I said "others believed" this novel hypothesis. He provided no explanation.
You said it happened a few days ago -- turns out that this echo of a belief was seven weeks ago.
You pretended that echoing "me too" was a "compelling argument", rather than just one of the variety of competing personal pet theories I said I received, some of them conflicting with each other, without any common consensus.
Note that Shorter and Cierpinski were from the '70s. When we talk about "Here's my take"'s statement "EPO is not going to be able to top that off much", this is relative to the 2:07's of the '80s, not 2:10's of the '70s. The pretended "compelling argument" assumes without evidence that the faster times of athletes like Steve Jones and Carlos Lopes and Taisuke Kodame were the result of the maximum synergy of drugs and methods available in the 1980s, and that "EPO is not going to be able to top that off much".
What about Athletics West? Here is an example of the prevailing belief as late as 1999 by none other than the infamous Salazar of AW:
"I, naively, did not know the extent of doping in athletics and believed that it was a problem primarily in the sprint and weight events, as compared to distance running, where muscular power rather than endurance and cardiovascular ability is crucial to an athletes' success. Other than blood doping, which was rumored to have been used successfully by the Finns, there were not any prohibited practices or doping methods that were clearly beneficial for distance runners, or I did not know about them."
As you can see, there was no common consensus belief -- just a variety of different beliefs.
It also doesn't match cycling, where blood transfusions were also used in the 1980s before it was banned. But it wasn't until the 1990s, where the "game-changing" performances were attributed to high-octane EPO, leaving 1980s world champions like LeMond in the dust. In other words, in cycling, EPO did "top that off much", but the pretended compelling theory for running is supposed to be that it shouldn't be expected to do that for the fastest non-Africans from five continents for nearly three decades in running?
It all just seems like the Emporer's clothes to suggest EPO really really works for running, trust me, but the prevailing consensus is supposed to be that we shouldn't expect to be able to see it reflected in nearly three decades of EPO-era performances, except for altitude based Africans who already benefit naturally from higher EPO and RBC, while simultaneously arguing EPO works for Africans like everyone else. It just doesn't seem all that compelling.