Ramblin’ Rants

Slow News Day

When there’s a slow news day, magazines and newspapers often break out stories that wouldn’t otherwise make the news, or they update stories that have already been reported. Such is the case with VeloNews, who are reporting that Oscar Pereiro is (gasp!) frustrated with the snail’s pace at which the Floyd Landis case seems to be progressing. They’re even promising to publish a full interview in the near future. Color me underwhelmed.

I feel for poor Oscar’s predicament, I really do. But we’ve heard his concerns before. The case is taking too long. If it goes Oscar’s way, he’s lost precious time to capitalize on the advertising and marketing aspects of a win. Boo hoo. There’s this guy named Floyd in California who’s lost a lot more, old chap. Like all the money he’s spending to defend himself. And his reputation. And his job. And that marketing and advertising windfall he deserves for winning. By comparison, Pereiro’s predicament seems not so bad.

Pereiro, however, does score a few points for graciousness when he says,

“Whether I am named the winner or Floyd is named the winner, we just want the case to be decided as quickly as possible.”

Yes, Oscar, we would all like to see the case decided as quickly as possible. Send your cards and letters to Travis Tygart and tell him to quit the stall tactics, so that Landis can put on a proper defense, while you’re at it. And since it’s a slow news day, onwards to …

Science

It’s a wonderful thing. It’s how my dad, a theoretical physicist, made his living his entire adult life. Scientists and researchers, through their work, have found breakthroughs that have led to all sorts of technologies, products, services and more. Consider the computer you’re using right now. It’s made of a number of small microprocessors, circuits and assorted gizmos that let you do all sorts of things. Things like surfing the web and reading about Floyd Landis or crunching numbers using some high-powered math application to who knows what else.

It’s all possible because of a lot of hard work by scientists and engineers and others who’ve refined these beasts over the years. Chances are, if you have a relatively new machine you have the processing power in that little box greater than the processing power of building-sized computers of 50 years ago.

If you’re a cancer patient, you might go to a hospital and be treated using a particle beam from a cyclotron. When cyclotrons were first built, I rather doubt that the people doing so thought they’d one day be used to treat cancer. They were physicists probing the structure of the smallest known parts of matter at the time (which was back in the very late 1920s and 1930s).

Science can be very precise. For example, if you mix a lead nitrate solution with a sodium chloride solution, you’ll get a precipitate called lead chloride (or to be precise, lead dichloride). Keep everything the same (same amounts, same concentrations, etc.) and repeat the experiment and you’ll get the same amount of precipitate. Do this as many times as you want, you should come up with the same results.

So if your hypothesis is that mixing the two liquids together produces lead chloride, you can perform repeated experiments. If they all give the same result you’ve demonstrate that it’s true. If, on the other hand, repeated experiments came up with differing results, your hypothesis would not be proven. Repeatability is part of the process of verifying a scientific proposition.

But science can also be very imprecise. The more complex a system (or an organism) is, the more difficult it is to determine precisely what is happening inside. Things can be observed in a laboratory that may not bear out in real life, where a number of confounding variables might interfere with a process.

That’s how we can wind up with news about possible breakthrough cancer treatments which work in the lab, but end up with these breakthroughs falling through once a treatment goes into clinical trials. In the trials, researchers look for evidence that the treatment is effective, that it’s safe and that it has minimal side effects.

As most people who’ve seen or read drug ads know, even the safest of drugs have some side effects, even if those side effects aren’t common. Which is testimony to the fact that we are not quite all the same. But I digress.

Even if experimental results suggest a conclusion, there’s always the chance of experimenter bias. One famous example that I cite from time to time is the whole dust-up over cold fusion in the 1980s. Experimental results originally suggested that it had be discovered. But further studies failed to duplicate those results. Perhaps experimenter bias was to blame for the original experimental design, data and conclusions.

We want to believe that all science is precise and accurate. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Which brings me to …

Floyd Landis, The Debate

Much of the debate as to whether Landis is innocent or guilty of doping seems to rest on whether those debating the issue believe the science behind the testing is infallible (or that science in general is infallible) or whether they believe that the science behind the tests could be wrong, or wrongly applied. If you believe that the science is infallible, then you probably believe Landis is guilty. If you’re of the other mindset, you may believe he’s guilty or you may not, but either way you’re open to the possibility that the he may also be innocent.

The problem with the case up to now is that the data is subject to interpretation. You need to be pretty scientifically savvy to really understand everything that’s in those 370-odd pages of lab documentation to get a complete grasp of the case. And you need to have a lot of time to go through it. Something most of us don’t have.

Part of the uncertainty in the Landis case is whether the bits and pieces of whatever it is that LNDD, France’s anti-doping lab, analyzed by the carbon isotope tests were actually bits and pieces of testosterone and epitestosterone or their metabolites. Did LNDD actually prove that what they were analyzing was what they said they were? If not, the case should fall apart right there.

And then there’s the argument over whether all the bits and pieces must be positive for the sample to be declared a positive. This is the argument over whether the WADA code says “metabolites” versus “metabolite(s).” Article 2.1.1 of the 2003 WADA Code available from the WADA web site says “metabolites” and the web site says that the English version of the code rules in cases of differences in translations.

Unless a more recent version of the code was in effect last year (and if so, it’s not easily found on the WADA website), that suggests that more than one metabolite must be positive for a positive result. In fact, it may sound ilke splitting hairs, but it suggests that all metabolites measured must have a positive reading in order for Landis’ results to be considered a true positive.

But underneath all these arguments is this: Do the banned substances actually give their users any advantage? Some may, and some may not. There’s quite a bit of snake oil out there being sold to people over-the-counter and under-the-counter that probably doesn’t make a whole hell of a lot of difference. Which brings me to …

To Catch A Cheat

Testing for banned substances after the fact is certainly a good way to catch cheats — as long as the testing methods hold up to scrutiny. Requiring the same tests out of competition may also catch cheats. But perhaps there’s a better way.

What if you could test for the actual improvements that doping might bring? That’s the idea behind the testing program that Team Slipstream (powered by Chipotle) have instituted. This is a different approach. Rather than test for the banned substances, test for their effects. Interesting idea.

Let’s take it a step further. What if the rules were such that if you didn’t show the physiological effects, then whether you doped or not, you’re not guilty of a doping violation. So, in the case of those banned substances which have no benefit for a particular sport, the people buying them would be out the money spent (more fools, they), but they wouldn’t be out of competition.

Isn’t the idea of outlawing doping to prevent athletes from pursuing the life of “better winning through chemistry”? Well, if the dope doesn’t offer any improvement, why not just let the sucker spend his money and take his chances on his health? If, on the other hand, the athlete shows a real, measurable change for the better and that change came from doping, then ban him from competition.

The problem, as I see it, is you can’t mix the current system with this new system. I can easily imagine a situation where an athlete comes up clean on the Team Slipstream (powered by Chipotle) program, but who suffers a positive reading on the WADA-style test protocols.

I’m skeptical as to whether the data compiled by the Slipstream program would be able to exonerate an athlete charged with doping. I don’t know if we currently have enough flexibility for that to happen, or even if it could. In this strict liability world, the athlete — who might well be clean — has to explain how the result happened. And this system considers the science of the tests to be infallible. That’s quite the dilemma.

On the other hand, if the Slipstream (powered by Chipotle) program is successful in weeding out dopers, then perhaps WADA should consider making it the anti-doping regime across the board. It could even work out to be more fair than the current system. Maybe.