Botched Tests? Say It Aint So!

Over at TBV, Atown, who comments regularly there as well as here, filed a report from Monday night’s town hall meeting where the usual suspects presented the Wiki defense slide show and answered questions from the audience.

Atown asked the following question about the B sample tests that began yesterday at LNDD, just outside of Paris:

[W]as there going to be any blinding of the B samples they are now testing, [were] they going to test 14 samples instead of 7 so they wouldn’t know which was Floyd[‘]s?

As Atown tells it, this caught Floyd and Arnie Baker a little bit off guard. Baker answered:

Yes, there were three random samples that were sent over from the UCLA lab to be tested with Floyds samples. However the 3 samples that were sent over had the lids taped on, apposed to Floyd[‘]s samples that were not sealed the same way. So it was obvious which samples were not Floyd[‘]s. (emphasis added over at TBV)

That’s disturbing, coming from the UCLA lab. I had certainly hoped for better from them. But the person doing the testing surely already knows that most of the samples he or she is testing belong to Landis. Still, it would be interesting to know, if the samples had really been properly blinded, exactly how the test results would have turned out. But now, because UCLA botched the labeling, LNDD really isn’t being tested on their ability to get the correct results. They’re merely being tested on their ability to perform the same tests, the same way. Whether they’ve been done correctly or not will be a major issue in the arbitration hearings a few weeks down the road.

Which leads me to one more interesting thing Atown had to report:

[T][he word coming back from across the pond is that after the first day LNDD has already horribly botched their do over.

Unfortunately, he has no more specific detail, but even the vague suggestion that the lab has botched things up is cause for concern. On the first day? Granted, having four observers writing down your every move would be nerve-wracking, even for the most confident of people. But the lab personnel have to be able to do their jobs correctly, regardless of the distractions around them. Even without the observers, I’m sure there are plenty of distractions just with people chatting about whatever they might want to chat about.

And in answering a question posed in the comments, Atown lets us know that the observers’ job is just to observe. Unlike what’s been suggested in many places over the last 8 months, the observers don’t have the right (apparently) to throw up a red flag when they see something wrong and stop the testing. It appears they don’t even have the right to talk to lab personnel, they can only write down their observations.

I asked about the procedure of what the witnesses could and could not do. The Witnesses are not allowed to interject but just watch and take notes. If they interject they could be immediately removed from the lab.

So there you have it. Shifting gears a bit: To touch on the latest Judging Floyd installment again, one thing Judge Hue and TBV point out is that by allowing the B samples to be tested, the arbitrators are potentially giving USADA ammunition with which to rebut a Landaluze-type argument, should it be shown that the same technicians worked on both the A and B samples last year.

The rules in the international standard are pretty clear, and the Spanish anti-doping authorities really didn’t have any way of rebutting Landaluze’s arguments. So the CAS had to (grudgingly) let him go, despite indicating in their ruling that they suspected he really had doped.

So one thing I’ve been wondering about today is this: We know that, by the rules, the same technicians can’t perform the same work on both the A and B samples for a given athlete’s tests. But what about these tests? Can they be considered valid if the same person worked on the A and B samples last year, and she also works on these tests? That seems awfully suspect to me.

LNDD is not a large, highly staffed facility. In an average year, they perform about one-quarter the number of tests as UCLA does. And, from what I understand, UCLA has about 40 employees. Would it be fair to assume that LNDD has less than half that, and perhaps as few as 10 employees? Seems reasonable to me. Of those people, how many do you suppose are trained to operate the GC/MS instrument used to perform the CIR/IRMS tests? Probably only a few, wouldn’t you say?

So it’s clearly possible, given the size of the lab, and the staffing, that the same person may be doing the testing again. I don’t know about you, but if that’s the case, the same errors are likely to be repeated (if any) and the same improper procedures followed (again, if any). The only thing we’ll have established through this exercise is that one person can repeatably perform a test. Whether accurately or not is another question, and surely one that will be hotly debated in the hearings.

If what Atown heard is true, and the tests were botched from the get-go, shouldn’t the results — no matter what they may be — be inadmissible come hearing time? I would hope so. But then, I really didn’t think the arbitrators would allow these tests to happen, in the first place. So, if flawed evidence is allowed, it will be yet another way that the system winds up screwing Floyd Landis. Has the lab botched it, yet again? We don’t know the details, yet, but this story adds yet another discordant element to a song that’s already disturbing enough as it is.