After opening arguments, USADA put Dr. Cedric Shackleton on the stand as their first witness. Shackleton is supposed to be an expert on IRMS, but we’ll come back to that in a bit. As he questions Shackleton, Richard Young, the lead prosecutor in the case, appears to be working a theory that the results show that Landis was switching back and forth between different forms of testosterone administration, but his theory may be based on unpublished and/or unreviewed research. And the research that the theory is based on may not be allowed in as evidence in the case, so Young is taking a real flyer here by putting on this witness as the first person the panel hears from.
As TBV notes about the research:
This is probably attempting to lead to the UCLA/Cologne studies that are likely to be rejected as unpublished/unreviewed.
Howard Jacobs and Maurice Suh each cross examine Dr. Shackleton. Both Jacobs and Suh ask some probing questions, and during the course of the cross examination, it turns out that Dr. Shackleton is not quite the expert on IRMS that USADA would like us all to believe. He’s familiar with the theory, but perhaps not quite so much with the practice and day-to-day work.
Here’s some of the exchanges between Maurice Suh and Dr. Shackleton:
Q: Not an endrologist, not an IRMS expert?
A: Correct, but I work with IRMS experts.
Q: Are you an IRMS expert or not?
A: It’s not that simple. There are people
Q: Not a GCMS expert.
A: I’m pretty good. I think so. 40
Q: All your testimony assumes the values are correct, right?
A: I reviewed the data.
Q: You assumed they were correct.
A: Yes.
Nothing like having your expert turn out to not be an expert. This is not a strong start for the prosecution. But there’s still time for them to recover. And we don’t know what other evidence USADA may put forward. But to start out with this makes me think their case is not so strong, and their precious undefeated record is — at least at the moment — in a certain amount of jeopardy.
At the moment, Dr. Shackleton’s testimony is continuing.
