Monday Hearings: Third Update

It’s a bit early to know how things will turn out, but things seem to be turning to Team Landis’ advantage. TBV has a good summary of Dr. Meier-Augenstein’s testimony from this morning’s direct examination by the Landis defense:

What I think I heard was:

• You need more then the 44/45 or 2/1 traces alone for proper identification, and we don’t have them all;
• That aside, the retention times aren’t anything near the WADA spec for matching the GCMS and the IRMS, so he really doesn’t know what he’s looking at.
• It’s easy for unclean peaks to have problems with background subtraction nibbling into true data;
• Overlapping peaks often lead to skews between first and second peaks in reports that do not match the truth.
• Lost peaks can affect the integration and isotope results.
• Wandering internal standard values suggest something odd is going on that has not been diagnosed.
• There is literature including the newly admitted Cologne study that says the delta-delta values should always be within -2 units.

What this seems to imply is that

• The peak identification isn’t up to WADA spec, providing a legally triggering ISL violation.
• The overlapping peaks probably account for some variation in delta values that is not correct.
• The ratio variance between the samples as inferred from the other studies, includig cologne, stronly suggest there is some other substance included in the measurements.
• This other substance might account for the big 5a swings.

I’ve just finished reading TBV’s notes from Dr. Meier-Augenstein’s morning testimony, and my understanding of what the doctor said is on par with TBV’s. How well this testimony stands up under what will likely be a very thorough cross examination is the question now. If Dr. Meier-Augenstein’s testimony can’t be impeached by USADA’s lawyers, then the Landis side has made some serious progress in their presentation.

Right now, it appears the afternoon session has begun, but I’m only getting slides and no video. I hope that will change. Meantime, check in with TBV if you aren’t connected to the video stream and take a look at his updates throughout the afternoon.