When last we checked in on the Landis hearings, Richard Young, one of the lawyers for USADA was about to begin cross examining Dr. Wolfram Meier-Augenstein. While Dr. Meier-Augenstein’s morning testimony looked good for Team Landis, the question was how good his testimony would hold up under fire from the prosecuting team.
Judging by what I read in Trust But Verify’s summary of the cross examination, Young would have been better off not bothering with the cross examination. While Young may have scored a few points (very few), the professor held up extremely well. And he managed to get a few zingers in at various points during the questioning. For example:
q: is there anything you find in urine that would have an isotope ratio below -40?
a: who is to see it comes from urine? Can you tell me it doesn’t come from matrix interference? We don’t know, we don’t even have the mass spectrum from this peak. Considering your baseline is unbalanced -54, something -129 at LNDD could have effect.q: you say this peak could have a carbon value of -129?
a: possibly.q: what in nature has that value?
a: it doesn’t have to be in nature my dear friend. we could use values down to -700. It’s an artifact of the matrix interference, doesn’t come out of the urine, we just don’t have the information. There’s no comment it’s a natural peak. No way of knowing.
Later on, Dr. Meier-Augenstein invokes the divine:
q: where is it in the spec it matters if it’s outside the spec?
a: they must have some criteria, how do they choose? Divine intervention? I’m amazed. You’re left with the GCMS, which has mass spectra, then you get to retention time, and it doesn’t match in the IRMS. How do you identify one unknown peak among 5 unknown peaks? I don’t know how they do it.q: where does it say they quantify the IS [internal standard]?
a: how do they know it is the internal standard?
And then, in discussing the Cologne study, he says:
Q: you have no experience in measuring steroids?
a: but that is not the point, you need to compare corresponding measurements, the measures in Shakleton, Aquilerra and cologne are all 5a-pdiio and 5b-pdiol; and this is only one volunteer anyway. I’d like to see any peer-reviewed journal accept a study with n=1. That, you can’t compare, I’m terribly sorry.
For most of the big points that Young tried to make in his cross examination of Dr. Meier-Augenstein, the professor shut him down. USADA’s lawyer made very little progress, at least from what I can tell.
Next up was Dr. John Amory, from the University of Washington, in Seattle. Dr. Amory is an expert in testosterone metabolism, among other things. In his testimony, Dr. Amory provided testimony that refuted a claim by Don Catlin during Saturday’s hearings:
GDC 621. Effect of multiple oral doses on endurance performance, Baume et. al, including Saugy.
q: purpose?
a: study of trained athletes with t/placebo/exercise, treadmill performance. conclusions were that no benefit compared to placebo.q: familiar with reviewed papers on recovery?
a: two old ones from the 80’s. Neither showed any benefit.q: Don Catlin testified that T would benefit recovery. Has he written papers on that?
a: unaware of data to substantiate that claim.
When Catlin made the claim that testosterone helps with recovery, I was surprised that Team Landis didn’t challenge him. Now I see why. They already knew one of their experts would refute Catlin’s claim, and refute it in style.
Later, when being questioned about the Cologne study that was discussed on Saturday, Jacobs made sure to ask about whether the paper had been peer reviewed:
EX 34 cologne.
q: not peer reviewed, correct?
a: correct.q: do you now what review has been given?
a: presented in conference in the last year.
What we find out in this testimony is that while there were 18 individuals studied, only two of those subjects provided samples that were subjected to IRMS testing. Going deeper into the discussion of the Cologne study, Dr. Amory shoots down any correlations between Landis’ test results and what the study found. At the same time, Dr. Amory says that Landis’ results are not consistent with the use of exogenous testosterone.
In cross examination, it again appears that Young may have scored some minor points, but no blockbusters. In redirect, Howard Jacobs asks:
q: when you got lab documentation, did you do that?
a: there are some errorsq: significant?
a: in a medical context they’d throw it out and force a retest.
Young certainly tried hard today, but for the most part, today went to Team Landis. While they probably haven’t delivered a knockout punch, they seem well on the way to flipping the burden over to USADA to prove that lab errors and violations of the International Standards for Laboratories didn’t cause the results reported. If Team Landis can do that, then the onus will be on USADA to prove that Landis doped. It’s not a done deal, by any means, but things are definitely looking up.
Over at Trust But Verify, there’s an excellent summary of today’s action, which includes this:
Here’s what I think the essence of the case is for USADA:
- One metabolite is good enough, no corroboration is necessary.
- The lab work didn’t violate the ISL.
- All these tests show one.
Landis arguments so far are:
- The lab work obviously violates the ISL for diagnostic ions on the T/E.
- The lab work obviously violates the ISL for peak identification in the IRMS.
- Overlapping peaks can falsely skew the wrong direction on overlapped peaks; Many peaks overlap in the Landis samples.
- Small changes in the integration and background subtraction can have large effects on the reported delta numbers. None of this is recorded, and the results aren’t highly repeatable in the reprocessing.
- Unidentified co-elution can have large effects, and there is quite possibly co-elution because LNDD didn’t look at everything they could to rule it out.
- The reported numbers are not consistent with what’s known about metabolism, in that the 5a and 5b do not track in ways seen in any published data.
The remaining arguments seem to be, from USADA, that Landis is some kind of black-magician with a complicated doping regime of many testosterone and epitestosterone products that result in values never seen before in the published literature.
Even for those who aren’t too technically inclined, it’s worth taking the time to give TBV’s summary of today’s hearings a read. Tomorrow’s hearings will begin with the cross examination of Floyd Landis, and then Team Landis will call Dr. Simon Davis, who is an expert in the use of IRMS instruments. Landis’ testimony under cross examination promises be one of the highlights of these hearings.
Rant,
Today was a good day. We still have the final climb and down into the finish. Plus we need a time trial yet. Let’s see where this goes. Still too much yet to happen to know the outcome. But it looks more hopeful.
Cal
Cal,
Quite right. Things do look more hopeful. It will be interesting to see what the next two days bring.
– Rant
More hopeful, perhaps. Seems to me this is like fighting Mohammed Ali when he was world champion. You won’t win on a decision, you have to knock him out. I don’t think we’ve seen a knock out yet.