Wednesday: First Update

Checking in on today’s Landis hearings, it appears that Dr. Simon Davis will be doing a demonstration of the software used at LNDD during their testing of Floyd Landis’ samples from the 2006 Tour de France. I’m having the same challenges getting into the video stream this morning, so at the moment, I’m going to have to make do with TBV’s summaries.

Dr. Davis shows how to use the software. It looks like the presentation was fairly brief, judging by the summary. At the end of the demonstration, comes the following exchange between Howard Jacobs and Dr. Davis.

q: what about the popup box to do calculations?
a: the popup shows the detector values as you move the cursor along. Shows you the values of the traces in the graph that is plotted at that X value.

a: not the only thing they did, also manual BG subtraction. Pink line is the automatic BG value; green is points picked by software If there’s a contribution from something else, you are trying to remove it.

q: if not happy, what would you do?
a: what was happening at LNDD is they would remove points and add new points where they felt it would best fit. Demonstrate very wrong case, with massive changes to result ratio. Can go the other way as well. Can play all day and give any value you want, from plus or minus 50.

q: when you were at lndd you saw them do this?
a: yes, to the degree not extreme. Let me show minor change Determining how ridiculous the data point is is hard to determine. I don’t know how to do it. I don’t think the technicians at LNDD know how to do. This is an expensive, rather large random number generator.

q: if I wanted to check, I could save and document whe I’d done.
a: yes, simple save.

q: and if wanted to print, you could.
a: yes, file/print.

q: but after LNDD did this, they just printed.
a: yes, but didn’t save. The SOP says you should not save the parameter file after printing results.

q: how hard?
a: file/save/params OK.

It appears that the way LNDD’s technicians performed the testing, it was possible to introduce errors into the data by using the manual background subtraction technique. And Dr. Davis shows how easy it would be to save information about the test so that the data could be reanalyzed using the same parameters at a later date. But as Dr. Davis notes, LNDD’s standard operating procedure specifically told their technicians not to save any parameter information.

That seems rather odd, to me, that they wouldn’t want to save this information. It sounds like their jobs would be infinitely easier when having to go back and re-run data from tests at a later date. Perhaps the person who drafted the procedures never anticipated a need for that. That’s the end of the direct examination of Dr. Davis.

Richard Young begins the cross examination. He begins by asking some questions about Dr. Davis’ background. Apparently there are some discrepancies on his resume. They sound minor, but Young’s approach is to call Davis’ credibility into question. It’s a bit slimely, but not the heavy-handed approach one of the other USADA lawyers might have used.

So far, Young is trying to shake Davis on questions about his testimony from yesterday, but it doesn’t seem to be scoring a lot of points — at least not yet. The only concession he seems to have gotten out of Dr. Davis is that he had very good access to data, courtesy of Dr. Botre, the panel’s independent scientist.

Dr. Davis seems to be pretty well sticking to his story.

q: in connection with reprocessing, was there anything you asked botre to do that he was unwilling to do?
a: nope.

q: was there anything asked the lab techs didn’t do?
a: no.

q: you talked about the ability to save the parameter files.
a: yes.

q: during reprocessing they did adjust?
a: yes.

q: you never asked them to save?
a: that wasn’t my point, it was Botre’s procedure. I assumed that they had saved param. I was astounded they were doign it manually without records.

q: but you didn’t ask.
a: if they didn’t know to do it, it wasn’t my job to tell them.

Davis makes a good point here. And also, that these parameters should have been saved with the original Stage 17 tests, so that they could reanalyze later, if need be. Given how controversial things had already become by the time of the B sample tests in August 2006, it’s especially surprising that the technicians wouldn’t have done everything they could to record each and every step they took during the testing.

Young is trying to lay a trap for Davis:

q: and they still came out 5a positive?
a: they aren’t even the right peaks, the numbers are meaningless.

q: in your signed statement, you said the reprocessing…
a: let me look.

q: your signature, penalty of perjury.
a: yes.

q: read before you signed, page 6, section e.
a: trying to establish if the original was processed with newer sw., the numbers would be better; I don’t think it says anything about reprocessing.

While Young is trying to rush Dr. Davis along in his reading, Davis is taking his time and reading it carefully. The exchange continues:

q: let me ask the question. You requested the EDFs be reproduced on Masslynx software.
a: that’s not what this refers to. I’m saying if the analysis had been done on the new software, the results would be different.

q: Previous page, iii, you say reprocessing on masslynx or ionvantage…
a: reads, “for instance, if…” yes.

q: so you say newer software would remove errors.
a: yes.

And with that, Young’s cross examination comes to an end. Howard Jacobs is handling the redirect.

q: explain why reprocessing on new software doesn’t guaranteed accurate results?
a: yes, may I pull up screenshots from reprocessing?

He wants directory treeshot at the very end of the masslynx data. One at 185 is missing;

GDC 1054 and 1055; missing pages from some copies.

Continuing on, Jacobs asks:

q: Not present in Jul or Aug 2006 for original processing?
a: correct.

q: Any way of knowing what they did?
a: Not only do i now have any idea, they have no idea what they did.

q: when there in april/may, the numbers came up different.
a: correct.

It looks like Dr. Davis has held up well, and Jacobs is going back to reinforce some points made in yesterday’s testimony. Jacobs’ redirect finishes with this:

q: did reprocessing of S17 tell you anything about background?
a: that it wasn’t fit for purpose. We don’t know how it works. People have been saying “good enough”? It’s not. Every single sample needed to be re-integrated, and every time we’ve seen significantly different results.

Perhaps I missed it, but it appears that Richard Young hasn’t shot too many holes in Davis’ testimony, and Jacobs seems to be strengthening Davis’ earlier testimony.

The arbitrators have each asked Davis some questions. McLaren asks the following:

q: look at original result runs, at original and masslynx values, why are they similar?
a: they are quite different, not exact. I don’t know what the difference is, but it’s uncertain is the point; the lack of audit trail and know knowledge. There are quite significant changes there.

Even under questioning from the arbitrators, Davis stays on point. From my Rant’s-eye view, this looks pretty good for the Landis defense. Not perfect. But I expected Young to be much tougher. Perhaps he’ll put Dr. Brenna on the stand as a rebuttal witness to contradict Dr. Davis’ testimony. We’ll have to wait and see.