Between A Rock And A Hard Place

VeloNews.com, on Friday, reported something that’s been flying under the radar for at least a little while. The first inkling of a split between the two founders of the Agency for Cycling Ethics came when Rock Racing announced that they would be hiring Scott Analytics, a company formed by Paul Scott, to handle their drug screening program.

Prior to that announcement, no public word had been spoken about Scott’s heading off in a new direction and forming his own, seemingly competing, company. As a consultant to the Landis defense team, he’s drawn some notice for helping with the technical aspects of Floyd’s case. And, being that he was part of ACE meant that some of the stories written about Scott included the observation that he was a founder of that program. That in turn brings a certain amount of attention to the ACE program, for reasons that have nothing to do with the program’s mission.

Some in the cycling community see Scott’s involvement at ACE and as a consultant to the Landis defense team as a conflict of interest. As VeloNews reports:

“Personally I didn’t feel it was right,” said Frankie Andreu, the former pro racer who worked […] for ACE as a consultant until January.

“How you could represent anybody in a case and remain unbiased with an agency that is doing testing on athletes?” Andreu asked. “I thought it was inappropriate to cross over that barrier — that was the feelings within ACE throughout 2007 and into the start of 2008, that it was still a big conflict of interest being an expert witness for Floyd and trying to run a company with unbiased testing procedures.”

Paul Strauss, the other founder of ACE, declined to comment, other than to say he thinks the point Frankie raised is a legitimate question. Whether there is a conflict of interest is an interesting question. First, of course, ACE isn’t contracting with the individual riders, they contract with the teams. And in the Landis case, in particular, the program didn’t exists during Floyd’s tenure at Phonak. If they had, and they were contracted to perform work for Phonak, it would be a different story, perhaps. And it would raise another interesting question, which I’ll get back to in a a future post, namely, what might ACE’s obligations be if a rider they monitor tests positive.

In addition to working with the teams, ACE also has to interact with the governing bodies, such as USA Cycling and the UCI, and they have to interact with the anti-doping agencies. In order to maintain credibility, in today’s environment, they need to be perceived as a neutral party. Which leaves them pretty much stuck in the middle. Anything that detracts from that perception of neutrality could have negative consequences for the future of the ACE program.

So, with a highly visible member of the team helping to defend an athlete in a highly-charged and controversial case, it puts the company in an extaordinarily awkward position. There is no actual conflict of interest here, because the Landis case predates ACE’s existence. But it does raise questions of neutrality.

Why should the agency even be neutral? Well, right now they need to work with groups that are in some fashion at war with each other. The UCI is at war with one of the main promoters, the ASO. And, at times, there has been bad blood between the UCI and various teams. In addition, there has been the occasional (and not so occasional) tension between both groups and the anti-doping agencies. This is the reality in which ACE exists.

If the tensions between all of the main players in cycling weren’t such an albatross around the sport’s collective neck, perhaps things would be different. But, as in politics, the old saying “perception is reality” carries a lot of weight. The truth of the matter is not nearly so important as the perceived truth.

Sort of like in 1992, when the American economy hadn’t met the “official” definition of being in a recession, even though most people thought it was. Politicians who argued that the country wasn’t in an economic downturn (which, at least at one point during the election cycle was technically true) suffered at the polls. Why? Because a lot of voters saw a recession around them, and those who argued it wasn’t happening were seen to be out of touch with reality.

So, if the perception of the ACE program is that it is not neutral, but is “biased” in some way, ACE will suffer the consequences (and very likely, the whole sport will suffer, too). Is that right? Is it fair? Perhaps not. But that’s the reality of the climate they operate in.

There is another side to the story, however, that needs to be looked at. When an athlete is accused of doping — rightly or wrongly — it’s unlikely that the person accused is such a science expert as to fully understand the tests, the data, and what it all means. A professional athlete’s job is to excel at his or her sport. And that means endless hours of training and competition. It’s not the athlete’s job to be a Ph.D. in biochemistry or pharmacology or microbiology or even physics.

If that also happens to be the case, good for him or her. But most likely it isn’t. As Floyd Landis told VeloNews:

“I have no choice but to hire somebody, because I don’t know anything about science … But as soon as I hire someone, everyone is saying, ‘Oh, Floyd’s paying him.’ Well, what choice do I have? You’re stuck either way.”

As Landis notes, in order to understand the tests, the results and what it all means (and for that matter, whether the alleged results are correct), the accused needs to be able to turn to someone who understands the science of it all. And, if the case goes to arbitration, someone whose experience and knowledge will be deemed credible by the arbitrators.

This is not an easy thing to do. By WADA’s rules, anyone who works at a WADA-accredited anti-doping lab is out of the question. WADA has its own version of omerta, which says (in effect), “Thou shalt not speak ill of another anti-doping lab.” So the folks with the most direct experience, and the greatest credibility (for the arbitrators) are completely off limits.

The next best thing would be programs like ACE’s or Dr. Rasmus Damsgaard’s. Except, to maintain “neutrality” these people may well be off limits, too, by virtue of real (or tacit) rules that might prevent staff from testifying for either side in an anti-doping case.

Where else to turn? Well, there’s certainly experts in medical schools and academia. But the arbitration panels have a mixed record of whether they accept those scientists’ opinions as credible. In the Landis case, the majority didn’t. They accepted the argument that Landis’ scientists weren’t members of the anti-doping science club, and therefore weren’t knowledgeable enough to be able to comment on the case. Despite, in the case of Dr. Wolfram Meier-Augenstein, having actually written the book on some of the techniques used by LNDD in their sample analysis.

Now, as Paul Scott notes, “science is science” and should be independent.

“My own personal feeling is that science is science,” Scott told VeloNews. “It stands independent, based on the objective analysis of the data and facts at hand. You don’t need to be taking sides to reach such a conclusion. That is where science should come down. You don’t look at who is saying what, you just look at the data and come to your own conclusion.”

The thing is, arguments about what the data means happen all the time in the scientific disciplines. Taking sides happens all too frequently. In the ideal, Scott is right. In actual practice, things don’t always work so well. And that applies not just to the interpretation of medical data, but in other sciences, too. I could regale you with all sorts of stories from the worlds of physics, chemistry, and biology, but I’ll let that pass tonight.

So what’s the solution? An athlete accused of a doping offense is entitled to defend him- or herself under WADA’s rules. But many avenues of defense are limited or unavailable. One avenue that is available is to challenge the validity of the test results. But the only way to do that is with the help of one or more scientists that an arbitration panel will listen to. If all of the WADA-affiliated anti-doping lab staff are unavailable, and all of the staff at independent testing companies are unavailable, and scientists outside the “anti-doping club,” but still expert in the field, are not considered good enough by the arbitrators, then the accused athlete is pretty much out of luck.

Somewhere, somehow, an accused athlete needs to understand what they are being accused of. Whether the accusation is correct or not, the person needs to know what the evidence means and how strong it is. In some cases, the answer may well be, “Face it, you’ve been caught dead-to-rights. You’re not going to beat this charge.” In a few cases (at least, we should hope it’s only a few), the tests may not have been performed properly or the results incorrectly understood by the lab technicians. Either way, someone needs to be available to help the athletes. Otherwise, they will truly be stuck between a rock and a hard place. And the only way out will be to accept a doping sanction, regardless of whether the accusation is true or not.