As an initial point, was Magness competing at the time and subject to the time limited infusion constraint? If not he doesn't deserve any ban. This is true even if he received 20x the legal limit, if he was not subject to the limit.In a lengthy report to compel evidence, a motion which failed, USADA expressed a strong belief of a highly likely possibility that the infusions of a "WADA legal" substance, were greater than 50ml, making the method not "WADA legal". This seems to be based on a stated belief that it would not be possible to infuse the recorded amounts of L-Carnitine within the 50ml limit.Before we can attempt to assess if we believe USADA was right or wrong, we should see a more detailed argument why USADA believes it is right that it was not possible to infuse the amounts within the 50ml limit. Did they try it, and produce a substance like toothpaste? Even then, this likely requires an expertise that most anonymous posters here don't possess to properly evaluate, rendering the question of what we believe about USADA's belief, largely useless. In the thread at the time, a few posters with self-expressed experience said that administering such an infusion of 50ml over an hour would pose no special difficulty. Personally, I am unable to judge one way or the other, without more information, and more expertise.Generally speaking, athletes do not deserve any ban on the basis of belief, even a strong belief from a trusted organization like USADA.Another question: If the forbidden method occurred, was it "Salazar's" forbidden method? We also saw from the "leaked report" that Salazar was concerned from the beginning that infusions were "WADA legal". In the very first communication in an email to Magness discussing infusions, he asked Magness to investigate how it can be done "and of course if it's WADA legal".So, if it is true, for the sake of argument, that infusions of greater than 50ml occurred, for athletes subject to the limit, we would need more insight into the sequence of events in between Salazar's initial concern to find a way to remain "WADA legal", and the subsequent "illegal" infusions of the six athletes, to find out when and where the change came from, and from whom. Assuming the infusions were greater than 50ml, did Salazar change his mind and order larger infusions? Did no one communicate the 50ml constraint to the infusors? Even if such an illegal infusion occurred, perhaps the just outcome is a "no-fault" finding on the part of Salazar, Magness, and the athletes, because of some unfortunate breakdown in communication, resulting in just cancellation of performances, but no ban.It is instructive to note that WADA is changing the rules in 2018 from 50ml each 6 hours, to 100ml each 12 hours, to allow more flexibility to infuse non-prohibited substances. While 2018 rules cannot be retroactively applied to 2012, it does help fans like us put this "illegal method" into perspective. It sends a strong message that WADA isn't concerned about a strict 50ml limit for non-banned substances like L-Carnitine.Regarding your statistical conclusions about "45% dopers", we lack a great deal of information about the distribution of the self-confessed dopers (e.g. by nationality, by gender, or by event), and the nature of the anti-doping rule violation (e.g. blood doping that triggers an ABP, versus steroids, HGH, etc. for strength events, versus using a banned method rather than substance, versus procedural error such as a failure to report whereabouts in ADAMs). Notably, we saw significantly higher figures in the Pan-Arab Games survey (unlikely to include Americans) of 45%, compared to the World Championship survey of 29%.Without knowing these distributions, and the nature of the ADRV, we can conclude what we want from these "self confessed" surveys, prevelance studies and detection rates. While it's easy to type the words "it is far more likely that Jager and Rupp and Farah are drug cheats than that even one of them is not", we cannot have a high degree of confidence in this expressed likelihood, if (hypothetically) significantly fewer American and English male distance runners did not self-confess to doping in these surveys.
