Wait, what? What did I assume and conclude? These look like assumptions and conclusions you made for me.
I recall, in a thread that looked closely at EPO-era performances, I concluded with a question: "Why so few, by so little, from five continents over almost three decades?", and letting the discussion begin. In between 43 pages of incivility, ignorance, confusion, false accusations, and outright dishonesty, there were some creative responses.
I believe that "EPO works", just like "altitude works", based on short term studies on amateurs finding comparable benefits after 4-6 weeks, but likely much less for elites at their peak fitness, especially after training at altitude, than sea-level amateurs starting from an unknown state of training.
The explicitly stated purpose of my "closer look" was to "observe the large effect from EPO on the best performances, pre-1990, versus post-1990". I only assumed EPO had no impact in pre-1990 performances. Some argued that 1987 was a better choice, but that would effectively change nothing.
The answers to your two questions (for the men):
- I make exactly no prevalence assumptions "about say the top 10 non-African 1500 m runners pre 1990". My "closer look" only included 3 non-African men. 0, 1, 2, or 3 can be clean, or can be doped.
- I make exactly no prevalence assumptions "about say the top 10 non-African 1500 m runners post 1990". My "closer look" only included 2 non-African men. 0, 1, or 2 can be clean, or can be doped.
Prevalence doesn't interest me as much as demonstrating effect.
If I draw any conclusions it is that blood doping effect for the fastest men's elite distance running performances is not "proven" in any sense, neither scientific nor anecdotal, and is therefore relegated to the domain of belief, myth, speculation, hypothesis, etc.
