Why are “EPO era” records falling?

Typical insult when you are exposed as an intellectual fraud …… yet again.

So did the black market only relate to competitive athletes ?

Respond ?

You just quoted the explictly stated assumptions: "assumptions of high prevalence, and high effect for elite athletes".

I answered this question clearly, without distortion, in the opening post, 5 years ago: assuming high prevelance and high effect (see above) "we should be able to observe the large effect from EPO on the best performances". I defended it then.

You would have me believe that, despite assumptions of the high prevelance and high effect, the not strange and common expectaction is to be unable to confirm it in 28 years of results from non-African athletes across 5-continents.

This is in combination with your

In essence, you are comparing 3 athletes pre 1990 (where "0, 1, 2, or 3 can be clean, or can be doped") with 2 athletes post 1990 (where "0, 1, or 2, can be clean, or can be doped").

Then you conclude that doping does not work (well or significantly or whatever). Honestly - if you are really serious about that conclusion, I really don't know what to say. This is so wrong on so many levels:

1) The sample size is ridiculously small.

2) The sample size is very unbalanced (3 v 2 athletes).

3) There are way too many unknowns to conclude anything (even when ignoring problems 1 + 2): 4 doping possibilities pre 1990, and 3 post 1990 -> 12 different doping possibilities overall.

a) If all 3 athletes pre 1990 were doped, and 0 of 2 post 1990 were doped, your conclusion is wrong.

b) If 2 out of 3 were doped pre 1990, and 0 out of 2 were doped post 1990, your conclusion is wrong.

c) If 2 out of 3 were doped pre 1990, and 1 out of 2 was doped post 1990, your conclusion is wrong.

....

g) If 3 out of 3 were doped pre 1990, and 2 out of 2 were doped post 1990, your conclusion is wrong.

...

l) If 0 out of 3 were doped pre 1990, and 2 out of 2 were doped post 1990, then your conclusion is correct.

You are not willing to say whether you assume a, b, c, ... or l. Evidently your conclusion works only under a few assumed scenarios.

Unless you assume scenario g with your "high prevalence", then you are definitely wrong.

I'm sorry. What is your point? Is that meant to respond to my post? It's intellectually dishonest for me to give "steroids for women" as an example of doping that works? Are you arguing that steroids for women in fact do not work, and that this paper sets out to prove that?

This paper seems to ignore any and all effects of steroids on women completely. They don't explain why they omitted steroids from consideration.

Where are you pulling his conclusion from? That is not the peer reviewed conclusion found in the paper, but a quote in a magazine that starts with "one way of interpreting these findings ...". What are other ways then of interpreting these findings?

As a side note, it seems like some scientists are eager to "prove" that the ABP is a deterrent. I recall the IAAF already tried to show the deterrent effect of the ABP, by comparing the 2011 WCA and 2013 WCA estimated blood doping prevelances, but finding no significant reduction, except in Russia. I suspect the real reason is that Russia was under enormous pressure around that time from the IAAF (see the IAAF Ethics Commission Report and the WADA IC reports #1 and #2), and Russia stopped all doping, including steroids and blood doping.

Another factor that these researchers ignore, can be found in Table 2: 53% of the women in 2008-2012 were sanctioned. Maybe the 2013-2017 group was slower because many of the faster women from 2008-2012 were sanctioned and could not compete in 2013-2017.

Finally, the conclusion in the paper is "It can be reasonably speculated ...". Let all these weasel words sink in. All this analysis and graphs and discussion, and the best they can say is that reasonable speculation is possible.

You are halfway there. Without speculating, can you tell me what would his clean performances have been? Then we can start to talk about "efficacious" and "benefit".

Your first post was five paragraphs of "use" without one single mention of any single athlete with a performance gain attributable to that use. Now with Kiptum, you still haven't established that he benefited from his use.

These arguments might persuade you, but I find them completely uncompelling.

So do you want me to defend my statements? Because it will take many words, and most posters seem to hate that.

It is your statement "you conclude that doping does not work (or whatever)" that is wrong, and invalidates your whole post. I did not conclude that. I concluded with a question "why so few non-Africans, and then by so little?"

It's my "hypothesis" that, assuming high prevalence/effect, "we should be able to observe the large effect from EPO on the best performances" that you think is wrong, as you argue that EPO isn't necessarily better than steroids and blood transfusions of the '80s. (Note: I clarified then it may not be the 3-6% individual improvement, but nevertheless, we should be able to see some sort of "EPO footprint", showing how the "game changed", resulting from a drug often described as a "game-changer".)

TLDR; most posters can stop here, if they've made it this far.

What else is wrong with your post?

First, there is ambiguity in your undefined term "work". If you want to use the word "work", then my look at EPO-era performances defines "work" as progress relative to a "top" 1990 benchmark, in the two dimensions of quality (top-5 average) and quantity of performances since 1990.

Second, since I only looked at performances as measured by time, I can conclude some combination of unidentified things "worked" or all things combined didn't really "work", but I cannot be sure that what worked or didn't work was "EPO" or "doping". As you say, there are too many unknowns.

Third, I'm not really comparing 2 athletes to 3 athletes. I'm comparing thousands of post-1990 candidate athletes against a 1990 benchmark.

Then, the way you use "sample size" seems incorrect. A criticism of "sample size" makes sense when you have a large population, and you observe just a small sample of that population, and then draw conclusions from that small sample about the large population. I am not doing that. My 1990 benchmark, defined as the average of the top-5 performances pre-1990, makes absolutely no conclusion or judgement about the whole population of pre-1990 performers, except that these 5 fastest were faster than the rest, which is undoubtedly correct.

Then you say 2 (post-1990 non-African "top" performers) is a small sample size. The sample I observed is the entire population of male non-African competitors between 1990 and 2018 (in the alltime athletics list). 2 is not a small sample size, but a measured small "quantity" result. It was this small "quantity" result of 2 non-Africans that leads me to conclude with a question: "why so few?" The comparative quality was also low, leading me to conclude with a question: "and then by so little"?

What I'm willing to say, for all 12 of your options, is the result of these non-African progress measures are a low quantity of low quality. By comparison, East Africa had a quantity of 16 high quality performers, outperforming "5-continents" by a factor of 8. The East African quality was 1.1% versus the non-African 0.26%, or a factor of 4.3. Normalized to population size, East African quantity per capita was 120x that of 5-continents. For the longer distances, the East African quantity per capita factor increases to as much as 230x "5-continents", while the quality remains around 3.5 to 4 times greater.

I have no reason to say any option is any more likely than the rest. We could speculate prevalence of 30-50% and say a mix before and after 1990 is most likely. But it's not like most of the 12 options suggest "EPO-era doping is effective".

Considering the four options where 2 of these 2 post-1990 non-Africans were clean, then these two clean non-Africans were faster than all non-African EPO dopers worldwide for 28 years. And the corresponding "quality" of the clean non-Africans is positive, while for every non-African EPO doper it would be negative. For these 4 of the 12 options, what can we conclude then about EPO for non-Africans for this 28-year period?

For the four options where 1 out of 2 were clean, can we conclude that the clean athletes in the EPO-era were just as likely as dirty athletes to make the quality cut? If we assume 50% prevalence at the very top, and the quantity result is still 50-50 making the quality cut, the implication here is still that doping does not perform better than not doping.

All 8 of these options are independent of pre-1990 doping, and none of them strongly favor a conclusion of high effect.

Similarly, if 0 of 3 pre-1990 non-Africans were clean, what can we conclude about steroids and blood transfusions of the 1980s? The low-quantity of low-quality performances are relative to clean performances.

Combining these above accounts for 9 of your 12 scenarios.

The scenario that you seem to prefer is g) above.

You appear confused. Or are you starting a straw man discussion on purpose?

Recall this is about your hysterically wrong statement as cited, nothing to do with your question "why so few..." where ever and whenever you may have asked that question, or with your statement "we should be able to observe the large effect from EPO on the best performances":

What else is wrong with your post?

You are citing me wrong! Get lost. This invalidates your whole post.

Plus:

The 3 v. 2 discussion comes from you, not me, as did the 0, 1, 2 or 3 may have doped scenarios.

And: I did not even mention blood transfusions or steroids. Where is that coming from?

The whole discussion has also nothing to do with my preferences.

But if you'd think this through: your "assumptions of high prevalence, and high effect for elite athletes" directly lead indeed to scenario g - the top 3 pre-1990 and the top 2 post-1990 are doped.

It goes without saying that the conclusion from g is that the "high effect" from the 80s is comparable to one from the 90s/00s (fewer controls v better drugs -> comparable results). Nothing "incompatible" here. At all. Whatsoever.

Not to mention that there is ambiguity in your undefined term "effect". Your ambiguity caused mine ("doping does not work (well or significantly or whatever)."), and then you blamed me for that.

Obviously you are not interested in an honest serious discussion.

He does not respond with vile insults or run away when exposed.
Are you going to bother to respond to outstanding questions about your stance?

Since you think I am a troll who confers only insults why are you so desperate to have me respond to your questions? You obviously hang on every word I say. You should try thinking for yourself. Sorry - silly suggestion.

To make those who may well be gullible to understand that your statements have no validity in science and can’t be substantiated.

I had this honest serious discussion 5 years ago, and was quite interested then. But sure, let's have an honest, serious discussion.

First, I am confused to how many posters I'm responding to. Can I assume that "reminderer", "moron or not", and "casual obsever" are in fact the same poster? Do you use other aliases? I don't really care who you post as, but it makes "honest, serious discussion" easier if I know what "reminderer" said under previous aliases.

High prevalence/effect are not my assumptions per se, but assumptions of others. I suppose "effect" here means what it commonly means -- performance benefit between doping and not doping. To be clear, this is not the same as my quantity/quality metrics, looking at progress relative to 1990, which may be due to a combination of doping and non-doping factors.

You say "my conclusion is wrong", but let's pin down what exactly do you think "my conclusion" is? You said my conclusion was "doping does not work (well or significantly or whatever)". This cannot be found in the "hysterically wrong" statement. Maybe you mean later when I said: "My conclusion about EPO is that non-African men from 5-continents for nearly three decades, clean and dirty, did not run significantly faster during the EPO-era than their pre-EPO predecessors."

In all 12 scenarios of your clean-dirty combinations, that conclusion is equally true that "non-African men from 5-continents for nearly three decades, clean and dirty, did not run significantly faster during the EPO-era than their pre-EPO predecessors." As you picked the 1500m, the quality (top-5 average) for the 4 years between 1985-1988 was 3:30.23, while the quality (top-5 average) for 28 years between 1990-2017 was 3:29.88, or 0.35s faster. This lack of significant progress of quality is similarly true for the men across all distance events from 1500m to the marathon.

I'm not convinced that your "option g)" would be a realistic scenario even under these high prevalence/effect assumptions. I would consider 50% prevalence high prevalence, and if I assume a high effect from EPO, I also assume a similarly high effect from the widely practiced non-doping method of altitude training.

"moron or not" told me "there is no such thing as "low quantity and low quality of elite non-African EPO-era performances". But surely a serious discussion must start from the same set of facts. We can see this reality, in the 1500m, in terms of both quality and quantity, when we compare EPO-era non-African results to EPO-era East African results (see above). This is the comparison that triggers the question "why so few (non-Africans), and then by so little?"

But even when we compare EPO-era non-Africans to pre-EPO era non-Africans, (Fortunately, I took a second "look" measuring quantity and quality trends per each 4-year Olympic cycle) we can find in the 1500m that both non-African quantity and quality dropped after it's peak in 1988, only resurging once in 2000, when the first EPO tests were announced at the Sydney Olympics, and then again after the ABP was introduced in 2009, but never again to the depth of quality of the mid to late 1980s.

"moron or not" placed some weight on "out of competition tests and better steroid tests" in the 1990s. While I concede "steroids works for women" in events requiring physical strength, I do not share the assumption that steroids can produce a high effect for distance running for men. Nor was it a common belief for male distance runners to take steroids. Steroids was historically for sprinters and fielders. This did change later. Lance Armstrong calls steroids "low octane" - a 1%-er versus EPO, a 10%-er.

You also think compatibility comes as a result of "fewer controls" and "better drugs". Is EPO better than blood transfusions or altitude? Scientists find similar performance benefits for EPO, blood transfusions, and altitude training, at least for amateurs in short term studies. WADA and USADA didn't exist until after 2000, and there were no controls for EPO, blood transfusions, or HGH for quite a significant amount of the EPO-era. Even then, these controls were easy to avoid, also in non-African countries, especially in countries like Russia and China.

But it boggles my mind that we should accept that EPO was both pervasive and powerful, while for a long time undetectable, but yet the expected non-hysterically right result for most of the athletic world for nearly three decades is "comparable results" compared to pre-EPO. Does everyone here believe that? Does anyone else besides you and your aliases? Serious, honest question.

Do you believe that EPO-era doping was not more powerful than pre-EPO era doping, and that it is expected to achieve "comparable results"? Do any of your athlete/coach/physician experts ever say something similar?

Sounds like you really are confused, mixing at least five discussions in two threads five years apart with at least three posters. When did I bring in the 1500 m? You mentioned it in the post I responded to. Don't assume, and stay on topic. If you want, tell us at some point why you are doing all this, and as how many posters.

Your "conclusion" that I challenged was "assumptions of high prevalence, and high effect for elite athletes, are incompatible with the reality of the low quantity and low quality of elite non-African EPO-era performances for nearly three decades." If you would stop mixing threads and posters, that would be obvious, I cited that now what? 4 times?

Many problems with that as mentioned. You didn't define "high prevalence" and "high effect", but then argue that all I am saying is invalid because of my similarly vague statement "
doping does not work (well or significantly or whatever)" - which you even cited falsely!

And that is not all! You yourself wrote just two days ago: "I believe that "EPO works", just like "altitude works"'.... but apparently according to you only you are allowed to make such statements.

"low quantity and low quality" was also not defined; later you seem to imply that you mean similar results like during the 80s. That doesn't sound like low quantity and low quality to me. Tell that to Willis, Radcliffe, Flanagan, Meb, Mo, Rupp, Jager, Shobubkova and so on.

You also didn't mention EPO during the paragraphs preceding that one; those were all generally about doing such as "the athletes know about doping" and "how you can ignorantly suggest doping effect is greater than all other non-doping factors combined". You sneaked that in later for no reason.

Do you believe that EPO-era doping was more powerful than pre-EPO era doping, and that it is expected to achieve "superior results"? Do any of your athlete/coach/physician experts ever say something similar?