You gave the example of Ramzi, but you can prove nothing with one example, and your suggestions are not persuasive.
If you want to start arguing a point about the performance benefit of steroids for women in 800m, I will only point out how that is completely disconnected from a discussion about the men's mile, and moreso a discussion about EPO or blood-doping for the men's mile.
For the 1.45 male, the advantage might be half, or it might be one-fiftieth or one in a million, or zero -- these are things in the set of things you don't know.
To argue that a woman md runner may clearly benefit from doping but a male won't, as though they have biologies from different planets, is stupidity of Olympian proportions. Then to add that Ramzi didn't actually benefit from his doping makes morons of him, his coach and the experts whose decision banned the drugs he was using. There is only one moron here, and, unfortunately for you, it isn't them.
Right, Mr. Pot.
I know you only claim to have a law background, but when it comes to male hormones, men and women are quite different, biologically.
I did acknowledge that Ramzi may have benefitted from placebo effect. Who knows -- he may have also benefitted from other doping like steroids or HGH or diuretics and non-doping altitude training. This doesn't mean that athletes and coaches are not morons for doping. The experts that ban drugs do so for some unspecified combination of reasons which may or may not include an unproven "potential" to enhance performance. EPO is potentially harmful to health and against the spirit of the sport.
I have experience in analyzing data and making correlations and detecting bias and fallacies, even when lacking comprehensive studies.
So when we analyze the data and see clear and ridiculous spikes in performances from 2 or 3 countries that set WRs lasting for decades (and still today in the case of El G), we are 'assuming' things, but when you hold up a LetsRun poll from 2007 stating that a majority of multiple anonymous handles thought El G was clean, that proves that EPO doesn't work, along with the fact that Peru and Antartica showed no increase in performances during the EPO era??
The overwhelming scientific consensus is that peds, including EPO, work. This is not just studies showing an increase in performance, but also hard science as to why they should work. Rekrunner - extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. LetsRun polls and your cherry picking and manipulation of statistics don't cut it.
To argue that a woman md runner may clearly benefit from doping but a male won't, as though they have biologies from different planets, is stupidity of Olympian proportions. Then to add that Ramzi didn't actually benefit from his doping makes morons of him, his coach and the experts whose decision banned the drugs he was using. There is only one moron here, and, unfortunately for you, it isn't them.
Right, Mr. Pot.
I know you only claim to have a law background, but when it comes to male hormones, men and women are quite different, biologically.
I did acknowledge that Ramzi may have benefitted from placebo effect. Who knows -- he may have also benefitted from other doping like steroids or HGH or diuretics and non-doping altitude training. This doesn't mean that athletes and coaches are not morons for doping. The experts that ban drugs do so for some unspecified combination of reasons which may or may not include an unproven "potential" to enhance performance. EPO is potentially harmful to health and against the spirit of the sport.
So Ramzi won because he and his coach were fired by a purely superstitious belief that drugs were helping him - your "placebo effect". I guess if he became sick and was treated successfully with drugs you would also say that, too, was only a "placebo effect". Or is it only drugs used medically that work, even though many of the same drugs are used by athletes to enhance performance - like growth hormone or testosterone? More likely, to you, modern medicine - like drugs in sport - is simply a 'con' and no more real than the magic potions of witch doctors, but patients are too stupid to realise this. However, you don't mind admitting to a contradictory belief that weightlifters can benefit from doping but not runners, or that Russian female runners can benefit but not males. There is simply no end to the intellectual contortions you engage in. You should be in a circus.
Really!? The WR improved by 2.7secs in the 1500m from 1974 to 1985. In the next 13 years it improved by 3.46 secs! The rate of improvement % wise actually speeded up during the last 25 years of the 20th century, mostly in the last decade. Hmm can't think why?
It has since stood still in the 24 years since the current WR was set, with only a confirmed doper and a solitary run by Kiplagat (on the Monaco track) getting within 2 secs.
You forgot US-based Lagat.
Really!!
Recall I'm responding to posts comparing Jakob relative to the greats of the '60s like Snell, and Elliot, asking why Jakob can run 8 seconds faster than these legends from 60 years ago, as if that 8 seconds only "suggests other factors", while downplaying well known factors in the last 60 years.
From Elliot (1960) to Cram (1985) the record dropped by ~6 seconds, from 3:35.6 to 3:29.67. Jakob has run 1.39s faster than Cram's time from 1985, and El G has run 3.67 seconds faster. 6 seconds is bigger than both 3.67s and 1.39s, therefore I say "most of the gains".
Also recall I'm responding to a post about observations from "top athletes in recent decades suggests other factors", presumably not just 1985-1998, which is not the most recent decade, but also the 2+ decades after.
If we use your "within 2 seconds" metric, we can find very few athletes before and after 1998. During 1985-1998, we only have one athlete, Morcelli, compared to post-1998 with the two you implicated, and then the one you forgot.
If we expand that to "within 3 seconds", we can only add just 1 more (Cacho) during your 13 years (3 runners total), while we can add 9 more in the 24 years since (12 runners total), with 7 of those (9 in total) after the implementation of the ABP in 2009.
Similarly, if we sort post-1986 runners faster than Coe (3:29.77), we find the same pattern of increasing number of athletes:
- 5 runners, including El G, in those 12 years, up to El G's current WR in 1998
- 8 runners in the next 12 years to 2009, until the ABP was implemented
- 19 runners in the next 12 years from 2010-2021, with 6 of those added in 2020-2021
This shows a pattern of continuous, but small, improvements, with very few exceptions, from 1985 to the present, mostly and initially from North and East Africans, but recently from non-Africans like Jakob, Wightman, Kerr, and McSeweyn.
The fact remains that the 3 fastest ever 1500/milers, were all running 3:26 or 3:43 at the end of the 90's. The depth of fast times might have increased since then, but no one has got close to the times of Lagat, Ngeny and EL G from the late 90's, except a convicted doper. The other factor we have that you have ignored is the fact that tracks are known to be getting faster, I mean even Mondo that makes them are happy to tell the world how each Olympic cycle the tracks are made faster. There is a reason why the home of the IAAF/WA has one of the fastest tracks in the world. It is because it is the showpiece of the Diamond League. The reason why year after year the vast majority of middle distance athletes run their fastest times at Monaco is because of the track. Of course there are other factors, but these are secondary. Then there are the 'super shoes' which have helped numerous records (World, Area, National, etc) to be set on the roads and on the track the past 4 seasons. Most analysts would tell you that the likes of Kerr, Wightman, McSwayn would not beat the lieks of Coe, Aouita and Cram from 35 - 40 years ago, yet they are running faster times because of the faster tracks and shoes. Not drugs, I don't think by and large, but through tecnology and the fact there is, as you pointed out, a greater depth of fast times. These two factors seriously skew the number of fast times the past decade.
I also believe, however, that the evidence is overwhelming regarding the biggest jump in standards in the top echelons between the mid 80's and mid/late 90's. It was almost certainly due to EPO; the availability, the lack of a test, the lack of regulation and actual testing by some federations. That the current crop of top 1500m runners are still not matching the fastest from 20+ years ago tends to question the suggestion that standards have slowly improved, even with the double benefit of faster tracks and shoes, which is slowly having an impact on performance (times) in other events too.
Why do you not call him 'gentleman Tim' as I tried to do for a year, but not a single other person followed my lead? Lots of people here call him potato Tim, for the most part affectionately, including the BroJos. I believe it dates to when El K posted a thread entitled - 'Timothy Cheruiyot skips the Bislett Mile to plant potatoes'. This was less than two weeks after Kiprop had been busted for EPO. Since then, you may have heard, Gentleman Tim's training partner Manangoi has been suspended for doping offences, and since his return has been unable to break 3:40.
He is a skilled troll. If you notice he tries to engage particularly with the individuals here who are of the opinion that 'everybody dopes'. So the discussion on doping becomes reduced to 'nobody dopes/doping doesn't work anyway' vs 'everybody dopes'. He posts walls of text with fluffy statistics and vague unsupported claims and denials of obvious truths, inevitably provoking his opponents to respond with their own walls of text. Any possibility of a serious discussion on the problem of doping in athletics is therefore nullified. Job done.
Why do you not call him 'gentleman Tim' as I tried to do for a year, but not a single other person followed my lead? Lots of people here call him potato Tim, for the most part affectionately, including the BroJos. I believe it dates to when El K posted a thread entitled - 'Timothy Cheruiyot skips the Bislett Mile to plant potatoes'. This was less than two weeks after Kiprop had been busted for EPO. Since then, you may have heard, Gentleman Tim's training partner Manangoi has been suspended for doping offences, and since his return has been unable to break 3:40.
He is a skilled troll. If you notice he tries to engage particularly with the individuals here who are of the opinion that 'everybody dopes'. So the discussion on doping becomes reduced to 'nobody dopes/doping doesn't work anyway' vs 'everybody dopes'. He posts walls of text with fluffy statistics and vague unsupported claims and denials of obvious truths, inevitably provoking his opponents to respond with their own walls of text. Any possibility of a serious discussion on the problem of doping in athletics is therefore nullified. Job done.
I have also engaged with you, of the opinion that only Africans dope.
If anything, I fully recognize my fault is that I engage with most everyone who engages with me, without discrimination. The reason for walls of text is that sometimes I respond to all the points that are wrong, with the evidence and arguments as to why they are wrong.
My stated conclusions remain valid if "nobody dopes", or "everybody dopes", or anywhere in between, because they are based on quality and quantity measures of non-cherry picked historical all-time performances.
I have experience in analyzing data and making correlations and detecting bias and fallacies, even when lacking comprehensive studies.
So when we analyze the data and see clear and ridiculous spikes in performances from 2 or 3 countries that set WRs lasting for decades (and still today in the case of El G), we are 'assuming' things, but when you hold up a LetsRun poll from 2007 stating that a majority of multiple anonymous handles thought El G was clean, that proves that EPO doesn't work, along with the fact that Peru and Antartica showed no increase in performances during the EPO era??
The overwhelming scientific consensus is that peds, including EPO, work. This is not just studies showing an increase in performance, but also hard science as to why they should work. Rekrunner - extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. LetsRun polls and your cherry picking and manipulation of statistics don't cut it.
Yes. You are assuming the cause of the spikes in performance from 2 or 3 countries, in order to conclude the cause. That is a common logical fallacy with many names.
The letsrun poll was from 2014. In a 57/43 split, a large minority of letsrun survey responders believed El G's record was clean. This proves that in a forum of public opinion, it is not settled. On a scale of definitely, maybe, maybe not, and definitely not, El G doping is a clear "maybe" -- according to a 2014 letsrun poll.
When I looked at historical performance progression during the "EPO era", I didn't suggest that EPO doesn't work, but that *historically* it *hasn't* worked, to *improve progression*, for the fastest non-African distance athletes, not only from Peru, but from 5 non-African continents holding 85-90% of the population, plus, for good measure, West and South Africa, over the course of 3 decades. I did not analyze athletes from the 7th continent of Antarctica. I repeatedly asked for these non-Africans, "why so few (quantity) and then by so little (quality)". The few answers that did come covered the full spectrum, from non-Africans already maxed out from unlimited steroids and blood transfusions in the '80s, to non-Africans never doping for non-racist cultural reasons (contrary to what we saw in cycling). Hardly a coherent consensus among doping performance believers.
Rather than disagreement, my analysis supports what you say today, that we saw "clear and ridiculous spikes in performances from 2 or 3 countries". You take extra steps, apparently not motivated by racism, to assume only 2 or 3 countries are doping, while implying that as many as 197 countries did not ever dope. That would be an extraoridinary claim, requiring extraordinary evidence.
Cherry-picking? Statistics? Looking at (nearly) 100% of the alltime fastest performances across 11 events (6 men and 5 women) from 1500m to the marathon, since 1990, and then again at (nearly) 100% of the alltime fastest performances in three events, since 1960, is not cherry-picking, and simply counting how many, by how much, is not manipulation of statistics. I even hate to use the term "statistics" for two simple methods that just counted athletes faster than a pre-EPO threshold (quantity), and averaging the top-5 (quality). But if you have a better alternate method that leads to another conclusion, please share it.
Whether there is overwhelming consensus among scientists, what is lacking is scientific basis. This is repeatedly confirmed by the inability of the claimants to produce any such evidence on demand. I cannot persuaded by any alleged "scientific consensus" if the scientists have no evidentiary basis. Scientists would understand that this is their failure if they draw conclusions not supported by bases in evidence. Appealing to authority is another common logical fallacy.
Of course PEDs work, or we couldn't call them PEDs. It is tautological to say performance enhancing drugs are drugs that enhance performance, and only shifts the discussion to debating what drugs can rightly be considered a PED. Caffeine is a PED. Maybe coca-cola, and bananas and water and pasta, found at every marathon, can be considered PEDs. WADA doesn't strictly concern itself with PEDs, allowing some, while banning others, and banning many non-PEDs. Talking in terms of PEDs brings no intellectual value.
I'm not making any extraordinary claims. I'm claiming you, and other unknowledgeable posters, and the alleged scientists with alleged consensus, do not have overwhelming evidence to support the claims coming, not from scientists, but from unknowledgeable anonymous posters.
I know you only claim to have a law background, but when it comes to male hormones, men and women are quite different, biologically.
I did acknowledge that Ramzi may have benefitted from placebo effect. Who knows -- he may have also benefitted from other doping like steroids or HGH or diuretics and non-doping altitude training. This doesn't mean that athletes and coaches are not morons for doping. The experts that ban drugs do so for some unspecified combination of reasons which may or may not include an unproven "potential" to enhance performance. EPO is potentially harmful to health and against the spirit of the sport.
So Ramzi won because he and his coach were fired by a purely superstitious belief that drugs were helping him - your "placebo effect". I guess if he became sick and was treated successfully with drugs you would also say that, too, was only a "placebo effect". Or is it only drugs used medically that work, even though many of the same drugs are used by athletes to enhance performance - like growth hormone or testosterone? More likely, to you, modern medicine - like drugs in sport - is simply a 'con' and no more real than the magic potions of witch doctors, but patients are too stupid to realise this. However, you don't mind admitting to a contradictory belief that weightlifters can benefit from doping but not runners, or that Russian female runners can benefit but not males. There is simply no end to the intellectual contortions you engage in. You should be in a circus.
Drugs for medicinal purposes undergo a gold-standard of extensive clinical trials with large populations and controls, to demonstrate both safety and effectiveness.
You can use this gold standard and remove all of my doubts by showing me the clinical research demonstrating the effectiveness of any doping for improving the personal bests of distance runners.
Is it a contradiction to suggest steroids increasing muscular strength beyond natural limits can enhance performance in events requiring such strength, while suggesting men and women are biologically different, precisely because of the lifelong effects of male hormones verus female hormones, and that blood-doping has not yet been similarly "proven" for distance running?
Fundamentally in logical discussion, when you change the facts and conditions and the objects and the subjects, you can arrive at different conclusions that do not contradict each other because the two sets do not intersect.
Why do you not call him 'gentleman Tim' as I tried to do for a year, but not a single other person followed my lead? Lots of people here call him potato Tim, for the most part affectionately, including the BroJos. I believe it dates to when El K posted a thread entitled - 'Timothy Cheruiyot skips the Bislett Mile to plant potatoes'. This was less than two weeks after Kiprop had been busted for EPO. Since then, you may have heard, Gentleman Tim's training partner Manangoi has been suspended for doping offences, and since his return has been unable to break 3:40.
What a stupid question. Why should I?
So, "potato Tim" is in connection to doping of others?
You are doing it for one simple reason, to belittle him. And this only because of your hate for his country.
The fact remains that the 3 fastest ever 1500/milers, were all running 3:26 or 3:43 at the end of the 90's. The depth of fast times might have increased since then, but no one has got close to the times of Lagat, Ngeny and EL G from the late 90's, except a convicted doper. The other factor we have that you have ignored is the fact that tracks are known to be getting faster, I mean even Mondo that makes them are happy to tell the world how each Olympic cycle the tracks are made faster. There is a reason why the home of the IAAF/WA has one of the fastest tracks in the world. It is because it is the showpiece of the Diamond League. The reason why year after year the vast majority of middle distance athletes run their fastest times at Monaco is because of the track. Of course there are other factors, but these are secondary. Then there are the 'super shoes' which have helped numerous records (World, Area, National, etc) to be set on the roads and on the track the past 4 seasons. Most analysts would tell you that the likes of Kerr, Wightman, McSwayn would not beat the lieks of Coe, Aouita and Cram from 35 - 40 years ago, yet they are running faster times because of the faster tracks and shoes. Not drugs, I don't think by and large, but through tecnology and the fact there is, as you pointed out, a greater depth of fast times. These two factors seriously skew the number of fast times the past decade.
I also believe, however, that the evidence is overwhelming regarding the biggest jump in standards in the top echelons between the mid 80's and mid/late 90's. It was almost certainly due to EPO; the availability, the lack of a test, the lack of regulation and actual testing by some federations. That the current crop of top 1500m runners are still not matching the fastest from 20+ years ago tends to question the suggestion that standards have slowly improved, even with the double benefit of faster tracks and shoes, which is slowly having an impact on performance (times) in other events too.
While you and others continue to be impressed by 3 "proofs by example", I'm completely unpersuaded by the timing of these fast performances in the 1990s, and the implied attempts to correlate them with EPO, or lack or EPO testing, for a number of reasons:
- Given the worldwide popularity of EPO in the 1990s, and the worldwide belief in the alleged significant effect, ranging among believers from 3 seconds to 10 seconds, 3 examples are far too few.
- The performances of Lagat, Ngeny, and El G (you forgot Morceli) could be clean. Even the 2015 performance of Kiprop could be clean (or even more controversially, despite the WADA bust in 2017, Kiprop could still be clean -- there are several precedents, Vojtěch Sommer, Steven Colvert, and Benedikt Karus, showing that the WADA labs sometimes fail to get EPO urine tests right, with bleeding from neighboring tracks coming from EPO controls, and this evidence stays hidden in the WADA labs, unavailable to the athlete for his defense). You also forgot Kiplagat.
- There was no testing for EPO *globally* in the 1990s, and in the 2000s the urine test was easily beatable *globally* by athletes with few resources and a little knowledge (see Russia or cycling), and blood testing (the point in time where the lack of OOC testing starts to be applicable) was not established until the ABP in 2009, and historically, many non-African athletes went to Kenya and Ethiopia (or alleged EPO hotspots like Albequerque and Flagstaff) to train at altitude -- there is no credible reason we shouldn't have seen similar performance jumps from EPO around the world, because the "the availability, the lack of a test, the lack of regulation and actual testing" was global. It should be repeatable, and should have been repeated, by at least some non-Africans world-wide, somewhere, and somewhen, despite continuous improvements in testing, especially when non-Africans were consistently getting spanked in these distance events, and it is human nature to not be stupid enough to do the one thing that would have helped these athletes win. Instead many strong believers in the power of EPO suggest that athletes like Willis and Ingebrigtsen are the fastest clean athletes, and this has nothing to do with race.
- East and North Africans who move to countries with testing (e.g. USA, UK, Japan, Denmark, France, Spain, Sweden, Israel, ...) significantly outperform "native" athletes from those countries.
Contrary to your suggestion I overlook non-doping factors like improved tracks and recently improved shoes, my whole argument is that the performances we have seen since the 1990s, for the men, from the 1500m to the marathon, can be fully explained by non-doping factors, like training, tracks, shoes, as well as legal altitude training. I agree with you that the increase we have seen since 1997 can be fully explained by non-doping factors. These factors can also explain the increases we saw in 1985-1997.
You are the third one to use this term "overwhelming" to describe your belief. The evidence is fundamentally underwhelming: The few "scientific" doping/performance studies that do exist measure the wrong things on the wrong subjects, and are often sub-standard, lacking controls. The number of real world examples (e.g. you provide 3) are too few and too inexplicably regional to be able to establish a strong correlation.
So when we analyze the data and see clear and ridiculous spikes in performances from 2 or 3 countries that set WRs lasting for decades (and still today in the case of El G), we are 'assuming' things, but when you hold up a LetsRun poll from 2007 stating that a majority of multiple anonymous handles thought El G was clean, that proves that EPO doesn't work, along with the fact that Peru and Antartica showed no increase in performances during the EPO era??
The overwhelming scientific consensus is that peds, including EPO, work. This is not just studies showing an increase in performance, but also hard science as to why they should work. Rekrunner - extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. LetsRun polls and your cherry picking and manipulation of statistics don't cut it.
Yes. You are assuming the cause of the spikes in performance from 2 or 3 countries, in order to conclude the cause. That is a common logical fallacy with many names.
The letsrun poll was from 2014. In a 57/43 split, a large minority of letsrun survey responders believed El G's record was clean. This proves that in a forum of public opinion, it is not settled. On a scale of definitely, maybe, maybe not, and definitely not, El G doping is a clear "maybe" -- according to a 2014 letsrun poll.
When I looked at historical performance progression during the "EPO era", I didn't suggest that EPO doesn't work, but that *historically* it *hasn't* worked, to *improve progression*, for the fastest non-African distance athletes, not only from Peru, but from 5 non-African continents holding 85-90% of the population, plus, for good measure, West and South Africa, over the course of 3 decades. I did not analyze athletes from the 7th continent of Antarctica. I repeatedly asked for these non-Africans, "why so few (quantity) and then by so little (quality)". The few answers that did come covered the full spectrum, from non-Africans already maxed out from unlimited steroids and blood transfusions in the '80s, to non-Africans never doping for non-racist cultural reasons (contrary to what we saw in cycling). Hardly a coherent consensus among doping performance believers.
Rather than disagreement, my analysis supports what you say today, that we saw "clear and ridiculous spikes in performances from 2 or 3 countries". You take extra steps, apparently not motivated by racism, to assume only 2 or 3 countries are doping, while implying that as many as 197 countries did not ever dope. That would be an extraoridinary claim, requiring extraordinary evidence.
Cherry-picking? Statistics? Looking at (nearly) 100% of the alltime fastest performances across 11 events (6 men and 5 women) from 1500m to the marathon, since 1990, and then again at (nearly) 100% of the alltime fastest performances in three events, since 1960, is not cherry-picking, and simply counting how many, by how much, is not manipulation of statistics. I even hate to use the term "statistics" for two simple methods that just counted athletes faster than a pre-EPO threshold (quantity), and averaging the top-5 (quality). But if you have a better alternate method that leads to another conclusion, please share it.
Whether there is overwhelming consensus among scientists, what is lacking is scientific basis. This is repeatedly confirmed by the inability of the claimants to produce any such evidence on demand. I cannot persuaded by any alleged "scientific consensus" if the scientists have no evidentiary basis. Scientists would understand that this is their failure if they draw conclusions not supported by bases in evidence. Appealing to authority is another common logical fallacy.
Of course PEDs work, or we couldn't call them PEDs. It is tautological to say performance enhancing drugs are drugs that enhance performance, and only shifts the discussion to debating what drugs can rightly be considered a PED. Caffeine is a PED. Maybe coca-cola, and bananas and water and pasta, found at every marathon, can be considered PEDs. WADA doesn't strictly concern itself with PEDs, allowing some, while banning others, and banning many non-PEDs. Talking in terms of PEDs brings no intellectual value.
I'm not making any extraordinary claims. I'm claiming you, and other unknowledgeable posters, and the alleged scientists with alleged consensus, do not have overwhelming evidence to support the claims coming, not from scientists, but from unknowledgeable anonymous posters.