Sunday Mail Has More Details on Paula's Blood Values and Off Scores + News She'll Put up £1m for an MRI lie detector

stop dragging anchor wrote:

We are the future of the sport, and we have limited patience in waiting for organizations and media outlets to join us. And we will bury those that stay stuck in the 1990s.

Big +1 for this statement.

We trusted the athletes, they let us down. We hoped the authorities would work to clean things up, but - hey - they're taking bribes, and protecting the athletes! And the sports clothing companies like the druggies too - here's another deal! Nothing to see. Move along.

Sorry millionaire athletes, you are accountable to the Connected World now. Things are changing. We can educate and get educated quicker. And we can chase you down.

Call it a witch hunt if you like, but I don't see anyone being hunted here who hasn't generated a whole bunch of suspicion through test scores (and other behaviour). If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck ...

The Dirty Duck wrote:

Paula, Tyson, Lance, and Weldon have historically been among the most vocal critics of doping and dopers. Weldon could once be described as unwilling to hear excuses and more than happy to let rumor take its course.

It makes this exchange all the more bizarre.

Wow I've never been grouped into Lance before!

I'm still letting rumor take it's course. That's why we allow a thread like this. It leads to a cleaner sport.

People need to see more nuance in everything.

Autologus madness wrote:

Where are the frozen samples? Where is the whole data set? Where is the transparency? Where is the cooperation with the competent authorities?

The stance changed quite alot in the last couple of years.... So hypotcritical!

http://www.paularadcliffe.com/serialisations-taking-on-the-cheats/

The authorities, well at least WADA, have said she should not release her data.

They are doing an independent investigation, and she has asked them to look into this and clear her name.

How is that not cooperating with the competent authorities? What more would you like her to do if that is your criteria? She is doing exactly what WADA has advised.

A lot of people would like all the data to be out there now (including myself) but you have to look at the facts. WADA has advised athletes to not release their data.

I assume the frozen samples are still there.

Some of this reiterates my last post.

I wouldn't say she has prohibited it. She has followed WADA's advice and not facilitated it. The Sunday Times or whoever has the database is free to do this analysis.

As I have said I think more information will come out over time.

WADA is having an independent group look at the blood values. Let's see what they conclude.

[/quote]

Actually it does matter because WADA does not take blood 2 hours after races now. And I was wrong with that meaning they don't take blood after races. I've heard they do it now but after 2 hours.

You are being reasonable on this.

As for the facts, some of these blood values some of you are just speculating and/or calculating because they haven't been released, right?

I did see this old post here saying:

So the Times didn't release that the IAAF did. Earlier people thought the HGB was 14.8 Point being there is a lot of speculation and the IAAF actually released more data here than the Times. Yes I agree it would be better if it was all out but let's wait.

larkimm wrote:

I'm happy to appear naive on this, but personally I'd find it incredible (unbelievable) if, in the weeks following the commencement of criminal actions against a select few individuals within the IAAF (i.e. not the whole of the IAAF) that the IAAF then publishes a knowlingly false report which deliberately covers up doping by a high profile athlete.

I take it you are not a follower of FIFA, then? They have been knowingly and blatently covering up illegal actions for years in spite of government investigations, journalistic exposes, etc.

Just fyi, Lord Coe was head of the FIFA ethics committee for many of these years, during which time he saw no unethical actions...

larkimm wrote:

Some tweets of interest on this thread this morning:-

https://twitter.com/LumsdenBumhat/status/677794499595210752https://twitter.com/Scienceofsport/status/677810323504648192

Well, here are some comments from Ross Tucker on the updated 15.6 hemoglobin number for Paula, one of the comments is hidden, and you have to click on the conversation icon, I quote from Ross Tucker -"Yeah, I saw that later. I think the changes are significant and they MAY have valid explanations but they're still suspicious"....and... "I already said those are changed that do demand some follow up and questioning. They're very extreme. 15.6 even more so." .... so it seems that Ross and I agree. Ross Tucker also has a comment about "being with Ashenden" on suspicious flags. So it seems on our side of blood test experts we have Ross Tucker and Michael Ashenden and on Paula's side we have Martial Saugy and the IAAF experts (and the director of IAAF anti-doping under criminal investigation for taking bribes to cover up positive doping tests)........hmmmmm......... let me think.......Which side do I trust more?

Our little conversation here may be starting to get some momentum....

Let's keep the pressure on folks...otherwise Paula and the IAAF just do nothing..... and just wait........and hope this whole big mess just quietly dies down and goes away.......

Lots of feisty comments here today....well done!!!

How much data is there that could be released and evaluated,is this known?

WADA is not going to determine conclusively on historical data

"Let's keep the pressure on...." Are you serious? Paula's never going to be sanctioned by anyone, and short of some official sanction, 99.9% of the population won't care. You have "suspicions" and "red flags" on your side. Wonderful. Not really compelling, though.

Man Overboard wrote:

"Let's keep the pressure on...." Are you serious? Paula's never going to be sanctioned by anyone, and short of some official sanction, 99.9% of the population won't care. You have "suspicions" and "red flags" on your side. Wonderful. Not really compelling, though.

I think I posted this here, but I'll do it again.

You're right, but the idea is that 0.1%. There were a variety of factors that brought Lance down. The tipping point was the Federal investigation. And, just like Puerto, Balco, Padua, etc... law enforcement agencies can be the ones to initiate action. And while those were different from Armstrong, the general trail that led to his investigation was rumors--> suspicion --> investigative journalism --> insider testimony. Not in that neat order, nothing is, but generally.

That Paula is under pressure from parliamentary committees, is on public record, is a step in the direction of the jurisdiction of law enforcement. I don't know the funding system in the UK, but maybe some claim can be made from that.

(And with the overall climate of clean-out in IAAF, we may get some individuals willing to talk.)

The point is, nothing will happen with no discussion.

rjm33 wrote:

larkimm wrote:

Some tweets of interest on this thread this morning:-

https://twitter.com/LumsdenBumhat/status/677794499595210752https://twitter.com/Scienceofsport/status/677810323504648192

Well, here are some comments from Ross Tucker on the updated 15.6 hemoglobin number for Paula, one of the comments is hidden, and you have to click on the conversation icon, I quote from Ross Tucker -"Yeah, I saw that later. I think the changes are significant and they MAY have valid explanations but they're still suspicious"....and... "I already said those are changed that do demand some follow up and questioning. They're very extreme. 15.6 even more so." .... so it seems that Ross and I agree.

I wouldn't say you agree. Ross said they are suspicious and may have valid explanations.

You sound reasonable in some of your posts but in one of your posts said, "Go Paula!!!.............Go Lance!!! ......Go Dr. Ferrari!!!!......Go Dr. Fuentes!!!.......Go Dr. Rosa!!!............................"

You sound like you have your mind made up and don't want to find the truth.

I don't get your point on the burden of proof. If you want to make a claim, you should be prepared to defend it. If there is no defense, then the baseline assumption must be that such claims are speculation without basis.It's public knowledge that blood collection rules were put in place only in 2009, to minimize significant errors that Ashenden himself has termed "intermethod bias".If the basis for "B) Paula is a doper" relies on the suspicious blood values for strength, you cannot ignore that the pre-2009 blood data might be significantly unreliable, undermining the strength of such a claim which relies on unreliable data. See here for more info:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observational_erroralso more generallyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

I agree with you that she will probably never be sanctioned (unless a blood bag name shows up), but the blood tests are what interested me in this from the beginning...it's ironic that the 12.0 hemoglobin number comes from Paula herself in her biography in the part where she strangely talks quite a bit about her blood test results around the 2003 1/2M race....My eyes popped out when I saw that part!!!..How could she win the race by over a minute with a hemoglobin level of 12.0?!!!... and why is she talking about it and going on explaining it in her biography?.... looking back.....that ended up being a BIG MISTAKE on her part!!!

Even today when she refers to those blood tests in 2003 she says ..."there is something not right there"...............Yea, you are right about that Paula!

All that she can lose is her reputation. She is already doing a pretty good job damaging it with her non-transparency and behavior. IF she released non-suspicious blood tests from before and after her 2:15 and 2:17 marathons, I would be really impressed, because that would really help her reputation... that she says she cares so much about...but she hasn't done that............It would be so easy......

I remember when even Mo Farah (regardless of opinion about him doping or not) had some of his blood tests published in the newspapers.. someone can dig those up if wanted... and I remember seeing them, and they were not suspicious at all, as there were no rapid and large magnitude changes and had very consistent values in a narrow range (not like Paula's scores!).....so good for him....I think that helps his reputation by voluntarily releasing those scores.

I agree with you, that 99.9% of the population does not care now and will never care......that's not going to stop us...we are in the less than 0.1% of the population that does care and are posting about it on the letsrun.com message board.........and some of us are feisty.....yea.....It's time for a change.....

Why is she putting up $1 million towards a MRI lie detector ?

They cost a fraction of this amount and are available commercially

Of course, cooperating with the authorities (i.e. Martial Saugy as the head of the ndepedent expert group in charge of reviewing the data) is a good sign of her will to clear things up in full transparency!

You're living in a beautiful fantasy world!

Ross and I do agree...."they're very extreme. 15.6 even more so"...and there MAY be valid explanations....we are both also still waiting to hear what the valid explanations are.......waiting.......waiting.........waiting.....I do not have my mind made up. In the past, I believed Paula was clean...but due to extensive research into the history of doping (see one of my previous posts where I go through it from 1972 to today) and seeing these leaked suspicious blood tests, the changing explanations, her behavior, non-transparency, Martial Saugy as her expert, IAAF corruption, anti-doping director at IAAF taking bribes to cover up tests, etc...many things...I have changed my position as the evidence has changed...I think the weight of the evidence is against her now (and I thought I was very fair in actually giving her a PASS on her 2012 test with the high 16.2 Hgb being explained by altitude,OK!!, agreeing with the IAAF report on that one test!!) ........but I would find non-suspicious blood tests before and after her 2:15 and 2:17 marathons very strong evidence for her side....I would definitely have to reconsider my position then....but that hasn't happened yet..... and may never happen....I do want to find the truth....It is Paula and the IAAF that is making it very difficult to find the truth.....Go Paula!!...is in lots of my posts...just having some fun... and trying to bring up the history of so many crooked doctors ...it's hard to keep track there are so many....Remember, NONE of all of these doping stories and corruption stories came from the authorities and institutions...without the leaked database, the brave Russian whistleblowers, the Seppelt documentary,the Sunday Times investigations and articles....we would all KNOW NOTHING about ANY of this....just like all the years in the past when we all could just be in that wonderful ignorance is bliss state that the IAAF would like to keep us in going forward.......well.........those days are over................

wejo wrote:

rjm33 wrote:

Well, here are some comments from Ross Tucker on the updated 15.6 hemoglobin number for Paula, one of the comments is hidden, and you have to click on the conversation icon, I quote from Ross Tucker -"Yeah, I saw that later. I think the changes are significant and they MAY have valid explanations but they're still suspicious"....and... "I already said those are changed that do demand some follow up and questioning. They're very extreme. 15.6 even more so." .... so it seems that Ross and I agree.

I wouldn't say you agree. Ross said they are suspicious and may have valid explanations.

You sound reasonable in some of your posts but in one of your posts said, "Go Paula!!!.............Go Lance!!! ......Go Dr. Ferrari!!!!......Go Dr. Fuentes!!!.......Go Dr. Rosa!!!............................"

You sound like you have your mind made up and don't want to find the truth.

This rarely happens, but I must admit that I agree with all of the below.

wejo wrote:

I'm still letting rumor take it's course. That's why we allow a thread like this. It leads to a cleaner sport.

But wejo, we are not exactly discussing rumors here. We talk about actual measurements, i.e. real, published data.

I don't need to defend anything, and I also don't need to convince you. But as for the burden of proof, you claimed - not exactly convincingly - that the data could be wrong, whereas neither Ashenden nor the IAAF said so. Also remember that not all of her suspicious data predate 2009. In fact, IAAF spokesman himself wrote here on (to) letsrun: (http://www.letsrun.com/news/2014/12/iaaf-spokesman-nick-davies-writes-letsrun-com-reports-iaaf-not-follow-retesting-150-suspicious-samples-2006-2008/)"When they are available, the IAAF has used the blood values prior to 2009 as “secondary evidence”, in support of an increased sanction in addition to the post-2009 profile to establish the athlete’s long history of doping. However these values do not have the same level of reliability and strength as the post-2009 values which were collected under strict and stringent conditions." So while you are correct in stating that the 2005 data are less reliable, IAAF still considers them as "secondary evidence". To conclude, even in the eyes of the IAAF, we have two sets of data as secondary evidence and one set set of data as primary evidence against Paula's "case". Last, as a science prof, I always have to chuckle when someone quotes wiki.

rekrunner wrote:

I don't get your point on the burden of proof. If you want to make a claim, you should be prepared to defend it. If there is no defense, then the baseline assumption must be that such claims are speculation without basis.

It's public knowledge that blood collection rules were put in place only in 2009, to minimize significant errors that Ashenden himself has termed "intermethod bias".

If the basis for "B) Paula is a doper" relies on the suspicious blood values for strength, you cannot ignore that the pre-2009 blood data might be significantly unreliable, undermining the strength of such a claim which relies on unreliable data. See here for more info:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observational_error

also more generally

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

Nice job summarising Clerk and rjm

Just for one minute if you took Radcliffe out of the equation and just put together a handful of the doubts that have built up over the last year or so and attributed them to a nameless athlete then asked people "Has this athlete got something to hide?"

There is only one answer, based on a balance of evidence, and that is "Yes."

All i'm interested in is truth and time and again that is usually the last thing that gets revealed.