This whole thread is based on some asinine statistical theory if you ask me. How can there be percentage variations in possible cheating? Isn't it the case that somebody is either using performance enhancing drugs or isn't? Shouldn't that mean that the percentages are either 100% or 0%. The only way to know for sure is to test someone, and then of course you have the possibility of false positives. Just skimming through the explanations, they are all explanations based on poor reasoning. For example:
Nader 10%. Basically, the argument is a linear progression, no positive tests, a tactical win, no outlier time. This is philosophically naive. It's a simple absence of evidence argument for a low cheating chance. It's well known that absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. Nader could still be doped and just getting away with it. The 10% means nothing.
El Guerrouj 85%. So, no positives, but widespread suspicion? Reports of undetectable blood doping? From where and whom? So unproven rumors qualify as evidence all of a sudden? Consistency suggests micro-dosing? According to what data and even what logic? The reasons given are laughably bad and inconsistent. It's either black or white. There is no positive evidence that El G doped, so if he did he just got away with it. We don't know one way or the other and at this point it's unproveable. We have to live with uncertainty sometimes.
There's several listed where the reason is something like "ties to suspicious coach" or ties to rumors of some kind of national doping rings. This is as illogical as suggesting something like some Italian Americans are in the Mafia, so therefore we should be suspicious that all Italian Americans are. It's laughably and almost childishly stupid.
There's too many other problems with the OPs Grok post to write about or that I want to spend too much time writing about, but I am finding that suspicion of doping is oftentimes inconsistent and contradictory when you look at all of the potential common reasons in a list.
Some common contradictions:
Age. The athlete is either too young or too old to be clean. Contradiction
Consistency. Too many years at the top or they just ran a fast time out of no where. Contradiction.
Ethnicity, nationality, race, etc. I have seen literally every country be blamed as a scapegoat for why an athlete of a particular country may be doping. Common ones are Americans, Kenyans, Ethiopians, Russians and Moroccans, but as I've said, I've seen every country on earth with a successful distance runner blamed for having some kind of in clandestine, underground, state sponsored doping program. There is no doubt an unconscious and sometimes flagrantly conscious racist mentality is behind this. Inconsistency and loads of contradictions.
Family genes. His or her parent were great, but there were rumors the parent doped, so he or she must be doping to. Or instead, the parent was no very fast, so therefore the athlete must be doping because he or she doesn't have the talent genes. Massive contradiction.
Training. He doesn't train hard so he's doping. Oh, but wait, he trains way too hard to be clean. He must therefore be doping to be able to train THAT hard. Contradiction.
There's many more, but the above should suffice. I'm just trying to show that the only way to really show that someone is doping is with a positive test and even that can have a minor fail rate. All other reasons are usually purely anecdotal, inconsistent, conjectural, assumptive, and inconclusive. Yeah, I was suspicious about Ruth C after her 2:09 but some people really did think she was clean and gave excuses like her prior marathons going out at the same crazy pace, but just not being able to hold it until that "magical" race in Chicago. I had a 50/50 chance of being right, and just by luck it seems like I happen to be right. I could have easily been wrong. I'm sorry but people are way overconfident in assessing if an athlete is doping. The most rational approach I can think of is to just admit that you don't know and that the smart thing to do is to just let time play out to see if they ever test positive. There's no other way.
You have just effectively argued the opposite of your conclusion - which is to give the benefit of the doubt that athletes are clean until they are caught - by saying almost any reason argued can suggest doping. If that is so then doping is a possibility with any athlete. But we can see that what is possible is actually arguably probable.
What you have failed to do is to acknowledge the reasons that suggest the probability of doping amongst top athletes. Firstly, doping has been present in the sport for over half a century, it continues to be a problem, as is acknowledged by antidoping experts (look at Russia and Kenya), the chances of being caught are slim since doping remains ahead of antidoping, and confidential athlete surveys have shown doping is widespread at the elite and championship level and is far higher than the numbers caught. Hence, we see a situation in which doping offers competitive advantage for the ambitious athlete and the perceived benefits far outweigh the risk of being caught: the incentive to dope is therefore high. The most rational conclusion then is to take the view that any top athlete could be doping and most probably are or they could not successfully compete with their doped peers.
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.
It doesn't matter whether it's 1 or 400. The incidence of a single known doper is enough to that the county of origin of that doper is now a doping country. Otherwise, what is your doper amount minimum? 10 positive tests? 50? 400? 1,000? You see it's too subjective otherwise. Kenya may just have more positive tests because they are doing far more than other countries like the United States or Ethiopia at testing and identifying the cheaters. So you could make the opposite case that Kenya is actually a rule-following non cheating country with a lower incidence of doped athletes who make it past quality testing.
Numbers matter. You’re just engaging in disingenuous pilpul to deflect. It wasn’t Kenyans who caught most of those Kenyans, but you already know this.
You are replying to Hoady. A known hardcore doping apologist who has 'thing' about thin ebony calves, and uses multiple anonymous accounts, devices, and VPNs to post multiple times in a thread.
I asked Grok about Abebe Bikila. Grok said around 0%.
Shows that AI still has a long way to go.
Abebe Bikila was presented to the world as an innocent farmer too poor to afford shoes who stumbled onto the marathon course at the Rome Olympics and through pure natural talent took poetic revenge over the Italians who had conquered his country only 20 years previously.
In fact, he was probably as much of a science experiment as El G was.
Even Grok has to tread carefully when it comes to accusing a public individual of doping. It also isn't allowed to be 'prejudiced'. I asked it for the likelihood of Mo Katir having taken peds and it said 40% and gave a list of reasons, but didn't mention his Moroccan background.
I convinced it to raise its estimate of Katir doping based on his manager's excuses for dopers, the fact that it didn't realize his appeal had been rejected, and the large number of doping busts for Moroccan born runners:
"Updated Estimate: I'd now put the likelihood at around 60-70% that Katir has used PEDs at some point. This is higher than my initial 40% due to the tampering confirmation and the additional context you provided. The ban for tampering is particularly damning, as it often signals underlying PED issues (e.g., in cases like Lance Armstrong's early evasions). Without a positive test, it's not 100%, but the cumulative red flags—rapid rise, demographic patterns, managerial environment, and now a upheld 4-year ban—make it more probable than not."