You do not understand. If the smallest fraction of dopers are caught it means most dopers aren't caught. You think you are a logician but you are a pretentious idiot.
Contrived nonsense. The enormous numbers of athletes in every sport who are tested annually will not result in the kind of skew in the figures you argue, between those tested several times and those tested less. It is unarguable is that amongst all those test results very few - 1% - produce a positive result. Expert estimates meanwhile suggest a prevalence of anywhere between 20%-40% of top athletes. In some sports it will be way higher. It means very few of those doping are caught. The view in antidoping is that "only the dumb and the careless" are caught. Your specious arguments in no way produce a credible scenario that most of those doping are caught. You are in fantasyland to imagine that. Howman has acknowledged antidoping can't eradicate doping from sport; he says the best that can be hoped for is that it can prevent an unrestrained doping free-for-all.
I know you have trouble with numbers, and especially percentages, but is it contrived nonsense, or the expert view of anti-doping experts? Here is an excerpt from interview letsrun's Jonathon Gault had with anti-doping expert Sergei Iljukov, when talking about 2% positive tests, versus a 40% prevalence estimate from a survey questionnaire, in a study where 53%-68% of all of the athletes were banned:
JG: You told me before this interview you believe World Athletics is doing a great job with anti-doping. Why do you believe that? SI: There was a study from Daegu 2011 that demonstrated the prevalence of doping may reach up to 40%. And on the other side, people are saying from the annual reports of most anti-doping agencies, you can read that only 2% of the samples test positive. When we talk about those 2%, which are misleading, we don’t quite appreciate the fact that we have to relate the number of those findings to the number of athletes tested. As just a simple mathematical example, you have 10 different elite athletes in your registered testing pool. And you test each of those athletes 10 times a year. Altogether, you get 100 tests. And from those 100 tests, you have two positive samples. That basically means two out of 10 athletes have tested positive. Officially in statistics, you only have 2% of all the tests positive. But if you take it from the testing pool, you have 20% of athletes. So that makes a huge difference. It’s important to deal with this in mind, that those statistics are misleading. So we have to look deeper at the registered testing pool, the number of the athletes, and they must be related between each other. So it’s quite a big job to do for the anti-doping agency and I think that [is the] explanation [for] why it is still expressed as an absolute percentage from all the tests. And also, when we estimate the prevalence, like it was done in the studies before…you have a sort of methodology to test how many athletes possibly use substances in that particular competition. But that doesn’t tell you how many athletes from the whole population use substances during their whole career. And basically, what our study demonstrates, based on those banned athletes, that in some distances, it’s up to 68% of the athletes who are banned during their career (Editor’s note. 13 of the 19 — or 68% — of Russian women who achieved the world/Olympic/Euro 1500 standard at the Russian champs from 2008 to 2012 were ultimately banned. For all distance events collectively, the figure was 53%). So that’s quite a high number. And based on that, I can definitely say the question, is who [caught] them? First and foremost, it’s an international federation (World Athletics) and this we have submitted and I will give some compliments to their job. And also, definitely the national anti-doping agency was also involved. So those are two institutions. These numbers, they tell you a little bit more than those widely finding 2%. And your question was why I think World Athletics is doing [a] great job with anti-doping. So this is basically an example. You take a long-term scale, 10 years. And you take a look during this 10 years, how many athletes have tested positive. It better reflects the anti-doping efficiency in the long term.
What have "we" actually seen? Did "we" actually "see" "blood doping" and "previous doping in the last 12 months".
The 15-18% was a measure of a population of athlete's blood parameters which may, or may not, have been properly adjusted for recent altitude training (or for that matter, blood changes leading up to training for a world championship), relative to a "reference" population.
With the "over 40%", we didn't see any doping -- it was a questionnaire, with a lot of question marks, and apparently a lot of respondent apathy.
A similar questionnaire at the same 2011 World Championship estimated 9-30% (95% confidence interval) after factoring in an estimated 30% survey non-compliance.
So if the athlete surveys don't in your opinion accurately reflect the likely incidence of doping then how many are doping? What is the incidence? The 1% of tests?
It's not just my opinion -- even the questionnaire researchers themselves recommended in their conclusions that further studies are needed to refine the method to give more accurate estimates.
But so far one has any accurate estimate yet. There is a false expectation that higher numbers must be more accurate, when the reality is much uncertainty in every method to date.
Keep in mind that much has been made of this single 2011 World Championship event, already 12 years ago, and a lot has happened since in the direction of anti-doping: the banning of the Russian federation and their anti-doping agency leading to reforms for both ARAF and RUSADA, the creation of a WADA Investigative body, the creation of the AIU, the creation of Category A countries targeted for increased testing, etc.
Also note that the 2011 questionnaire estimates combined men and women, with sprints, throws, jumps, walks, in addition to distance running on the tracks and the roads, telling us virtually nothing about the prevalence of doping in distance running for just the international class men, or national class men, or international class women, or national class women.
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Reason provided:
Grammar
How many Rwandese runners do you even know!! Rwanda and Kenya don’t have the same culture! To dope in a small country, with strick regulations and culture, it’s almost suicide for an athlete to dope in Rwanda!
I repeat it again triamcinolone acetonide doesn’t give an edge in long distance running period! Many people are treated with this for allergies, mostly skin conditions!
Now I find it funny to try to link John to Kiptum’s coach, to Kiptum being doped, to Rwanda having a problem of doping! You guys are geniuses😂
Well, according to Wikipedia, Rwanda has sent seven runners to the last three Olympics, and two of them have now been banned for anti-doping offences. 2/7 is Kenyan standards.
So you got supposedly John with traces of Triamcinolone acetonide and Robert (2012) accused for refusing doping control in Kigali?🤣 Out of 13millions of people and you just linked Rwanda to Kenya with doping! Let me give to you, Rwanda has a big Doping Problem😂
You do not understand. If the smallest fraction of dopers are caught it means most dopers aren't caught. You think you are a logician but you are a pretentious idiot.
You stil did not understand.
News: Every 4th household is a single householf.
Army: Oh, 25% live alone.
News: Maybe you rethink this, Army.
Army: You are an idiot.
Compared to you, most people are logicians.
I didn't say that. Because you aren't bright enough to follow my argument you constructed your own. But that, too, isn't an argument.
So if the athlete surveys don't in your opinion accurately reflect the likely incidence of doping then how many are doping? What is the incidence? The 1% of tests?
It's not just my opinion -- even the questionnaire researchers themselves recommended in their conclusions that further studies are needed to refine the method to give more accurate estimates.
But so far one has any accurate estimate yet. There is a false expectation that higher numbers must be more accurate, when the reality is much uncertainty in every method to date.
Keep in mind that much has been made of this single 2011 World Championship event, already 12 years ago, and a lot has happened since in the direction of anti-doping: the banning of the Russian federation and their anti-doping agency leading to reforms for both ARAF and RUSADA, the creation of a WADA Investigative body, the creation of the AIU, the creation of Category A countries targeted for increased testing, etc.
Also note that the 2011 questionnaire estimates combined men and women, with sprints, throws, jumps, walks, in addition to distance running on the tracks and the roads, telling us virtually nothing about the prevalence of doping in distance running for just the international class men, or national class men, or international class women, or national class women.
Quite a feat of evasion. I ask you what is the incidence of doping and you go back to your mantra that the athlete questionnaire results can't be relied on. But if the surveys aren't an accurate reflection of prevalence what is the likely incidence of doping in your view? You have never indicated that it is anything more than the numbers who actually test positive.
Gault's argument - and yours - is crucially dependant on a very small number of athletes tested. The hypothetical example he gives is of only 10 athletes. Obviously, there will be a significant difference between the number of positive tests from such a small group of athletes - 2% - and the proportion of them who test positive, which will be 20%, from only 2 failed tests in 100.
However, that isn't reality as the number of athletes tested and the number of tests conducted annually is vastly greater than that. Consequently the relationship between the number of positives and the number of doped athletes will be much closer than suggested in Gault's example. In both instances, the greater number of tests will be of elite and professional athletes, and the estimates of doping prevalence is of the same group.
But all of that is once again "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin", as the consensus amongst the antidoping experts is that the numbers caught are but a fraction of the numbers doping. It doesn't need the athletes' surveys to prove that. WADA has known for years that the dopers are always a step ahead of them. Most dopers, except "the dumb and the careless", know how not to get caught.
Quite a feat of evasion. I ask you what is the incidence of doping and you go back to your mantra that the athlete questionnaire results can't be relied on. But if the surveys aren't an accurate reflection of prevalence what is the likely incidence of doping in your view? You have never indicated that it is anything more than the numbers who actually test positive.
It's an unanswerable question, as there is insufficient data. Furthermore, do you mean from the 2011 World Championship, or today? Do you mean men? women? all events? distance running events?
I never thought that testing results was a good measure of prevalence, and not sure why anyone would confuse apples and oranges. It is a better measure of how lucky the testers are to have tests that catch athletes when they are "glowing".
More reliable than surveys, are population blood sample results, but these are limited to blood parameters only, and even then there are some limitations. I saw unofficial figures for suspicion of Kenya at 11% and Ethiopia at 8%, from 2000-2012, again, subject to caveats and limitations and questions about what they counted.
Gault's argument - and yours - is crucially dependant on a very small number of athletes tested. The hypothetical example he gives is of only 10 athletes. Obviously, there will be a significant difference between the number of positive tests from such a small group of athletes - 2% - and the proportion of them who test positive, which will be 20%, from only 2 failed tests in 100.
However, that isn't reality as the number of athletes tested and the number of tests conducted annually is vastly greater than that. Consequently the relationship between the number of positives and the number of doped athletes will be much closer than suggested in Gault's example. In both instances, the greater number of tests will be of elite and professional athletes, and the estimates of doping prevalence is of the same group.
But all of that is once again "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin", as the consensus amongst the antidoping experts is that the numbers caught are but a fraction of the numbers doping. It doesn't need the athletes' surveys to prove that. WADA has known for years that the dopers are always a step ahead of them. Most dopers, except "the dumb and the careless", know how not to get caught.
Not Gault nor me, but Sergei Iljukov. You accused me of contriving nonsense, when an anti-doping expert is saying the same thing.
As you scale up to the "real" figures, repeating the number of tests per athlete will eventually catch more dopers, than 1-2% suggests are caught, if it is taking many tests on average to catch the dopers. Your fraction may be 1/3 or 1/2, with another fraction of dopers not being tested much, if at all, as they are not performing well enough.
Quite a feat of evasion. I ask you what is the incidence of doping and you go back to your mantra that the athlete questionnaire results can't be relied on. But if the surveys aren't an accurate reflection of prevalence what is the likely incidence of doping in your view? You have never indicated that it is anything more than the numbers who actually test positive.
It's an unanswerable question, as there is insufficient data. Furthermore, do you mean from the 2011 World Championship, or today? Do you mean men? women? all events? distance running events?
I never thought that testing results was a good measure of prevalence, and not sure why anyone would confuse apples and oranges. It is a better measure of how lucky the testers are to have tests that catch athletes when they are "glowing".
More reliable than surveys, are population blood sample results, but these are limited to blood parameters only, and even then there are some limitations. I saw unofficial figures for suspicion of Kenya at 11% and Ethiopia at 8%, from 2000-2012, again, subject to caveats and limitations and questions about what they counted.
It is ironic that you consider the prevalence of doping to be an unanswerable question because of "insufficient data" yet you do everything you can to argue prevalence won't be as high as is suggested by the athlete surveys or other estimates by antidoping experts. The is a further irony in your determination to discredit these estimates of doping, as its prevalence should be irrelevant to you because you seek to minimise its effects on performance, and even go so far as to suggest that training can produce better results than doping.
It seems strange that sports governance and antidoping bodies are concerned about a practice that is employed by very few athletes and also has no real effect on elite performance. It's like worrying that too many athletes play computer games or Monopoly.
Gault's argument - and yours - is crucially dependant on a very small number of athletes tested. The hypothetical example he gives is of only 10 athletes. Obviously, there will be a significant difference between the number of positive tests from such a small group of athletes - 2% - and the proportion of them who test positive, which will be 20%, from only 2 failed tests in 100.
However, that isn't reality as the number of athletes tested and the number of tests conducted annually is vastly greater than that. Consequently the relationship between the number of positives and the number of doped athletes will be much closer than suggested in Gault's example. In both instances, the greater number of tests will be of elite and professional athletes, and the estimates of doping prevalence is of the same group.
But all of that is once again "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin", as the consensus amongst the antidoping experts is that the numbers caught are but a fraction of the numbers doping. It doesn't need the athletes' surveys to prove that. WADA has known for years that the dopers are always a step ahead of them. Most dopers, except "the dumb and the careless", know how not to get caught.
Not Gault nor me, but Sergei Iljukov. You accused me of contriving nonsense, when an anti-doping expert is saying the same thing.
As you scale up to the "real" figures, repeating the number of tests per athlete will eventually catch more dopers, than 1-2% suggests are caught, if it is taking many tests on average to catch the dopers. Your fraction may be 1/3 or 1/2, with another fraction of dopers not being tested much, if at all, as they are not performing well enough.
Your reasoning is fallacious - as usual. You can't simply "scale up" the figures because an increased number of tests amongst a few athletes has a much more disproportionate effect on the figures than when the testing pool is thousands and not ten. The only way it could "scale up" is if some athletes had hundreds of tests. They don't.
What we see from the number of positives is that it shows very few athletes appear to be doping. But we know that isn't the case. How many? We can't be sure. But it doesn't matter what the actual number of athletes who are doping will be - whether it is 10% - one of the most conservative estimates - or 40%, as others argue - every expert on the subject says it is greater than the numbers caught. They recognise that in some sports - like cycling - the entire top echelon will be doped. That means most dopers aren't caught - and they won't be. It applies to every sport in which doping is present - and it is present in every sport.
It is ironic that you consider the prevalence of doping to be an unanswerable question because of "insufficient data" yet you do everything you can to argue prevalence won't be as high as is suggested by the athlete surveys or other estimates by antidoping experts. The is a further irony in your determination to discredit these estimates of doping, as its prevalence should be irrelevant to you because you seek to minimise its effects on performance, and even go so far as to suggest that training can produce better results than doping.
It seems strange that sports governance and antidoping bodies are concerned about a practice that is employed by very few athletes and also has no real effect on elite performance. It's like worrying that too many athletes play computer games or Monopoly.
What is ironic about preferring reliable data, with respect to prevalence, with respect to elite performance, and with respect to any alleged relation between these two?
I am often simply the messenger. Even the authors of your often referred to survey, a paper which exhaustively identified about a dozen ways the survey could be unreliable, are split about the method they used, with one author publishing a follow-on paper showing that that random-response method is unreliable for sensitive questions like doping, in a study that compared 4-methods on the same group, with three of them suggesting ~20%, while the random-response method result was "inflated" to ~60%. The latest published survey using another random-response method on the 2011 WCA athletes gave a 95% confidence interval range of 9-30% prevalence, with an estimated 30% survey non-compliance.
As we said before, besides the "potential to enhance performance", sports governance and antidoping bodies are also concerned about athlete health, and the spirit of the sport. This is even more concerning for doping that doesn't "work", as some athletes/coaches/managers will try to increase the dose to attempt to realize the effect that they believe must exist and hope for.
It is ironic that you consider the prevalence of doping to be an unanswerable question because of "insufficient data" yet you do everything you can to argue prevalence won't be as high as is suggested by the athlete surveys or other estimates by antidoping experts. The is a further irony in your determination to discredit these estimates of doping, as its prevalence should be irrelevant to you because you seek to minimise its effects on performance, and even go so far as to suggest that training can produce better results than doping.
It seems strange that sports governance and antidoping bodies are concerned about a practice that is employed by very few athletes and also has no real effect on elite performance. It's like worrying that too many athletes play computer games or Monopoly.
What is ironic about preferring reliable data, with respect to prevalence, with respect to elite performance, and with respect to any alleged relation between these two?
I am often simply the messenger. Even the authors of your often referred to survey, a paper which exhaustively identified about a dozen ways the survey could be unreliable, are split about the method they used, with one author publishing a follow-on paper showing that that random-response method is unreliable for sensitive questions like doping, in a study that compared 4-methods on the same group, with three of them suggesting ~20%, while the random-response method result was "inflated" to ~60%. The latest published survey using another random-response method on the 2011 WCA athletes gave a 95% confidence interval range of 9-30% prevalence, with an estimated 30% survey non-compliance.
As we said before, besides the "potential to enhance performance", sports governance and antidoping bodies are also concerned about athlete health, and the spirit of the sport. This is even more concerning for doping that doesn't "work", as some athletes/coaches/managers will try to increase the dose to attempt to realize the effect that they believe must exist and hope for.
You cannot grasp that doping would not exist as a problem if its known effects were adverse consequences for health and not substantial performance improvement. It is the latter which causes athletes to risk their health (as well as their reputations). Athletes would not persist with a practice they know would make them ill but they don't know would make them better. That is a non- rational response. Athletes aren't irrational. The problem is in fact the other way around - doping will make them better and only possibly make them sick - and only a few of them. That is the rational response. And athletes are rational actors, who calculate risk.
This post was edited 40 seconds after it was posted.
Not Gault nor me, but Sergei Iljukov. You accused me of contriving nonsense, when an anti-doping expert is saying the same thing.
As you scale up to the "real" figures, repeating the number of tests per athlete will eventually catch more dopers, than 1-2% suggests are caught, if it is taking many tests on average to catch the dopers. Your fraction may be 1/3 or 1/2, with another fraction of dopers not being tested much, if at all, as they are not performing well enough.
Your reasoning is fallacious - as usual. You can't simply "scale up" the figures because an increased number of tests amongst a few athletes has a much more disproportionate effect on the figures than when the testing pool is thousands and not ten. The only way it could "scale up" is if some athletes had hundreds of tests. They don't.
What we see from the number of positives is that it shows very few athletes appear to be doping. But we know that isn't the case. How many? We can't be sure. But it doesn't matter what the actual number of athletes who are doping will be - whether it is 10% - one of the most conservative estimates - or 40%, as others argue - every expert on the subject says it is greater than the numbers caught. They recognise that in some sports - like cycling - the entire top echelon will be doped. That means most dopers aren't caught - and they won't be. It applies to every sport in which doping is present - and it is present in every sport.
It is not my reasoning, but Sergei Iljukov's. For someone who pretends to stand with anti-doping experts, here you, a non-expert, reject the information from an anti-doping expert.
Lets' see if it scales. If I have 10,000 athletes, each tested 10x, and 2% of 100,000 tests are positive, that is 2,000 positive tests from 10,000 athletes. Hmmm. 2% test positives catches 20% of all athletes. It does scale. If prevalence if 40%, the fraction of dopers caught, from the 2% positive tests, would be 1/2. In this mathematical simulation, 2% of positive tests caught 50% of the dopers.
The key factor here is that it takes multiple tests on average to catch the dopers, and this will reduce the percentage of positive tests by that same factor. Tweaking the figures to reflect the reality (fast and suspicious runners will be tested more than 10x, while slow runners will be tested less, if at all) does not change the fact that test positive percentages (1-2%) could never be reasonably interpreted as a prevalence estimate. To omnisciently obtain the prevalence, you would have to multiply by that factor of average number of tests to catch a doper, then divide by that fraction of dopers caught of the total dopers.
Two reasons dopers are not caught is because 1) it is a question of strategy and luck to catch dopers when they are "glowing", and 2) many dopers are too slow to be tested.
You cannot grasp that doping would not exist as a problem if its known effects were adverse consequences for health and not substantial performance improvement. It is the latter which causes athletes to risk their health (as well as their reputations). Athletes would not persist with a practice they know would make them ill but they don't know would make them better. That is a non- rational response. Athletes aren't irrational. The problem is in fact the other way around - doping will make them better and only possibly make them sick - and only a few of them. That is the rational response. And athletes are rational actors, who calculate risk.
Sure, it must be that I cannot grasp your kindergarten logic.
Once again, these agencies are concerned with "health *risk*" and "*potential* to enhance performance". Neither result is guaranteed, but that doesn't prevent WADA from making lists and testing for banned substances/methods.
You are wrong. The doping problem will actually be bigger when the exact effects are not known, but instead spread by word of mouth. Usually we pretend dopers are cheaters and pathological liars, but here you insist they will be credible and truthfully accurate. It may be a rational process, but based on questionable and incomplete information.
You also forget these threads always start from the other end, e.g. hoping to find any shred of evidence or tenuous link that a world record performance like Kiptum's must most likely be the result of doping. Nothing says Kiptum ever doped, yet someone here started a thread desparately attempting to establish any link, based on the coach sharing the same name as a busted athlete. Why?
Even if we accept for argument there exists some marginal benefit for elite athletes who decide to dope, that is not enough to argue that world record setters must be doped.
Your reasoning is fallacious - as usual. You can't simply "scale up" the figures because an increased number of tests amongst a few athletes has a much more disproportionate effect on the figures than when the testing pool is thousands and not ten. The only way it could "scale up" is if some athletes had hundreds of tests. They don't.
What we see from the number of positives is that it shows very few athletes appear to be doping. But we know that isn't the case. How many? We can't be sure. But it doesn't matter what the actual number of athletes who are doping will be - whether it is 10% - one of the most conservative estimates - or 40%, as others argue - every expert on the subject says it is greater than the numbers caught. They recognise that in some sports - like cycling - the entire top echelon will be doped. That means most dopers aren't caught - and they won't be. It applies to every sport in which doping is present - and it is present in every sport.
It is not my reasoning, but Sergei Iljukov's. For someone who pretends to stand with anti-doping experts, here you, a non-expert, reject the information from an anti-doping expert.
Lets' see if it scales. If I have 10,000 athletes, each tested 10x, and 2% of 100,000 tests are positive, that is 2,000 positive tests from 10,000 athletes. Hmmm. 2% test positives catches 20% of all athletes. It does scale. If prevalence if 40%, the fraction of dopers caught, from the 2% positive tests, would be 1/2. In this mathematical simulation, 2% of positive tests caught 50% of the dopers.
The key factor here is that it takes multiple tests on average to catch the dopers, and this will reduce the percentage of positive tests by that same factor. Tweaking the figures to reflect the reality (fast and suspicious runners will be tested more than 10x, while slow runners will be tested less, if at all) does not change the fact that test positive percentages (1-2%) could never be reasonably interpreted as a prevalence estimate. To omnisciently obtain the prevalence, you would have to multiply by that factor of average number of tests to catch a doper, then divide by that fraction of dopers caught of the total dopers.
Two reasons dopers are not caught is because 1) it is a question of strategy and luck to catch dopers when they are "glowing", and 2) many dopers are too slow to be tested.
You base your calculations on hypotheticals, without knowing how many tests are applied annually, and to how many athletes and how many tests per athlete on average. Your juggling figures is only that - playing with numbers. It obscures the known fact that doping exceeds the numbers caught and hence the only relevant question is by how much. That is where we are see a range of estimates. But what I also see is that you are coy about indicating what your position on that is: is doping largely confined to those caught or does it greatly exceed that figure, as many experts suggest?
Also, it doesn't take multiple tests to catch a doper - it takes one. But most dopers know how to not fail tests, through masking and timing, so increased testing won't automatically result in more positive tests. When doping is conducted "professionally" the chances of being caught are greatly reduced. What is apparent about Kenya is that doping is mostly not at that level of sophistication. Hence, more are caught.
You cannot grasp that doping would not exist as a problem if its known effects were adverse consequences for health and not substantial performance improvement. It is the latter which causes athletes to risk their health (as well as their reputations). Athletes would not persist with a practice they know would make them ill but they don't know would make them better. That is a non- rational response. Athletes aren't irrational. The problem is in fact the other way around - doping will make them better and only possibly make them sick - and only a few of them. That is the rational response. And athletes are rational actors, who calculate risk.
Sure, it must be that I cannot grasp your kindergarten logic.
Once again, these agencies are concerned with "health *risk*" and "*potential* to enhance performance". Neither result is guaranteed, but that doesn't prevent WADA from making lists and testing for banned substances/methods.
You are wrong. The doping problem will actually be bigger when the exact effects are not known, but instead spread by word of mouth. Usually we pretend dopers are cheaters and pathological liars, but here you insist they will be credible and truthfully accurate. It may be a rational process, but based on questionable and incomplete information.
You also forget these threads always start from the other end, e.g. hoping to find any shred of evidence or tenuous link that a world record performance like Kiptum's must most likely be the result of doping. Nothing says Kiptum ever doped, yet someone here started a thread desparately attempting to establish any link, based on the coach sharing the same name as a busted athlete. Why?
Even if we accept for argument there exists some marginal benefit for elite athletes who decide to dope, that is not enough to argue that world record setters must be doped.
You again miss the point. WADA listing health as a concern does not show that adverse health consequences are a likely outcome of doping while improved performances remain only conjecture. It only shows that WADA is concerned about health consequences as well as unfair advantage. However, it is the long history of doping in sport and the widespread nature of the practice that enables an inference that doping aids performance, if we can accept athletes are rational actors (as you would no doubt claim to be), who calculate risk against reward.
Again, an obvious point: dopers will not admit to the practice if they can be identified and thereby be penalized but may do so if they are anonymous - as with the surveys being discussed. That they will anonymously admit to doping is because they do not feel the opprobrium that you and others might have of the practice. For them, doping is a necessary part of what they do - and even their living.
On your last observation about Kiptum - I don't see any basis for arguing he is doping because of who he might be related to. There are far more convincing reasons than that.
I have not read the rest of the responses to this but, your post is damn funny. This is like saying that a random Kiprotich from Kenya and a Kiprotich from Kenya are cousins or whatever. Or that the tens of Kagame I know in Uganda are somehow related to Paul Kagame.
Newsflash: some tribes use the same name over and over, esp those that name according to events and the like. Most of the Kalenjin do, just like the Banarwanda. Mana is god, or something similar, so you'll get lots of Habyarimanas, Hakizimana, Hagumimana, etc. It does not mean they are related. One could actually be born in South Africa to a Bafumbira parents - Bafumbira are a Ugandan tribe, close to the border with Rwanda - while the other is from some small Burundian village.
I didn't say that. Because you aren't bright enough to follow my argument you constructed your own. But that, too, isn't an argument.
You would, if that would be the subject.
It clearly demonstrates your level of "reasoning".
A: 1% of tests are positive B: at least 20% of athletes dope ("expertly estimated") C: most dopers will not be caught
For you, C is a direct conclusion from A and B. For sure that's nonsese. You were asked to explain the "logic" behind your reasoning. For sure you can't (it definitely was: 1 < 20, not more).
Yeah, I'm not bright enough to follow your "argument" (you didn't had any). Interesting that so many people are not bright enough to follow your unique way of thinking (the thinking of someone who after six decades of following athletics closely still hasn't underestood the format times are written in).
How often do you meet people who can follow your way of "thinking"? The quote must be little bit higher in some psychiatric clinic?
I didn't say that. Because you aren't bright enough to follow my argument you constructed your own. But that, too, isn't an argument.
You would, if that would be the subject.
It clearly demonstrates your level of "reasoning".
A: 1% of tests are positive B: at least 20% of athletes dope ("expertly estimated") C: most dopers will not be caught
For you, C is a direct conclusion from A and B. For sure that's nonsese. You were asked to explain the "logic" behind your reasoning. For sure you can't (it definitely was: 1 < 20, not more).
Yeah, I'm not bright enough to follow your "argument" (you didn't had any). Interesting that so many people are not bright enough to follow your unique way of thinking (the thinking of someone who after six decades of following athletics closely still hasn't underestood the format times are written in).
How often do you meet people who can follow your way of "thinking"? The quote must be little bit higher in some psychiatric clinic?
Still playing with yourself. You need to do something about that problem.
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