Alex Hutchinson calls out CANOVA over study confirming EPO works on Kenyan runners

I have never misled anyone into taking drugs. Why would I want even more people to beat me?

Your theory is still empty and you've never been able to expand on it and show exactly what principles are being ignored and how the laws of physics are involved.

Now why would that be? I'll tell you why. Because you made it up just like a religion and it's all in your head.

Jon, I am interested in your view on other, non-performance enhancing drugs, that we know have a profound effect on the human body and can alter homeostasis etc. Drugs used for anaesthetics for example stop pain receptors and clearly override our natural homeostasis quite easily. Or recreational drugs such as cannabis, cocaine or ecstasy all have clearly demonstrable effects on the human body. Why then, is it so hard to believe that other drugs can effect the body to perform greater than it naturally can?

So how many drugs and their derivatives can potentially be added to the WADA banned list? Thousands? How is that going to work.

I don't have an answer to your second question apart from explaining my position on what we should and shouldn't believe. We should believe in the amazingly wondrous thing that is a healthy human body and mind. We shouldn't believe that is is somehow imperfect for sporting conquest without magic potions to give superhuman strength. That is basically what the PED dogma is, a superstitious belief, where bad science triumphs over good.

Anabolic androgenic steroids and power events? Well are you aware of Peter Weyand's work in describing mass specific force?

And is it not conceivable that this can be optimised without exogenous chemicals?

And regarding CNS stimulants, they increase adrenaline production that is certain, but the idea of such stimulants as performance enhancers pre supposes that normal adrenaline production be considered sub optimal?

Are we talking about fight or flight here and the natural resource for such endogenous performance enhancers being somehow insufficient for any purpose or is the belief in your caffeine fix so ingrained that you can't perform optimally without it? Or is it just a ritual that you do before you start the day/write your report/go for a run/watch the game on tv etc etc.

Question... wrote:

Jon, I am interested in your view on other, non-performance enhancing drugs, that we know have a profound effect on the human body and can alter homeostasis etc. Drugs used for anaesthetics for example stop pain receptors and clearly override our natural homeostasis quite easily. Or recreational drugs such as cannabis, cocaine or ecstasy all have clearly demonstrable effects on the human body. Why then, is it so hard to believe that other drugs can effect the body to perform greater than it naturally can?

He can't explain that. He'll just repeat his stock dead end statement and then resort to the childish '"you figure it out" since he is unable to do so himself.

Just watch.

See? He basically has no idea but some sort of quasi-religious belief that the human body is really special and perfect.

rekrunner wrote:

You said "pretend".

Yes. Based on the facts that the evidence was clear (as presented in the link), and Pound a knowledgeable insider (as is common knowledge and can be easily proven). Why do you keep trolling me with this triviality?

rekrunner wrote:

2-4 is more than 0. I didn't say "proof" but "basis".

Yes, more than 0, but that doesn't make it a "long list". You also might be the very first to call it "irresponsible" to publish a study with disclaimers.

But keep trolling, this is fun.

rekrunner wrote:

Please stop making up lies about what I think. I do not think EPO should be legal.

I think athletes should not take EPO, both because it is not legal, and because legal methods can achieve much of the same effect.

Arguing about exaggerations of magnitude of effect is not apologizing for breaking the rules.

I can be completely against doping, and still say 5% for fully trained elites is nonsense.

I don't say genetic superiority, because there are many factors in combination besides genetics.

I don't argue that "EPO doesn't work" -- other people start these arguments.

Maybe...but your own EPO-performance thread showed ~3% for E. Africans as you concluded:

"Most events have East Africans at 70-90%, improving by 3%"

Chad has estimated ~4%, others have posted opinions anywhere from 2% - 4%. And since you're pretty confident of your data, 3% is right in the ballpark of several opinions posted over the last few months on this topic.

And you might even have an occasional "ten-percenter:" Lombard was popped for rocket fuel on an OOC test in the summer of 04. A few months earlier, he ran 27:33 at Palo Alto shattering the Irish National record by 11 secs and meeting the Olympic qualifying time.

18 months earlier his PB was only 30:35 - a whopping ~10% improvement in 18 freaking months! ?. Maybe his earlier 30:35 is considered sub-elite and RF put him in a whole new level. But the facts are what they are: Improved ~10% in 18 months on his 10,000 time, and tested positive for EPO a few months after running his PB in the States.

It's one thing to observe the difference, but another to determine its cause. It's a mistake to think that EPO is the only variable that changed in 28 years, or the only variable that changed for Lombard. For the men, I did not conclude that that 3% progress from East Africans was caused by EPO, and actually found it unlikely given that both EPO, and the lack of testing for it was global, while the 3% observed progress from the East Africans was very local, as the rest of the non-African world, including known dopers Spain, made very little progress (0.3%-0.8%) , with very few athletes (32 unique athletes in 28 years across 6 events from the 1500m to the marathon, for all non-Africans across 5-continents). Similarly, Lombard, the sub-sub-sub elite runner, besides taking EPO, made significant changes to his training, which cannot be ignored. Maybe EPO helped him by 3%, and the remaining 7% has other causes. I once compared Lombard to "wejo", using high altitude, and changes in his training, gaining a whopping 7% after 5 years of competing at university. I'm not so interested in Lombard's 10% from before and after, but rather, the difference between the "illegal" EPO path, and the "legal" altitude path.

I saw a ten-percenter! wrote:

Maybe...but your own EPO-performance thread showed ~3% for E. Africans as you concluded:

"Most events have East Africans at 70-90%, improving by 3%"

...

And you might even have an occasional "ten-percenter:" Lombard was popped for rocket fuel on an OOC test in the summer of 04. A few months earlier, he ran 27:33 at Palo Alto shattering the Irish National record by 11 secs and meeting the Olympic qualifying time.

18 months earlier his PB was only 30:35 - a whopping ~10% improvement in 18 freaking months! ?. Maybe his earlier 30:35 is considered sub-elite and RF put him in a whole new level. But the facts are what they are: Improved ~10% in 18 months on his 10,000 time, and tested positive for EPO a few months after running his PB in the States.

Not exactly. If you've been paying attention over the last few years, it is a subjective opinion supported by a mixture of performance data, studies with flaws that tend to cause over-estimates, and diminishing returns for elites compared to study subjects.

physics defiant wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

I did not say "know".

So you just pulled that out of a dark place?

rekrunner wrote:

Not exactly. If you've been paying attention over the last few years, it is a subjective opinion supported by a mixture of performance data, studies with flaws that tend to cause over-estimates, and diminishing returns for elites compared to study subjects.

physics defiant wrote:

So you just pulled that out of a dark place?

Ah, so you pushed it out of the same place.

Yeah, he was able to train differently because EPO raised his level. You don't think people are saying you just keep doing what you were doing and EPO gives it all to you only in races?

Faster athletes train faster and or more. EPO l allows people to do that.

It allows you to practice harder as JO would say, if he wasn't a moran.

You might be the first and only one to judge Pound negatively for his role in defending Johnson. I would not call it "irresponsible" to publish a study with disclaimers, but rather that they decided to publish it, despite the disclaimers, particularly since it was not the primary purpose of the study. Recall a few pages back: "The present study was not blinded, did not include a control group and the subjects, yet involved in endurance activities, were not all runners. As such, we were unable to adequately assess changes in the training load during the study due to the absence of a placebo group and the heterogeneity of sporting/training activity of the subjects. It cannot totally be excluded that the performance enhancements observed may, therefore, be partly due to placebo effect, to an increase in the training load and to an improvement in pacing strategy especially for the non-runners..." "The present study was designed primarily to identify differentially expressed gene transcripts and therefore, SaO2 and thbMASS were not measured for practical reasons nor was the study blinded or include a control group. Therefore, the novel data generated within the study limitations, while useful for comparison with the literature, require further replication... Factors unrelated to rHuEPO such as altered motivation (e.g. placebo, order effect) may partly explain the reported performance effects and reflected in the small but significant rise in RPE after rHuEPO in KEN... Studies have shown that placebo can improve 3,000 m race time by 1.2 % and Vo2Max by 0-1.5 %..."

casual obsever wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

You said "pretend".

Yes. Based on the facts that the evidence was clear (as presented in the link), and Pound a knowledgeable insider (as is common knowledge and can be easily proven). Why do you keep trolling me with this triviality?

rekrunner wrote:

2-4 is more than 0. I didn't say "proof" but "basis".

Yes, more than 0, but that doesn't make it a "long list". You also might be the very first to call it "irresponsible" to publish a study with disclaimers.

But keep trolling, this is fun.

It's an interesting hypothesis, but it looks like this was also pulled out of some dark place. Can you support it with data and studies? When you look at EPO studies, it's exactly that -- pre-intervention time trial, 4 weeks of intervention with no pro-active control in training load, post intervention time trial, then another follow-up time trial a few weeks later, all supporting the same hypothesis that an increase in RBC delivers more oxygen to the muscles, delivering better performance. Are there studies that looked at EPO's ability to increase training load beyond what is possible without it?

physics defiant wrote:

Yeah, he was able to train differently because EPO raised his level. You don't think people are saying you just keep doing what you were doing and EPO gives it all to you only in races?

Faster athletes train faster and or more. EPO l allows people to do that.

It allows you to practice harder as JO would say, if he wasn't a moran.

pushmipullyu wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

Not exactly. If you've been paying attention over the last few years, it is a subjective opinion supported by a mixture of performance data, studies with flaws that tend to cause over-estimates, and diminishing returns for elites compared to study subjects.

Ah, so you pushed it out of the same place.

Not exactly.

None that had 600 week pre-intervention controls or consisted only of potential world record holders.

rekrunner wrote:

pushmipullyu wrote:

Ah, so you pushed it out of the same place.

Not exactly.

Jon Orange is your proctologist?

Yes, ask Cathal Lombard, Eddy H and Christian H among others.

Is this Mr. Obvious undercover? After some reflection, I would accept 6 weeks. See the 1997 Stray-Gundersen altitude study: A 6 week pre-intervention training control phase was sufficient to cause a 2.3% improvement in all subjects (college subjects post spring track), before any altitude intervention, with high-low altitude causing an additional 1.3% gain, with no significant gain from a sea-level control group. Without a pre-intervention phase, and a control group, we might have concluded a 3.6% improvement caused by high-low altitude training, rather than 1.3%.

Rekrunner is a liar wrote:

None that had 600 week pre-intervention controls or consisted only of potential world record holders.

So you cannot support it with data and studies, just a few anecdotes that, besides Lombard, didn't address changes in training load. How did the training load of Eddy H change before and after EPO? He was an ageing master and did not run his PBs while on EPO. Christian H said "he never raced on EPO but used it to recover from injuries." "I can and have run all those times perfectly clean. It’s not that difficult to run these times, and it doesn’t take any outside help."

physics defiant wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

It's an interesting hypothesis, but it looks like this was also pulled out of some dark place. Can you support it with data and studies?

When you look at EPO studies, it's exactly that -- pre-intervention time trial, 4 weeks of intervention with no pro-active control in training load, post intervention time trial, then another follow-up time trial a few weeks later, all supporting the same hypothesis that an increase in RBC delivers more oxygen to the muscles, delivering better performance.

Are there studies that looked at EPO's ability to increase training load beyond what is possible without it?

Yes, ask Cathal Lombard, Eddy H and Christian H among others.