Thanks for the rare positive feedback. At least you are still open to ideas you don't yet believe. Actually, I have no more details than you should, since the only data I have is that which has been made public.In the timeframe the IAAF was accused of doing nothing, Russians were being banned in high numbers, in the race walks, and in the women's steeple, 1500m and 800m events. This comes from no more direct source than "letsrun"'s contemporaneous doping news.Keeping in mind the Off-scores from Paula are 110, 110, and 115, compared to sea-level and altitude level suspicions of 103, and 111:In Helsinki 2005 alone (when Paula scored 110), in the 1500m, 4 Russian women measured 129, 140, 124, and 136 (from the IAAF report)Comparing Paula to one athlete alone:Between 2005 and 2011, Lilya Shobukhova scored six values above 120: 127, 135, 132, 153, 124, and 156.Shobukhova also recorded several low scores below 70: 64, 69, and 35. 35!!!(Besides 82, Paula's lowest score was likely 78, according to the 47% range figure from the Sunday Times)Shobukhova's baseline seems to be around 100, as she had 7 scores around there.The Sunday Times listed 17 total samples for Shobukhova. The one I didn't mention was 114.91 (Paula's highest).In 2011 (post 2009 ABP), Shobukhova went from 124 in April, to 35 in July, to 156 in October.That's a 121 point swing, or 445%, at a time when the process was controlled post-2009.Compare that to an 18 or 32 point swing, when the process was not controlled pre-2009, or a reported total 47% change of score over the profile of one famous British athlete.The Sunday Times listed doping percentages by country: Russia ranks the highest percentage of doped athletes, at 30%, followed by Ukraine, Turkey, Greece, Morocco, and Bulgaria.In another WADA 2013 report, Russia provided the most "absolute" positives with 225, with Turkey in second, at 188, France at 108, and everyone else below 100. Limiting to athletics, Turkey wins with 53, while Russia is second at 42. Kenya and USA both had 9.The IAAF did their own prevalence doping study in 2011 (based on the same leaked samples), and one country stands out. While the IAAF respectfully kept the countries anonymous, there is little doubt that the top country is Russia.When I speak of lab or process errors, everything is a question of probabilities. 10 point errors can happen, with a certain probability. 20 points can happen, but with a much smaller probabilty. 53 point errors are not impossible, but the probability shrinks enormously, even in the presence of lab or process errors. When you don't control for a stable, reliable, comparable off-score, or recognize altitude, ABP off-score errors of 10 points can be common. When you don't have calibration data, even large swings of 33 points (from a legal 82 to suspicious 115) from one low measurement, are not impossible. But when looking at the Russian women, we see many off-scores ranging from 124-140, from no less than 5 women, in the uncontrolled pre-2009 era, and we see Shobukhova scoring 153 and 156, with 121 point swings (or 445%) in the controlled post-2009 era.When talking about probabilities, and likelihoods, I think there is little doubt that Russia tried to gain a doping advantage, likely frequently falling outside any uncontrolled process margin of errors.
cleans wrote:
rekrunner wrote:For extremely high values, like we saw with the Russian women, orders of magnitude beyond all thresholds of suspicion, I would side with the first Ashenden. Does this include Paula? Hard for me to say yes.
Hi Rekrunner,
I think you are admired on here for your forensic approach to the evidence. Do you have any details on the Russian cases? I expect they are guilty (as you have probably worked out, I am suspicious of the general culture of distance running), however I would be interested to see what evidence there is.
It seems that all the Russians are universally considered to be guilty, but aren't there also possibilities of lab error, or other possible exemptions?