zxczcxvz wrote:
You set impossible hurdles to demonstrating doping, because EPO is illegal in running and it's unethical to dose genuinely elite athletes and train and race them under normal racing conditions. Any true elites in the study would be banned and race results from, say, Monaco with known dosing individuals might well be cancelled because Monaco would lose its accreditation for allowing doping athletes knowingly to compete there. As for the steroid studies, they typically show major improvements but note specifically that the improvements would likely be much greater if the participants (who are not elite athletes, again) were given doses as high as actual dopers. Finally, if your claim is that the placebo effect is as great or greater than the benefits of EPO, then it has the same effect, regardless of whether they are doping, as long as they think they are doping, so they genuinely have to believe that they are using EPO for it to work, in that assumption. As soon as they knew it wasn't effective or it wasn't really EPO, the effect would cease to be the case. None of the studies show that. In fact, the control subjects are given a placebo and do not see any effect.
Your points are too clear, too logical and too obvious. None of that will work with the doping-denier.