Wow: Prof who testified against S. Houlihan is featured in article on how boar taint is inevitable if you eat enough pork

casual obsever wrote:

Plus, the androgen was wrong and the CIR not explainable with commercially fed pork. Going through the CAS report, one finds escalating improbabilities for the above from

1) "possible" (that the beef burrito was pork burrito)

2) to "possible but improbable" (that the pork came from a cryptorchid)

3) to "possible but improbable" (that the nandro amount would be that high EVEN IF it was a cryptorchid)

4) to "possible but highly improbable" (that the cryptorchid had such elevated androgen)

5) to not "consistent with the carbon isotope signature of commercial pork".

Recall that we are talking about number 2 here, with Prof. McClone stating that the chance for that is "far less

than 1 in 10,000". And then note that number 3 has a similar chance, and number 4 a much lower chance, not too mention number 5.

And then recall Statistics 101: one has to multiply these chances with each other to get the probability that all of the above happened. For example (and one can debate the numbers of course):

0.1 x 0.0001 x 0.0001 x 0.00001 x 0.000001 = 0.00000000000000000001

Which is a chance of 1 in 100000000000000000000...., or a guilty chance of 99.9999999999999999999%.

For comparison, Kiptum was banned because of his Hb and off-score "exceeding the respective upper 99.99% specificity level". So even the above-mentioned "far less than 1 in 10,000" night have been enough for a guilty verdict.

Open-and-shut case of a caught doper with a ridiculo excuse, imho.

rojo wrote:

I must admit that I was stunned to find myself tonight reading an article on stinky barbecue where the person the author used to remind the readers that if you eat enough meet it's basically inevitable that you'll run into "boar taint" as some pigs are going to be cryptorchid (meaning they have hidden or undescended testicles) was none other than Dr. John McGlone, the man used an expert witness against Shelby Houlihan.

In the Houlihan case, Prof McGlone estimated that the "probability of a cryptorchid actually entering the pork supply chain is far less than 1 in 10,000" which seems impossible but in this article, it's presented as an inevitability.

jesspryles wrote:

Dr. McGlone observes that some mammals are Cryptorchid (meaning they have hidden or undescended testicles). “This means that even if outwardly castrated, the animal can still be an intact male internally, and boar taint will occur”, explains Dr. McGlone.

Tres wrote:

This subject of cryptorchidism is near and dear to my pants. As a young boy I was perplexed about the mention of "balls" because I only had one, and by the time I knew that two was the common number, I had decided to never mention it. I don't know how this condition escaped detection by a doctor for all those years, but it did, and I entered puberty with one and then avoided situations that might display my 50% compliance with expectations. (That includes all organized athletics.) Then when I was 19, my first "active" girlfriend found it amusing and named it "Uno" and was also amazed at the amount of baby batter being manufactured by the one, but after about three months of fun she admitted that it really bothered her and we broke up. That's when I sought medical help. It was pretty straightforward: a sequence of 3 increasing ovaloid prosthetics in order to expand my sack, arriving at a size-matched twin who I named "Dos" (of course.) I didn't like that they hung front-to-back instead of side-by-side, but I'll admit that this configuration was more functional for running. Anyway, fast forward 15 years and my wife was inconceivable, so we went to doctors and I told of my groinal history and my doctor asked "did they check for a cryptorchid?" and I was like "What???" and he checked and lo and behold tucked inside me was exactly what should have been there, except in a different place. He concluded that "Tres" was perfectly functional but that my internal body heat was fouling the tailstroke of his swimmers, and that was interacting with the Lochte swimmers from Uno, so we could just disconnect "Tres" and that would likely fix the impregnability problem and I was like "Whoa!!! That ain'st gonna happen! Get him up where he belongs!" So more sequential surgeries, letting the ducting stretch on its own, and a decided mappage of front-to-back storage as established, and one final surgery in which the dude with the scalpel didn't get the instruction to remove Dos. Which might have been fine with me I guess but my lawyer friend suggested that it was emotionally traumatizing and for that I got all that surgery for free plus enough money to remodel our baby daughter Tracy's (get it, Tres-y) room. I still haven't bothered to pay out of pocket (elective cosmetics) to get Dos unsacked, and they still hang in a straight line front to back like a Newton's Cradle. And that's all I have to say about that.

rekrunner wrote:

rojo wrote:

I must admit that I was stunned to find myself tonight reading an article on stinky barbecue where the person the author used to remind the readers that if you eat enough meet it's basically inevitable that you'll run into "boar taint" as some pigs are going to be cryptorchid (meaning they have hidden or undescended testicles) was none other than Dr. John McGlone, the man used an expert witness against Shelby Houlihan.

In the Houlihan case, Prof McGlone estimated that the "probability of a cryptorchid actually entering the pork supply chain is far less than 1 in 10,000" which seems impossible but in this article, it's presented as an inevitability.

We should also understand that the AIU didn't chose their experts based on neutrality and fairness to innocent athletes.

Prof McGlone:

He gave expert opinion on the likelihood of cryptorchids getting in the food chain (and 1 in 10,000 is enough that some athlete somewhere will eventually test positive from cyptorchid consumption), and emphasized USDA protocols that presumably block the few that slip through. However it doesn't take long to find out there are other possibilities he didn't address:

- Some farmers, particularly in Oregon, do not castrate their pigs.

- Some farmers, immuno-castrate their pigs.

- A quick trip to the USDA website shows that the USDA protocol allows boars with testicles without certification papers to be processed as meat, if it simply passes the smell test.

- He conceded that farmers changed the diets to soy, but still opined that pigs were probably fed corn.

Prof Ayotte:

- Does a conflict of interest exists by having the head of the same WADA lab act as an independent expert?

- Her history on the Lawson case does not speak well for her ability to be completely truthful in an anti-doping tribunal setting.

- Based on two studies with small sample sizes of subjects eating meat, she opines that meat will not produce the higher levels observed in Houlihan's samples. There are too few samples to draw such a conclusion about the expected maximum that could come from meat consumption. This is also an odd opinion when the claim is about organ consumption. It didn't take letsrun readers long to find a third study, where one subject showed concentrations exceeding Houlihan's by 50%, and Ayotte herself participated in a study based on organ consumption with concentrations more than 20x Houlihan's.

One might argue it is up to the defense to provide such rebuttals, but this feeds directly into the real issue with a "guilty until proven innocent" process that presumes intent, and places a high, if not sometimes impossible, burden on innocent athletes to prove it. The defense is doing this for the first time, and only has a few months to prepare their expert defense against a wall of less-than-neutral experts who have done this for decades.

pupil3142 wrote:

Tres wrote:

This subject of cryptorchidism is near and dear to my pants. As a young boy I was perplexed about the mention of "balls" because I only had one, and by the time I knew that two was the common number, I had decided to never mention it. I don't know how this condition escaped detection by a doctor for all those years, but it did, and I entered puberty with one and then avoided situations that might display my 50% compliance with expectations. (That includes all organized athletics.) Then when I was 19, my first "active" girlfriend found it amusing and named it "Uno" and was also amazed at the amount of baby batter being manufactured by the one, but after about three months of fun she admitted that it really bothered her and we broke up. That's when I sought medical help. It was pretty straightforward: a sequence of 3 increasing ovaloid prosthetics in order to expand my sack, arriving at a size-matched twin who I named "Dos" (of course.) I didn't like that they hung front-to-back instead of side-by-side, but I'll admit that this configuration was more functional for running. Anyway, fast forward 15 years and my wife was inconceivable, so we went to doctors and I told of my groinal history and my doctor asked "did they check for a cryptorchid?" and I was like "What???" and he checked and lo and behold tucked inside me was exactly what should have been there, except in a different place. He concluded that "Tres" was perfectly functional but that my internal body heat was fouling the tailstroke of his swimmers, and that was interacting with the Lochte swimmers from Uno, so we could just disconnect "Tres" and that would likely fix the impregnability problem and I was like "Whoa!!! That ain'st gonna happen! Get him up where he belongs!" So more sequential surgeries, letting the ducting stretch on its own, and a decided mappage of front-to-back storage as established, and one final surgery in which the dude with the scalpel didn't get the instruction to remove Dos. Which might have been fine with me I guess but my lawyer friend suggested that it was emotionally traumatizing and for that I got all that surgery for free plus enough money to remodel our baby daughter Tracy's (get it, Tres-y) room. I still haven't bothered to pay out of pocket (elective cosmetics) to get Dos unsacked, and they still hang in a straight line front to back like a Newton's Cradle. And that's all I have to say about that.

Post wins 2021.

I was going to only award it second place due to lack of paragraph structure, but actually r4ealise that this deliberately makes the narrative difficult, makes you spend time in thinking it through and paying proper attention.

might even be leading post of the decade.