An argument against arguing about doping

in the 90s? based on what? most if not all historians agree that doping peaked in europe in the 80s. if performance peaked also in the 80s, despite the large number of improvements during the last 4 decades, then that makes a strong argument that doping worked as advertised.

which is obvious anyway.

The empty vacuity of your posts is beyond belief. There is no data from elite and professional athletes who have doped. None have taken part in any study. You are claiming to draw conclusions about the effects of doping on performance when you don't have samples of athletes who have doped and those who haven't. No one does. You are in the realm of mere guesswork - like just about everybody else - except for the athletes who take the drugs. They know. And we know they keep doping.

The same deficiency applies to your claims about the incidence of blood doping. None of this is definitive because the practice is clandestine. Most dopers aren't caught. We can only make approximate estimates beyond the data of actual positive tests and violations (where Kenya is currently the front runner).

The most reliable data we have about doping is that WADA says it is more sophisticated than antidoping, and therefore only a small fraction of actual dopers are caught, and that globally vast amounts of money are spent on doping. The incentives to dope are high, the chances of being caught are slim and the extent of the practice shows it delivers results. No one wastes that amount of money on that which doesn't deliver results. There is no elite and professional sport today without it. Your "studies", on the other hand, show only the desire to not see what stares you in the face.

Based on all the mythology that surrounds the widespread use and the power of a new, powerful, convenient, easy to use, impossible to detect, endurance drug.

I didn't just say Europe, but all non-Africans worldwide, for three decades.

I'm not one to argue against most if not all historians that doping has not effectively advanced since the 1980s, but can you name just a few of these historians, and tell me what exactly do all these historians say about the use of EPO in the 1990s? I understood Spain was one of the countries that used EPO, and it is sure that Russia was doping their men and women since the 1970s, until the scandal broke in 2014.

no. i wasn't talking about epo, and neither were you before. nice change of topic.

i was talking about the prevalence of doping in europe caused by the east's state-doping and the west's response to it (and should have included america, yes).

whoever said epo is superior over blood transfusions?

be that as it may, even your starting point ("non-African men generally peaked in the 1980s") is wrong.

it's only correct for the 800 thanks to coe.

nonafrican bests by distance:

100: 2009

110h: 2012

200: 2022 (1996 pre superspikes)

400: 1999

400h: 2021 (1992 pre superspikes)

800: 1981

1500: 2004

3000: 2000

steeple: 2013

5000: 2022 (2000 pre superspikes)

10000: 2022 (2014 pre superspikes)

I was talking about doping, which includes EPO.

I was not talking about Europe. I don't care if you were.

Who says EPO is better than transfusions? I think the better question is who says either are better than the legal method of living and training at altitude, like East Africans?

Earlier, you said "most, if not all, historians", but yet have failed to name any. I'm curious what any of these "most historians" say.

I was also talking about distance running events, especially for men, so not 100, 110h, 200, or 400.

While I said "generally peaked", I intentionally kept it brief considering the complexity of characterizing a +/- dozen events, and the constant criticism that my posts are too long. If you want a more detailed accurate characterization before the effect of supershoes, I created a performance thread back in 2018 looking at non-African progress (and North African and East African) in six events for men and five events for women (replacing North Africans with Chinese), with respect to both quantity (better than a 1990 benchmark) and quality (top-5 average), from 1500m to the marathon that I can direct you to. In 2019, I created a second thread looking at three men's events, the 1500m, 5000m and the marathon, as far back as the 1960's, again with respect to both quantity and quality, but with a relaxed quality benchmark, at each 4-year Olympic cycle. But the summary is that since 1985 until supershoes, the best performances of non-Africans can be best characterized by "why so few, and then by so little?".

I got many many personal pet hypotheses as a response, including "EPO is not better than blood transfusions". This would assume the 1980s best times were from blood transfusions, an assumption I did not make or resolve.

If you want to argue that doping hasn't become significantly better since the 1980s, I cannot say that is wrong.

"vacuity" -- you always come up with the best self projections.

My performance data actually does includes all of the data from elite and professional athletes who have doped, unless of course they were too slow to meet my performance criteria.

You refer once again to what you imagine the knowledge of nameless athletes must be, based on a number of your own assumptions. But according to your own arguments, you cannot know which athletes are doping, and what is the alleged performance knowledge they gained from it.

I didn't say "incidence of blood doping", but the reported claim was of "suspicious" blood values. While the practice itself may be clandestine, you cannot as easily hide blood measurements like hemoglobin and reticulyte count, especially during a period when there was no reason to mask it.

Your "most reliable data" is a concession that WADA doesn't know very much about who is doping, or how many, and therefore cannot know how doping impacts their performance, but only that many athletes are spending a lot of money on it. You supplement WADA's "reliable data", with your own unreliable personal conjecture that the practice must be extensive (apparently based on how little WADA knows) and that "extensive" proves results because athletes are never desperate and would not waste money and take risks on hope alone.

You keep referencing "my studies" as if I'm relying on any studies to say anything more than the best WADA-funded studies on doping performance are of low quality and low reliability, and not representative of elite athletes nor elite performances.

funny. you only asked "what exactly do all these historians say about the use of EPO in the 1990s" while epo wasn't even mentioned before. what's with all this epo talk all of a sudden.

ok. you meant to exclude all distances below 800 m. congrats. then you were right in 1 out of 6 cases with your peaking in the 80s. only 83% wrong. good job.

Why is it cheating if we change the rules to allow drug taking ?

That seems like an appropriate follow up question when you say doping peaked in the 1980s, as if EPO, which is also considered doping, in the 1990s never happened for most, if not all, historians. I thought I was very much in the minority to think that the performance effect of EPO is overrated and largely insignificant for elite distance running, and would be happy to include all these historians as my allies and expert references. So again, which historians say doping peaked in the 1980s, and what do they say about EPO in running in the '90s and onwards?

Do you understand what "general" means? I said "generally" peaked (should have said "generally plateaued") -- a "general" statement is not wrong because of 1 or 2 "specific" exceptions. In all 6 mens distance events, if I take the average of the top-5 best, to smooth out any distorting effect of single outliers, compared to the top-5 best of the 1980s, the non-African men, as a group in its entirety representing 90% of the world population, progressed from 0.3% to 0.77%. In the 28 years from 1990 to 2018, only 32 non-African men ran faster than the 1990 benchmark, 38 times.

You also said doping of the 1980s worked as advertised, as if the best times from the 1980s were a product of doping. That is still just conjecture.

The rules haven't been changed and they won't be. Because doping is cheating. Allowing it would be the same as saying stealing isn't stealing if we decide to say it's ok to take from others what isn't ours.

"My performance data actually does includes all of the data from elite and professional athletes who have doped, unless of course they were too slow to meet my performance criteria."(quote)

So you know who has doped? Care to name them?

No. I don't care to.

funny. 5 out of 6 were "specific" exceptions". you were obviously wrong.

now you have moved from "non-African men generally peaked in the 1980s" to non-african men only improved by 0.4 - 1 % since the 1980s in 6 distance events. funny.

are you still proposing that doping does not work as advertised (because non-african men only improved by 0.4 - 1 % since the 1980s in 6 distance events)?

why? because the non-african men were clean in the 80s and then started doping because state sponsored doping ended?

are you in analogy also proposing that doping does work as advertised for african men and all women?

I guess you don't know what "general" means then.

Actually I moved to "generally plateaued" in the 1980s, since it was not a peak. In the 28 years from 1990-2018, there are a few dozen exceptions, running marginally faster, but generally speaking, most of the progess in these non-African men's distance events was achieved in the 1980s, pretty much across the board.

The women are a different story, given the general relative immaturity of women's events in the 1980s.

With respect to doping and elite performance, I'm mainly proposing the "null hypothesis" until it can be rejected, both for the '80s and before, and from the '90s ownwards.

In my analogy, something worked for the Africans, but if that something was doping, then I think we should have seen examples of comparable performances among non-Africans, especially in countries known to have doped, for all these reasons I hear about human nature, and that athletes know what works better than I do, and will do what it takes, and that WADA cannot catch all of them.

… what gives away that chatgpt was used?

First, I think doping should remain against the rules and tested for because:

A- it’s dangerous to use and they are often illegal to obtain

B- it provides an unfair competitive advantage to those willing to risk their health and the law to obtain and use it

Second, I believe through past evidence that a significant portion of elite athletes dope and the majority of them get away with it.

Third, I believe because of the point above, a separate significant portion of elite athletes do not dope but are accused of doping simply because they are elite and we know doping exists.

For the reasons above, I agree with the subject of the thread. It’s fruitless to argue about doping.

You can't. Just another of your many lies.

But this was your lie -- I never said I knew which ones were doped, or their names. That was one of your many false extrapolations you want to put in my mouth.

Your initial objection is misguided, because:

- With respect to scientific studies, I had already said we don't have the right data on elite athletes, and curiously your objection just parrotted me that we don't have the right data on elite athletes.

- When I looked at the progression of performance trends of whole groups, I included all of the fastest performances of dopers and non-dopers alike.

Do you recall the "Tuebingen study" which attempted to estimate doping prevalence at the 2011 World Athletics Championship without being able to name a single doped athlete? This is not the barrier you pretend it is.

Doping is only cheating because such is against the rules.
Change the rules and you stop cheating immediately.

Stealing is only taking what is not allowed ; taxation/ fines/ compensation would be stealing according to you.

Murder is only killing someone in circumstances that society say is not allowed.

The doping rules change each year : do keep up before you post.