26mi235 wrote:
dingle wrote:Except that he just made up a false positive rate of 1%. It could be .001% and all his lovely math means little. We don't know what that rate is. From what I've heard, I'm not even sure that the testers know. And that brings up a whole other set of issues.
I suspect that the false-positive rate is higher on the A samples than on the B samples, since the A sample is like a screening where you do many samples. Another reason to not announce until the B is known -- however, there should not be a lag of more than a few days. Also, there are times when the A will cause you to take some actions (drop a runner from the 4x400 team, a rider before starting the Tour, ...)
I would suspect that is true, too, although I haven't seen any published false positive rates. I'm sure they don't want to publicize it as it would lead to more media mischief by those who do test positive. I can't remember exactly what he said but Caitlin said something to the effect of having never made a false positive. I know he wasn't quite as bald-faced as saying he was infallible, but it was basically trying to get the media to go down the false positive route.
How long does an athlete have to ask for a B sample? The process should be streamlined so that the athlete has 2-3 days to ask for a B sample and the testers have 2-3 more days to complete it. I think some of the delay between tests may be the athlete postponing the obvious. Landis's B samples weren't tested for several weeks after the Tour and I think they were waiting on him to decide.
Regardless, I'm sure that the false negative rate is still higher than the false positive rate.