I want to clarify why I have my "theories".
1) The fact I had some WR holder who did this with only training (like Shaheen, Mosop, Florence Kiplagat) and athletes at the top of different events, improving in very short time (Nicholas Kemboi in 10000m, the current group of new athlketes at the top of HM, or athletes like Irene Cheptai becoming WCC Champions from a midium level with less than one year of training)
makes me thinking that, in case of EPO, their improvement could not be evident, and in any case NEVER in high percentage.
You don't know how they train, and the fact you don't know how they train makes you thinking their performances can be achieved with doping only, OTHERWISE YOU NEVER CAN SUPPORT THE PERCENTAGES OF IMPROVEMENT WRITTEN IN SOME POST. If you accept the fact that the most part of WR and top performances are clean, automatically you have to change your "faith" in the effects of EPO (not doping in general, but specifically EPO...).
3) About the possibility for top talented athletes, with the best possible training, to increase their total volume of blood, an increase of almost 25% was found in medical tests, carried out with the same athletes in the period of about 4 months, by Xabier Liviarte and Nicolas Terrados, when they were doctors of the Spanish Federation, in systematic and periodic blood tests, carried out in the period between 1991 and 1996, in the University of Vitoria, in the Basque Region. I don't think they did some publication about this, because it was not an investigation for scientific targets, but a control about the change of the situation every 2 weeks, connected with studies about training.
4) About the fact I have no experience with EPO, this is correct, but this doesn't prevent me from knowing what happens with training, and to know the final results. Instead, many think to have experiences with EPO, but don't have experience with training and don't know what they have to do for reaching with training top results. Since our final goal is to improve top results, and not to study what happens giving EPO to average athletes, I think my lack of experience can allow me to look at the effects of training with free mind, while people with experience with EPO look at training with mind already full of stereotypes, that in the most part are not correct.
5) About the fact I don't have any training as physiologist, I collaborated for about 12 years with the University of Torino (Turin) for researches carried out in the hematology department of the University Clinic, that was happy to have the opportunity to investigate the behavior of italian and kenyan athletes, training at sea level, or immediately coming from altitude, in different situations of shape : with little training, medium training, top training, deciding their level not with tests in the lab, but, more easy, with their athletic performances on the track.
And, for your knowledge, in my role of Technical Scientific Director of the Italian Federation, I published in the Italian Technical Magazine "Atletica Studi" the training and the blood values of Christopher Koskei, my first World Champion from Kenya (3000 steeple in 1999 in Seville).
You have to think that the most part of researches are with limited number of subjects, normally not of high level as athletes, and in one defined situation (for example, a lab with a protocol connected with all the other researches, because the protocols must be similar in order to compare the final results), while we had the opportunity to collect more than thousand values, in different situations of shape, of training, of altitude, of seasonal period.
At the end of every other consideration, one problem is that, when physiologists want to do some research, they never ask something to the coaches that know HOW they train the athletes, depending on their level.
I'm ready, in any moment, to collaborate with some physiologist who REALLY wants to understand what happens with training. For doing this, he has to CHECK the training, not to look at the classic protocols, that are a "static picture" of the current situation of the athletes, when training is a dynamic evolution, for changing physiological parameters not in casual way, but using the right strategy for building the top shape when there is the main competition.