Sorry for the lengthy response, but you raise many points.
I'm aware of many published articles on VO2max on the internet, and elsewhere -- this is precisely why I challenge you to provide references, because I am certain you will absolutely fail to find one that confirms your claim for recreational runners who "generally improve their 10k performance time by 10-15% off a 5% increase in VO2 max".
Just quickly cross-checking with Daniels VDOT tables for example, I find 10K performance improvements of ~4% related to a 5% increase in VDOT, far less than 10-15%, for recreational 40-50 minute 10K runners. And I'm often reminded of Schumacher's "up to 3%" or "up to 1 minute" claim for faster 33-34 minute runners from blood doping.
Speaking of beyond idiocy, I continue to be puzzled by your repeated insistence that I made any distinction between VO2max, whether raised by doping or by legitimate means, especially after I explicitly corrected you on this point, emphasizing the "deleterious" example actually came from "legitimate means" in a high altitude study -- the very path you claim I would not argue. This is not a "purported" suggestion, but a historically documented reality. I don't make any distinction, or take different views based on how VO2max was raised. My preference for "legitimate means" is not connected to performance, but to legitimacy: high altitude raises EPO and RBC naturally and legally.
My denial is not a "doping denial". I don't doubt an amateur cyclist will improve performance with EPO, or even that this journalist did. I did deny two things: 1) I denied that VO2max is the best measure of performance improvement, and 2) I denied your "creative" claim of 10-15% 10K time improvement from 5% VO2max.
Where I suspect your 10-15% comes from is not 10K running performance in time, but something like increase in peak power, and you are obliviously mixing things up. But even this relation appears to be an over-estimate, as recently scientists associated a mere 7-8% aerobic power increase with 6-7% VO2max increase based on a meta-study analysis of EPO studies.
I do not generally deny EPO effect (and on the contrary, my repeated recommendations for high altitude training similarly relies on EPO produced naturally as having a similar beneficial effect on performance as exogenous EPO would), but claim that the resulting effect on performance is often over-estimated, especially for elite athletes. This is not my religious idea alone, but one shared by like-minded scientists.
See, for example, this study "Overestimated Effect of Epo Administration on Aerobic Exercise Capacity: A Meta-Analysis", where scientists tried to determine the relation between VO2max increases and Maximal Power Output in Watts (Wmap) which they called "EPO doping to Aerobic Performance relationship" or EDAP-relationship.
"... the proportional improvements for VO2max hover around 6–7% and for Wmap around 7–8%."
Much of the meta-study explores why they believe EPO studies over-estimate performance improvements that cannot be translated to cycling performance (see study for full context):
"This entails that 81–96% of the differences in performance improvement observed in the epo studies are not explained by epo administration." (This percentage is variation of EPO effect reported across studies, and not absolute EPO effect.)
"These percents imply that in 61.8–72.6% of the observations the epo studies are not able to discriminate between maximal performances demonstrated by participants that were administered epo or not."
What about studies versus the real world?:
"They show that the application of improvements in VO2max observed in the epo studies cannot be linearly extrapolated to cycling races and that the epo–induced increases in speed result in nearly trivial time differences between cyclists."
And there bottom line conclusion:
"The magnitude of the EDAP–relationship is overvalued. In turn, this entails that the relationship between epo doping and cyclists‘ performances at real contests is overrated too."