It is scary, though, that we might be condemning some innocent athletes. I'm not talking about the judicial system - the tangled web of legislation and the utter insanity that is the WADA are beyond the scope of this post. Instead, let's consider the court of public opinion.
Richard Groenendaal has a big head. Not just in terms of ego, but also anatomically. Phrenologists would have a field day with Herr Grooondaal. Did doping make his head bigger?
Marion Jones had braces as an adult. She took steroids as an adult. Did the doping make her maxilla and mandible bend like origami?
Tammy Thomas. Oh, Tammy Thomas. Tammy Tammy Tam Tam Tammy. Oof
So yes, we judge athletes based on looks, or at least on the change in looks. Certainly this isn't enough evidence for a court of law, but come on, this is us, the people! The people who keep the tabloids in business, the people who closely followed the Michael Jackson trial, or even the people who debate Floyd's case in coffee shops. It's all the same practice, just some versions are higher-brow.
But enough about us. Let's talk science. Or, rather, pseudo-science...
For a drug like testosterone, we can't just draw blood to look for exogenous testosterone. We have to measure the amount of testosterone, measure the amount of episterone (a precursor to testosterone), and infer the guilt or innocence of the subject based on that ratio.
That's where my understanding ends. I don't understand the measurement process well enough to speak to its validity (although I'm sure Floyd's legal team might have a thing or two to say about it). My question is about the physiology that underlies the inference in the testosterone test.
It seems (and by seems, I mean I've never heard anything to the contrary but am assuming anyway) that the "normal" values and their ranges come from studies of average joes. Normal people have such and such concentrations of these chemicals, so surely if someone deviates significantly from normal, then they're doping.
But the best athletes are abnormal. Their hearts are too big, and they have too many capillaries in their lungs, and their muscles are too damn glycolytic (or oxidative, depending on the sport). They are from the furthest reaches of the Bell Curve, and they stress their bodies torturously on top of that.
What happens when a genetic freak subjects themselves to hours and hours of exertion? Might the set points for homeostasis, the hormone ratios and the hematocrits and the biochemistries, shift? Might we be condemning people whose only offense is being really really predisposed to athletics?
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Some athletes have elevated physiological attributes by default (e.g. high hematocrit, high T:E ratio, etc) and these values are often documented and submitted as "baseline" information.
Landis had never before shown a high T:E ratio until that epic day. That, and the test for exogenous testosterone (based on C13 isotope ratios in naturally-occurring vs. non-naturally-occuring a.k.a. synthetic testosterone) was also positive. All this points to a positive test.
Landis tested positive, but that does not mean he doped with testosterone. There were enormously egregious violations of cGMP lab practices at the LNDD (practices that, should they have occurred in my lab, would have seen the FDA closing our site for an indefinite period of time). It seems the Landis arbitration committee did not seem to place much weight on good lab practices which, unfortunately, highlights their lack of scientific training. A bureaucratic former athlete (like Dick Pound) who, after a tested athlete's A sample tests positive and the subsequent B sample test comes back negative, states, "the B sample should never come back negative if the A is positive," simply demonstrates their profound lack of understanding of scientific rigor.
All that said, much better to give an athlete the benefit of the doubt (presumed innocence until guilt is proven) than to wrongly end their chosen means of existence.
the don,
well-articulated points about the bell curve. this is the frustrating thing about statistics. we know that nature trends to the bell curve. that's why it's called a "natural" distribution. however, given sample size, it can appear less than bell-ish. so, to me, it seems that until we have physiological data on all 6+billion folks living on the earth, we won't be able to say whether or not it's plausible that a certain population falls in that percentile beyond 6 sigma.
since i'm on here, i thought i'd repent for my sins of featuring tammy's photo on my blog. that will haunt her forever. i found a more recent photo and she looks much more like a female. i find that perhaps some of us react with horror at her image and this makes us unfairly attach a larger measure of dislike to her. is this something in our newly-evolved fish brains that makes us reject that which we do not understand? heuristics?
don, you're the scientist. i demand answers!
-your big sis
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