Quotes from Tafi
Quoted post said:As I have said I'm not damning either of them but neither of you have come up with any proof. Satistics is all very well (I know how probability works). However you haven't included factors such as masking or the use of saline solution which can bring haematocrit levels down to the acceptable range very easily. To quote the chance of passing a lot of tests based on pure maths is very naive. And I would like to see proof that Armstrong is the most tested rider too.
The burden of proof rests with the party who makes a claim. In this case, O'Reilly has made claims. She has not offered proof; she expects us to take her word for it. For example, where are the vials she claims to have been asked to dispose of? She says she threw them away.
Well, if I make a claim that I own $1 billion dollars in gold buried 10 miles deep on the far side of the moon, and you doubt me, as I expect you would, I would expect you to ask me to prove it. I would not be able to. It's too hard to get over there, I might explain. Being unable to prove that I am wrong is not proof that I am right. The burden of proof would be on me to prove it exists, not on you to prove that it doesn't
By the same token, O'Reilly has made claims she cannot prove. The fact that we cannot prove her wrong is not evidence that she is correct. The burden of proof is on her. She is the one making unsubstantiated claims.
You make good points about the testing. I haven't included the reductions in the odds as you have suggested because I wanted to start with long odds and work my way down. It's a simplistic way of looking at it, I agree, but it's a good starting point. But while we play this numbers game, remember that the burden of proof is on the one making the claim that doping has occurred. That's the $1 billion in gold buried on the far side of the moon, the UFO, the Bin Laden in Vegas. There is no direct evidence of doping. She hasn't come up with anything which is concrete or has physical form. In other words, she has no physical evidence. Stories without physical evidence, while not necessarily false, are simply harder to believe because they could very easily be fabrications.
But getting back to what you have said about masking agents, you sound like you are informed to realize that there are tests for masking agents as well. I'm not a chemist, but I doubt that a rider is going to be much of one either. Let's just say that Lance makes an attempt to mask EPO (if that's what he is alleged to have doped with). He would have to mask successfully each and every time that he went in to get a random test and knew that he had EPO in his system. In a 5 year time, the most likely number of times he would be in the red zone, assuming he was tested 60 times (this is a guess), would be 60/8 = 7.5. Therefore, he would have to fool the chemists successfully 7.5 times, theoretically. If he does not, then he's crucified in the press. We would have heard about it. But he passed every time. So he is either a very good "street" chemist or simply a clean rider. I am inclined to believe that you can fool someone some of the time if you're an amateur, but not in the long run unless you are an expert. I doubt Lance is an expert chemist. He doesn't have the background. To include others as co conspirators would make it harder for him to contain the story, not easier. So that's not believable either. We are talking about a long time here. The testing would have exposed him if he were doping. If anything looks funny, like evidence of any kind of masking agents, I suspect they go deeply into the urinalysis to test further. How easy it is to fool them I don't know. I do know that if I get a drug test and I have eaten just one bagel with poppy seeds on it in the past 72 hours, I will get a positive result for opiates. This is an extremely sensitive test. You only need an extremely low concentration to test positive. In this case, it would be a false positive because poppy seeds are in the same family as morphine, but they aren't drugs. What I'm getting at is the following. If I had a drug pusher trying to convince me that I could easily beat drug tests by using masking agents, but I knew my entire reputation were on the line if I failed, who will I believe: the drug dealer or that the chemist is better at discovery than I, the amateur am better at hiding? I wouldn't make that stupid choice, but that doesn't mean Lance didn't. It just illustrates what he would have to ponder before going down such a course. I think, as you already know, that this choice is not believable.
As for proof that Armstrong is the most tested rider, I have never made that claim. If you have heard this, perhaps you could show me where you discovered that this is true. I would like to see the proof too. That he is tested randomly in the offseason I gleaned from the press. I would like to know exactly how his random drug testing program works. It will be easier to ponder the probabilities.
Quoted post said:And you mean to say that Armstrong has never sold one story or another of his to newspapers before? He is very media savy and able to use it to his advantage. But like any allegation against him. His rantings are also just talk.
I don't know what you're driving at here. Maybe you can explain what this has to do with whether O'Reilly is making a far fetched claim or not. What Lance is making clear is the fact that she has no physical evidence. If she said she saw a UFO today that abducted her, opened her brain, took samples of her various tissues and then released her but she had no scars, her story would not be very believable. It might be true, but I doubt it. She has done the same thing with Lance. She has no physical evidence. The difference between her and someone on the street who would make such a claim is that she worked with USPS. That seems to be about it.
Quoted post said:The "not here" attitude of Australia towards this issue has been quite naive. The "not our Lance" attitude may be similarly so.
I am not basing my analysis on a "not our Lance" attitude. I am simply looking at the facts that have been presented and using reasoning. I come to bat when it seems that injustice is done. Justice, in this case, has nothing to do with who is being incriminated. It has to do with whether the allegations are true. It doesn't seem like it in this case.
Quoted post said:It is true that many athletes including Lance have submitted statements stating that they had never "Tested positive". Very few of them actually go so far as to say that they "Don't take drugs".
To say they "Don't take drugs" is a statement that cannot be substantiated. It's like saying that that gold is buried on the far side of the moon. It may be true, but you can't prove it. I suspect that Lance is aware of this argument, and sidesteps this issue by saying "I have always tested positive." This is a statement that can be proven. The evidence is the conclusion of the testers when they analyze every sample. That he has always tested positive is strong evidence that he has not been doping, but it is not 100% reliable. It is 100% reliable in that the results were all negative, but ever so slightly less than that that the results indicate no drug use. It is only at best 9,997/10,000 proven by the testing. It has a 3/10,000 probability of a false negative in 5 years, using the assumptions I made. That's slim odds.
Quoted post said:Rightly or wrongly there is now a definite stigma surrounding Armstrong and unless this can be dispelled it will remain forever.
I think people for the most part don't believe tales that are based on no physical evidence. Some do, but I suspect they are the minority. So I suppose if there is a stigma, it will not be dispelled from these people because they do not think rationally. They would not believe the physical evidence that would exonerate Lance, if this did exist, because they are believing the story of O'Reilly even though she has no physical evidence. So they are the same type of people who would believe far fetched stories published in the tabloids. It would be tough to teach them logic when they have a habit of not looking for physical evidence to determine whether a statement is true or not. So I suppose that a small minority might continue to believe these allegations.
