[Vision2020] Under the table sweepings

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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August 22, 2013
Study Revealing Doping in Track Strikes Hurdle By TIM ROHAN

Doping experts have long known that drug tests catch only a tiny fraction
of the athletes who use banned substances because athletes are constantly
finding new drugs and techniques to evade detection. So in 2011, the World
Anti-Doping Agency convened a team of researchers to try to determine more
accurately how many athletes use performance-enhancing drugs.

More than 2,000 track and field athletes participated in the study, and
according to the findings, which were reviewed by The New York Times, an
estimated 29 percent of the athletes at the 2011 world championships and 45
percent of the athletes at the 2011 Pan-Arab Games said in anonymous
surveys that they had doped in the past year.

By contrast, less than 2 percent of drug tests examined by WADA
laboratories in 2010 were positive.

The researchers were eager to publish their results, which they believed
would expose a harsh reality of modern sports: that far more athletes are
doping than might be imagined, and that current drug-testing protocols
catch few of the cheaters. But after a final draft of the study was
submitted to the antidoping agency, the organization ultimately told the
researchers they could not publish their findings at this time, according
to three of the researchers, who requested anonymity because they signed
nondisclosure agreements with the agency. The agency said track and field’s
world governing body needed to review the findings first, the researchers
said.

“It was going to be a really sensitive issue, and they needed time to
figure out how to deal with it,” one of the researchers said. “What was
going to be the international response?”

Nick Davies, a spokesman for track’s governing body, the International
Association of Athletics Federations, said in an e-mail that the original
study “was not complete for publication,” adding that it was “based only on
a social science protocol, a kind of vox pop of athletes’ opinions.” Davies
indicated blood tests from the world championships this month in Moscow
would be combined with the previous research to produce what the I.A.A.F.
believed would be a more comprehensive study.

In an e-mail, WADA confirmed “the position as set out by the I.A.A.F.”

The researchers said that their work was important and sound enough to
stand alone, and that it made little scientific sense to combine their work
with that of a study they did not conduct.

The project began in 2011 when the researchers created a
randomized-response survey, a common research technique that is used to ask
sensitive questions while ensuring a subject’s confidentiality. The
researchers conducted their interviews at two major track and field events:
the world championships in Daegu, South Korea, and the Pan-Arab Games in
Doha, Qatar.

Athletes at the events answered questions on tablet computers and were
asked initially to think of a birthday, either their own or that of someone
close to them. Then, depending on the date of the birthday, they were
instructed to answer one of two questions that appeared on the same screen:
one asked if the birthday fell sometime between January and June, and the
other asked, “Have you knowingly violated anti-doping regulations by using
a prohibited substance or method in the past 12 months?”

The study was designed this way, the researchers said, so only the athlete
knew which of the two questions he or she was answering. Then, using
statistical analysis, the researchers could estimate how many of the
athletes admitted to doping.

The researchers noted that not every athlete participated, and those who
did could have lied on the questionnaire, or chosen to answer the birthday
question. They concluded that their results, which found that nearly a
third of the athletes at the world championships and nearly half at the
Pan-Arab Games had doped in the past year, probably underestimated the
reality.

The team examined its data and in the spring of 2012 had a manuscript it
was prepared to publish. But when the final draft was submitted to WADA,
the agency told the team not to publish. WADA wanted it to do more research
at another event. The agency’s reasoning was not exactly clear to the
researchers, who mostly opposed the idea, the three researchers said.

For the next several months, the team and WADA exchanged correspondence,
debating whether to publish. In January 2013, after WADA gave permission,
an inquiry was sent to the journal Science, which decided not to consider
the study for publication. The researchers said it was rejected because the
subject matter did not fit. A spokeswoman for Science said she could not
comment specifically, but said the journal declined the vast majority of
submissions.

WADA expressed support in submitting the study to other journals. Then, in
March, the researchers said, the agency told them not to publish but to
wait for the I.A.A.F. to review the findings. The researchers said they
were blindsided.

John Hoberman, a University of Texas professor who is an expert on
performance-enhancing drugs, said the study’s findings dispelled the notion
that doping was a deviant behavior among a few athletes.

“Either the sport is recruiting huge numbers of deviants,” he said, “or
this is simply routine behavior being engaged in by, more or less, normal
people.”

He added, “That’s dangerous for WADA, because that’s a character issue.”

In May, Dick Pound, a former WADA chairman, presented a report, ordered by
the agency, on the current state of drug testing. In part, he and his team
concluded, “There is no general appetite to undertake the effort and
expense of a successful effort to deliver doping-free sport.”

Pound said in a telephone interview Thursday: “There’s this psychological
aspect about it: nobody wants to catch anybody. There’s no incentive.
Countries are embarrassed if their nationals are caught. And sports are
embarrassed if someone from their sport is caught.”

Don Catlin, a prominent antidoping scientist, said he was not sure that
WADA had the resources to rein in doping.

“Those are profound numbers,” Catlin said about the researchers’ findings.
“It’s disturbing. I’m not surprised, though.”


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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