No Se Nada

So once again doping authorities play a binary, black-and-white game with doping when the testing system appears to be anything but.

If you haven't heard, Marion Jones tested positive for EPO recently, and coming on the heels of her guilt-by-association with Victor Conte and the cast of BALCO characters, she was the latest inductee to the new Hall of Cheatership (opening June 2007 in Sacramento, CA). Except Jones didn't test positive because when they tested her B sample, it came back negative for EPO. Story at 11.

What this episode indicates is that the system is somewhere on the brink of FUBAR. Why? Because nobody has any idea whether Jones' A sample was a false positive or her B sample was a false negative. Since they test two, and only two samples, it's essentially impossible to know.

But more to the point, the episode illustrates that despite what anti-doping authorities like Dick Pound would like us to believe, dope testing results are not black-or-white, 100% guilty or 100% innocent. How could they be? The shades of grey in Jones' sample were clear from the beginning when the A sample came back marginally positive (according to her lawyers) and, similarly, the questions surrounding Floyd Landis' results are far from crystal.

Despite the clear shades of gray and the hosts of questions that Jones' false-positive-or-false-negative? tests present us, the doping system still wants us to believe that when an athlete gives a urine or blood sample and that sample is split in half and at least one comes up questionable, then there are two, and only two, possible outcomes:

A- both samples agree and the athlete is 100% guilty

or

B- the samples disagree and the athlete is 100% innocent

Who in the hell believes in these kinds of charades? Lab techs and race officials may not believe the results so black and white, but the system and the attendant language released to the media does. Which does the athletes an even greater disservice.

What Jones' mismatched sample result proves is that either false positives exist, false negatives exist or both. The problem is, as I alluded to earlier, we have no idea which case is true for Jones!! The Jones results further imply that it is possible that two false positives will exist on the same sample, thus erroneously implicating an athlete as 100% guilty. And if we can't tell whether we have false positives or false negatives on one (former) superstar athlete's samples, how can we in god's good name trust any other results? It's a mockery.

It's time to get serious about this. Here's what I demand to see:

1- Split the sample into fourths. (The odds of multiple false positives should decrease exponentially with an increase in sample size.)

2- Do not allow the original testing lab to hold anything other than the primary sample. (Prevent tampering and preempt the picking of the lowest of the low-hanging defense fruit for the athletes.)

3- Test the secondary samples at different labs on different equipment. (This should be a no-brainer.)

4- If all these point to guilt, then give the athletes brain-wave scanning lie detector tests.

Until I see all four conditions met I will continue to think WADA's doping-detection protocols to be absurdly amateurish and I will continue to support Floyd Landis' right to cry foul on whichever aspect of his doping saga he wants, continue to love Barry Bonds simply because everybody else has been brainwashed by the media into believing that he's worth hating, and continue to think Lance Armstrong unquestionably deserves all seven of his maillot jaunes.