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发帖数: 2314 | 1 原来是'Performance profiling' could help to catch cheater 现在是 '
Performance profiling' could help to dispel doubts.
Why great Olympic feats raise suspicions
'Performance profiling' could help to dispel doubts.
Ewen Callaway
01 August 2012 Corrected: 03 August 2012
Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen broke the world record for the women's 400-metre
individual medley event at the Olympic Games on 28 July.
L. NEAL /AFP / GETTY IMAGES
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At the Olympics, how fast is too fast? That question has dogged Chinese
swimmer Ye Shiwen after the 16-year-old shattered the world record in the
women's 400-metre individual medley (400 IM) on Saturday. In the wake of
that race, some swimming experts wondered whether Ye’s win was aided by
performance-enhancing drugs. She has never tested positive for a banned
substance and the International Olympic Committee on Tuesday declared that
her post-race test was clean. The resulting debate has been tinged with
racial and political undertones, but little science. Nature examines whether
and how an athlete's performance history and the limits of human physiology
could be used to catch dopers.
Was Ye’s performance anomalous?
Yes. Her time in the 400 IM was more than 7 seconds faster than her time in
the same event at a major meet in July 2011. But what really raised eyebrows
was her showing in the last 50 metres, which she swam faster than US
swimmer Ryan Lochte did when he won gold in the men’s 400 IM on Saturday,
with the second-fastest time ever for that event.
Doesn't a clean drug test during competition rule out the possibility of
doping?
No, says Ross Tucker, an exercise physiologist at the University of Cape
Town in South Africa. Athletes are much more likely to dope while in
training, when drug testing tends to be less rigorous. “Everyone will pass
at the Olympic games. Hardly anyone fails in competition testing,” Tucker
says.
Out-of-competition tests are more likely to catch dopers, he says, but it is
not feasible to test every elite athlete regularly year-round. Tracking an
athlete over time and flagging anomalous performances would help anti-doping
authorities to make better use of resources, says Yorck Olaf Schumacher, an
exercise physiologist at the Medical University of Freiburg in Germany, who
co-authored a 2009 paper proposing that performance profiling be used as an
anti-doping tool1. “I think it’s a good way and a cheap way to narrow
down a large group of athletes to suspicious ones, because after all, the
result of any doping is higher performance,” Schumacher says.
Related stories
Performance enhancement: Superhuman athletes
Science at the Olympics: Team science
Racing just to keep up
More related stories
The ‘biological passport’, which measures characteristics of an athlete’s
blood to look for physiological evidence of doping, works in a similar way
to performance profiling (see 'Racing just to keep up'). After it was
introduced in 2008, cycling authorities flagged irregularities in the blood
characteristics of Antonio Colom, a Spanish cyclist, and targeted drug tests
turned up evidence of the banned blood-boosting hormone erythropoietin (EPO
) in 2009.
How would performance be used to nab dopers?
Anti-doping authorities need a better way of flagging anomalous performances
or patterns of results, says Schumacher. To do this, sports scientists need
to create databases that — sport by sport and event by event — record how
athletes improve with age and experience. Longitudinal records of athletes
’ performances would then be fed into statistical models to determine the
likelihood that they ran or swam too fast, given their past results and the
limits of human physiology.
The Olympic biathlon, a winter sport that combines cross-country skiing and
target shooting, has dabbled in performance profiling. In a pilot project,
scientists at the International Biathlon Union in Salzburg, Austria, and the
University of Ferrara in Italy, developed a software program that
retroactively analysed blood and performance data from 180 biathletes over
six years to identify those most likely to have doped2. The biathlon
federation now uses the software to target its athletes for drug testing.
Could an athlete then be disciplined simply for performing too well?
“That would be unfair,” says Tucker. “The final verdict is only ever
going to be reached by testing. It has to be.” In recent years, cycling
authorities have successfully prosecuted athletes for having anomalous blood
profiles, even when banned substances such as EPO could not be found. But
performance is too far removed from taking a banned substance and influenced
by too many outside factors to convict someone of doping, Tucker says. “
When we look at this young swimmer from China who breaks a world record,
that’s not proof of anything. It asks a question or two.”
EDITOR’S NOTE
The comments below are a sample of the outrage with which this news story
was greeted. We are sorry that it has offended so many readers, but we stand
by the piece. We strongly reject suggestions that it was motivated by bias
or racism; our intention was to investigate the science behind a controversy
arising from the current Olympic Games. The first paragraph states that Ye
has never had a positive drug test and notes that much of the discussion of
her win “has been tinged with racial and political undertones”.
The article is a fair-minded look at a controversy that we did not initiate.
It asks whether new developments in performance monitoring could dispel the
unfortunate suspicions that the most extraordinary athletic performance
raises these days, whatever the nationality of the athlete.
We are no longer accepting comments on this news story, and because of the
volume of comments, some early posts have disappeared. We intentionally
deleted only those posts that violated our Community Guidelines.
Nature doi:10.1038/nature.2012.11109
Corrections
Corrected:
This article originally said that Ye’s time in the 400 IM was more than 7
seconds faster than in July 2012. It should have said July 2011. This has
now been corrected.
References
Shumacher, Y. O. & Pottgiesser, T. Int. J. Sport. Physiol. Perform. 4, 129–
133 (2009).
Show context
Manfredini, A. F. et al. J. Sport. Med. Phys. Fit. 51, 153–159 (2011).
ChemPort
Show context
Related stories and links
From nature.com
Performance enhancement: Superhuman athletes
18 July 2012
Science at the Olympics: Team science
18 July 2012
Racing just to keep up
15 July 2011
Nature's 2012 Olympic special
Author information
Comments
2012-08-02 11:45 AMReport this comment | #48092
Chao Yang said:
shame on you ,Nature!!!!!!!!!!!
2012-08-02 11:46 AMReport this comment | #48093
Dejian Zhao said:
Hi, Ewen Callaway. It is CONFIRMED through your article that YOUR LEFT BRAIN
HAS NOTHING RIGHT, AND YOUR RIGHT BRAIN HAS NOTHING LEFT.
2012-08-02 11:47 AMReport this comment | #48094
No Bias said:
Great Job, editors of this post, you just down-graded the prestige of Nature
into oblivion.
i would like to share something to educate you so called Nature editors,
please don't feel embarrased.
here's a most highly rated reponse posted by Buckus Toothnail, from a news
on National post, regarding the similar insinuating subject matter on Ye
Shiwen's success. http://sports.nationalpost.com/2012/07/30/chinas-ye-shiwen-pushing-realm-of-possibility-at-olympics/#comment-604038644
original reponse:
"Wow, this is the dumbest, most ignorant article I've read in a long time.
All Olympic medalists get tested immediately after the competition so if Ye'
s doping, then she'll be found out. But until that happens, and so far the
IOC has gone on record as to saying they have zero suspicions of her, then
all this chatter is just character assassination and defamation. These
accusations simply have no grounding but rather is based on pure conjecture.
But one of the more laughable things about this "article" is how it is so
blatantly biased against Ye and the Chinese (and quite transparently racist
overall).
While Ye's amazing accomplishments are termed "unbelievable" in the literal
sense and "suspicious", Ruta Meilutyte is given a completely free pass
despite being only 15 years old, swimming over 2 seconds faster in the Final
than she ever has before the Olympics, and only being ranked 14th in the
world in this event. Not only that, but this is her first major
international competition.
Ye, on the otherhand, is the world champion of the 200m individual medley
having won the event at the 2011 World Aquatics Championships, and placed
2nd in the 400m individual medley TWO YEARS AGO at the 2010 World
Championships (25 m). She is definitely not an "unknown" from out of "
nowhere". What's more, she improved her personal best by only 2 seconds in
the heats of these Olympics from her 2010 time, and then improved it again
by 3 seconds in the finals of the event. So in two years, from when she was
14 to now when she is 16, she improved her time by 5 seconds. Stephanie Rice
, on the other hand, swimming in the same event, improved her time by SIX
seconds RIGHT BEFORE the Beijing Olympics. Of course no one has accused Rice
of doping despite this.
And now Missy Franklin, who was able to WIN a finals events only 13 minutes
after swimming an exhausting 200 meter freestyle semi-final, when the
shortest rest period Michael Phelps got in Beijing was THIRTY minutes, is
celebrated rather than have suspicions aroused, even though this feat is way
more unusual and unheard of then Ye simply winning a race and breaking a
world record.
Now do I really think we ought to be suspicious of Meilutyte and Franklin?
Of course not!
Unless they have their tests come back as positive, there is absolutely NO
reason why anyone should suspect their great accomplishments instead of
hailing them. And that goes for Ye as well.
It's utterly ridiculous to celebrate the former two while defaming the
latter simply because Franklin is from the US and Meilutyte is from
Lithuania.
This is another ridiculous hypocrisy of this "writer" as Lithuania has
hardly been known as a swimming powerhouse and yet also has a reputation for
doping, the most recent case being that of Aurimas Didzbalis who failed a
doping test just two weeks ago and stripped of his European silver medal and
suspended for these Olympics.
The US team, let's not forget, has had it's share of doping cases as well
like that of Jessica Hardy. She is part of the bronze winning USA women's
4x100m freestyle team in these London Olympics, but was kicked off the US
team for the Beijing Olympics for testing positive for a banned performance
enhancer during the US Olympic trails and subsequently was banned from
competition for a year.
But of course, this "journalist" would like to ignore all that when stating
"Now, if Ye was Canadian, or American, or British, or German, we might be a
little less suspicious."
Why would that be? Canadians don't dope? Right, of course, the BIGGEST
Olympic doping scandal EVER concerned a Canadian by the name of Ben Johnson.
But let's just brush that under the rug because it doesn't fit our
narrative of "if Ye was Canadian, or American, or British, or German, we
might be a little less suspicious."
The irony of Johnson's gold medal for the 100 meter dash in 1988 Olympics
being awarded to second place finisher Carl Lewis is that it was reveal
years later that Lewis had failed THREE doping tests during the US Olympic
trials of that year, which should have gotten him kicked off the US team.
And yet the United States Olympic Committee covered us these failed drug
tests so that Lewis could compete. It was also revealed that the USOC
covered up 114 positive tests between 1988 and 2000. All this has comes out
and Lewis now even openly admits he used PEDs during his career.
And let's not forget Marion Jones, who because of biased attitudes like of
this "writer", escaped unnoticed for years despite her husband, a shot
putter also on the US team, being banned for doping during the 2000 Olympics
for testing positive FOUR times for steroids, and the fact that she
actually tested positive during a random drug test in high school and was
banned for 4 years until OJ Simpson's attorney, Johnnie Cochran, got the ban
revoked.
And of course, aside from the Olympics, American sports are NOTORIOUS for
doping. Take the case of American baseball. From Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco,
Alex Rodriguez and dozens more players that have admitted to doping to
Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa and Roger Clemens, who are largely suspected and
some being charged by the government of doping, these are the greatest
players in the past two decades and they have ALL doped.
The British don't dope??? Just on THIS Olympics' Great Britain team are
THREE dopers who were previously given bans, namely David Millar the cyclist
who tested positive for EPO and missed out the 2004 and 2008 Olympics,
sprinter Dwain Chambers, and shot putter Carl Myerscough.
And let's not forget British wrestler and Commonwealth Games champion
Myroslav Dykun just being banned for doping earlier this year.
The Germans don't dope? Are you serious? The East Germans for decades ran
one of the most wide-spread and sophisticated state-sponsored doping
programs EVER, far exceeding China in the 90s and rivaling the USSR's
program if not surpassing it.
If we are taking about recent times, Germany's own anti-doping agency and
the World Anti-Doping Agency are currently investigating the German doctor "
Dr. Andreas Franke, who extracted blood from athletes, treated it with
ultraviolet light and injected it back into the same athlete."
28 athletes are named in the case including "Olympic speedskating champion
Claudia Pechstein, former 800-meter Olympic champion Nils Schumann, [and]
rising German cycling star Marcel Kittel".
So tell me again, why is it that "if Ye was Canadian, or American, or
British, or German, we might be a little less suspicious"? Is this based on
factual reality or rather, just another obvious example of your transparent
and blatant bias, discrimination and racism?
Not only are the arguments presented in this "article" full of holes and
mostly laughable, the "journalism" is also extremely suspect and blatanly
dishonest.
For example, he mentions, "China won a record 51 golds in their home Games,
and continue to win medals here, in all sorts of disciplines. The last
similar factory was East Germany, and their hulking man-women".
East Germany, of course, was famous for state-sponsored doping and thus this
"journalist" is basically insinuating through his weasel phrases that China
was doing the same during 2008 and as a result, won their "record 51 golds"
. There accusations, of course, come without any examples, proof or
references.
The reality is that of all the athletes that tested positive during the 2008
Beijing Olympics games (not including the previously mentioned athletes
that tested positive BEFORE the Olympics and therefore didn't attend), NONE
of them were from China.
There were, however, athletes from the US and Germany, two of the countries
this "writer" claims we shouldn't be suspicious of, as well as athletes from
Ireland, Norway, Spain, Greece, Italy, North Korea, Vietnam, Croatia,
Ukraine, Poland, Bahrain and Brazil.
Another dishonest tactic of this "writer" is that he bases much of the "
impossibility" of Ye's achievement in that her "final 50-metre freestyle
split that was faster than the gold medal-winning equivalent by Ryan Lochte
in the mena#8482;s race". Naturally, many readers, as demonstrated in the
comments below, have interpreted that to mean the Ye actually BEAT Lochte's
time, which is hilariously off-base and untrue.
The fact is and what this "journalist" fails to mention is that Lochte swam
the 400m individual medley over TWENTY seconds faster than Ye in their
respective finals, and that he also BEAT her in the 100m freestyle split
when considering BOTH laps.
It is well-known that Lochte often goes all out in the beginning of races,
and fades near the end. That was well demonstrated in the 4x100 relay finals
in which Lochte himself said he was "too excited" and over-swam the first
50m and therefore not leaving enough gas for the final lap, and as we all
know, ended up losing the race to Yannick Agnel and the French team.
It is also well-known the Ye employs almost the opposite strategy. Like many
other swimmers, she conserves her energy for much of the race and then
explodes at the end. Like even John Leonard admitted, her splits from the
other 300 meters were "quite ordinary". She did not expend all her energy at
the beginning and was letting her competitors beat her until the final 100
meters which is when she made her move.
Given the different strategies employed by Lochte and Ye, it's much less
surprising that Ye was able to swim tenths of a second faster on the final
50 meters, while keeping in mind Lochte still had a faster 100 meter split
on the freestyle and was over 20 seconds faster overall in the entire 400
meters.
The real sad thing about this "article" is that this "journalist" basically
praises Franklin for employing the same strategy when she had to swim her
200m freestyle semi-final right before her 100m backstroke final, saying "
she swam her freestyle with as much arm work as possible, to save herself
for the leg-deadening backstroke. It was quite a feat."
Rather than praising Ye for "quite a feat", instead he accuses Ye of being
like a superhero character from "The Incredibles", of having "superhuman
speed" and "told by his parents to ease up at the track meet, and go just
slow enough to finish a close second", "holding back to whatever part of the
race that suits her, and then casually making every other world-class
swimmer in the field look like shea#8482;s drowning".
So rather than praise Ye's successful strategy of conserving her energy
initially so she could have more in the tank at the end, similar to the
strategy employed by Franklin, this "writer" is insinuating that Ye could go
full blast like she did on the final 100m freestyle during the ENTIRE race,
and is only "holding back" to not make her "superhuman speed" (i.e. her "
doping") appear so obvious.
Not only is this assumption completely ludicrous and mind-blowingly insipid,
it's also astonishing that this type of tripe could be published in so-
called "respectable" publication.
If the Olympics had an event for "Worst Olympics Coverage and Analysis",
this "writer" would win by such a margin that he would not be able to escape
accusations of doping with some sort of newly invented super "stupid pill".
And like Ye, he would be falsely accused.
He really is this stupid."
2012-08-02 11:47 AMReport this comment | #48095
Tao Wang said:
I happened to have a Ph.D. degree from Fudan University in Shanghai (is it
comparable to U Cape Town?) so that I guess I am qualified to comment on
this work of Mr. Ewen Callaway. But, after reviewing, I am feeling that Mr.
Callaway, together with Nature, is kidding me in a serious way. Mr. Callaway
, if statistics fail with drug test, it will also fail with your profiling
method and all Nature papers, unless you "innovate". I see that correlation
and agree that you did fail in statistics.
I don't want to give further analysis, for I have already seen so many
questions dogging Mr. Callaway and Nature. Let me paste Lai's questions and
comments here again so that Mr. Callaway and Nature have better chance to
defend their work. Mr. Callaway, please read it carefully to understand what
makes quality research work.
Furthermore, I encourage Nature to contact Lai and publish his work in next
issue to present more balanced views to its readers. (Obviously and
unfortunately, when I do statistics on comments below, I find most of Nature
's readers are Chinese. I wish Mr. Callaway is not citing me to explain the
reason of fast progress of drug development in China. To share a top secret
with you, similar to its spaceship, China is stealing drugs from US swimming
team.)
Lai Jiang said:
It is a shame to see Nature, which nearly all scientists, including myself,
regard as the one of the most prestigious and influential physical science
magazines to publish a thinly-veiled biased article like this. Granted, this
is not a peer-reviewed scientific article and did not go through the
scrutiny of picking referees. But to serve as a channel for the general
populous to be in touch with and appreciate sciences, the authors and
editors should at least present the readers with facts within proper context
, which they failed to do blatantly.
First, to compare a player's performance increase, the author used Ye's 400m
IM time and her performance at the World championship 2011, which are 4:28.
43 and 4:35.15 respectively, and reached the conclusion that she has got an
"anomalous" increase by ~7 sec (6.72 sec). In fact she's previous personal
best was 4:33.79 at Asian Games 20101. This leads to a 5.38 sec increase. In
a sport event that 0.1 sec can be the difference between the gold and
silver medal, I see no reason that 5.38 sec can be treated as 7 sec.
Second, as previously pointed out, Ye is only 16 years old and her body is
still developing. Bettering oneself by 5 sec over two years may seem
impossible for an adult swimmer, but certainly happens among youngsters. Ian
Thorpe's interview revealed that his 400m freestyle time increased 5 sec
between the age of 15 and 162. For regular people including the author it
may be hard to imagine what an elite swimmer can achieve as he or she
matures, combined with scientific and persistent training. But jumping to a
conclusion that it is "anomalous" based on "Oh that's so tough I can not
imagine it is real" is hardly sound.
Third, to compare Ryan Lochte's last 50m to Ye's is a textbook example of
what we call to cherry pick your data. Yes, Lochte is slower than Ye in the
last 50m, but (as pointed out by Zhenxi) Lochte has a huge lead in the first
300m so that he chose to not push himself too hard to conserve energy for
latter events (whether this conforms to the Olympic spirit and the "use one'
s best efforts to win a match" requirement that the BWF has recently invoked
to disqualify four badminton pairs is another topic worth discussing,
probably not in Nature, though). On the contrary, Ye is trailing behind
after the first 300m and relies on freestyle, which she has an edge, to win
the game. Failing to mention this strategic difference, as well as the fact
that Lochte is 23.25 sec faster (4:05.18) over all than Ye creates the
illusion that a woman swam faster than the best man in the same sport, which
sounds impossible. Put aside the gender argument, I believe this is still a
leading question that implies the reader that something fishy is going on.
Fourth, another example of cherry picking. In the same event there are four
male swimmers that swam faster than both Lochter (29.10 sec)3 and Ye (28.93
sec)4: Hagino (28.52 sec), Phelps (28.44 sec), Horihata (27.87 sec) and
Fraser-Holmes (28.35 sec). As it turns out if we are just talking about the
last 50m in a 400m IM, Lochter would not have been the example to use if I
were the author. What kind of scientific rigorousness that author is trying
to demonstrate here? Is it logical that if Lochter is the champion, we
should assume he leads in every split? That would be a terrible way to teach
the public how science works.
Fifth, which is the one I oppose the most. The author quotes Tucks and
implies that a drug test can not rule out the possibility of doping. Is this
kind of agnosticism what Nature really wants to educate its readers? By
that standard I estimate that at least half of the peer-reviewed scientific
papers in Nature should be retracted. How can one convince the editors and
reviewers that their proposed theory works for every possible case? One
cannot. One chooses to apply the theory to typical examples and demonstrate
that in (hopefully) all scenarios considered the theory works to a degree,
and that should warrant a publication, until a counterexample is found. I
could imagine that the author has a skeptical mind which is critical to
scientific thinking, but that would be put into better use if he can write a
real peer-reviewed paper that discusses the odds of Ye doping on a highly
advanced non-detectable drug that the Chinese has come up within the last 4
years (they obviously did not have it in Beijing, otherwise why not to use
it and woo the audience at home?), based on data and rational derivation.
This paper, however, can be interpreted as saying that all athletes are
doping, and the authorities are just not good enough to catch them. That may
be true, logically, but definitely will not make the case if there is ever
a hearing by FINA to determine if Ye has doped. To ask the question that if
it is possible to false negative in a drug test looks like a rigged question
to me. Of course it is, other than the drug that the test is not designed
to detect, anyone who has taken Quantum 101 will tell you that everything is
probabilistic in nature, and there is a probability for the drug in an
athlete's system to tunnel out right at the moment of the test. A slight
change as it may be, should we disregard all test results because of it? Let
ÃÆa#8482;Ãa#353;Â&
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Â￠s be practical and reasonable. And accept WADA is competent at its
job. Her urine sample is stored for 8 years following the contest for future
testing as technology advances. Innocent until proven guilty, shouldn't it
be?
Sixth, and the last point I would like to make, is that the out-of-
competition drug test is already in effect, which the author failed to
mention. Per WADA presidentÃÆa#8482;Ã&
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ƒa#353;ÂÂ￠s press release5, drug testing for
olympians began at least 6 months prior to the opening of the London Olympic
. Furthermore there are 107 athletes who are banned from this Olympic for
doping. That maybe the reason that ÃÆa#8482
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dope are already sanctioned? The author is free to suggest that a player
could have doped beforehand and fool the test at the game, but this
possibility certainly is ruled out for Ye.
Over all, even though the author did not falsify any data, he did (
intentionally or not) cherry pick data that is far too suggestive to be fair
and unbiased, in my view. If you want to cover a story of a suspected
doping from a scientific point of view, be impartial and provide all the
facts for the reader to judge. You are entitled to your interpretation of
the facts, and the expression thereof in your piece, explicitly or otherwise
, but only showing evidences which favor your argument is hardly good
science or journalism. Such an article in a journal like Nature is not an
appropriate example of how scientific research or report should be done.
1http://www.fina.org/H2O/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=1241
2http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ETPUKlOwV4
3http://www.london2012.com/swimming/event/men-400m-individual-medley/phase=swm054100/index.html
4http://www.london2012.com/swimming/event/women-400m-individual-medley/phase=sww054100/index.html
5http://playtrue.wada-ama.org/news/wada-presidents-addresses-london-2012-press-conference/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wada-presidents-addresses-london-2012-press-conference
2012-08-02 11:48 AMReport this comment | #48096
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2012-08-02 11:49 AMReport this comment | #48097
KGV Bazinga said:
Not to even mention Callaway's paper, which is full of prejudice, biased
facts, and presumption of guilt, it is really hopeless to see Nature
published such a crap. My undergraduate lab report was even more persuasive
than this.
Funny to see the author even cited two articles as references, which makes
even more like a joke
2012-08-02 11:49 AMReport this comment | #48098
Yu Chen said:
For those who doesn't understood what's going on here, please go to
Scientific American website and check out the original titles of this
article, which is already surreptitiously changed by the editor of Nature
News here.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-great-olym
2012-08-02 11:51 AMReport this comment | #48099
Kai Zhou said:
None of the evidence in this article is convincing to suspect Ye's
performance. If the results of the drug test are suspicious, why should we
believe the performance of all the other athletics?
2012-08-02 11:55 AMReport this comment | #48100
Ying Zhang said:
Ewen Hallaway, as well as Nature, should withdraw this article as soon as
possible and apologize to Ms Shiwen Ye formally for making totally unfounded
accusations and mislead the public. Had this article not been centered
around the single claim: Ye Shiwen cheated, the writer might still be able
to say something marginally counted as "scientific". But now the whole
article is just full of logical fallacies, unfounded claims, guess and
accusations. This is unbelievably low. Aren't they afraid of legal trouble?
2012-08-02 11:57 AMReport this comment | #48102
Wei Xie said:
I suggest the moderator/online editor in charge of this article to remove
the comment by Iam withNature--Yes, just as you remove Lai Jiang's reply.
The reasons are the following (note the last paragraph also serves as my
reply to Iam withNature):
First, Iam withNature's reply is not relevant to the theme of discussion in
this article, not at all. Iam with Nature's reply (a) is mainly arguing that
Chinese people, Chinese researchers and Chinese students on the whole are
cheating very frequently as "a whidespread trend"; (b) He or she also
implied that US people, US researchers and US students do not cheat or at
least cheat much less often as "ethics" exists in "civilized world including
the US" while "non-existent" in China. However, the current online article
is mainly discussing "'Performance profiling' could help to dispel doubts"
as the subtitle suggests after it was change from "Performance profiling'
could help to catch cheater". Iam withNature's reply themes is completely
not related to the article and thus should not be posted here.
Second, this reply violates Nature Community Guidelines item 9: No libel or
other abuse (including no racist). The author is attacking China and Chinese
throughout his reply as the sole theme and only conclusion that they are
cheaters. This reply is completely and noxiously racist in any single aspect.
Last, the claims of Iam withNature was absolutely groundless because they
were supported by invalid evidence and poor logic. Iam withNature's only
grounded his argument on the following information: (a) Chinese students
often score "nearly perfect" in GRE tests; (b) he has seen Chinese
researchers did not cite previous researches properly; (c) the Yao-Perelman
affair which is not a determined cheating case at all--at least Harvard, a
US university thinks not because Yao is still working there as a professor.
(d) his subjective "discovery" that some Chinese students are "pathological
liars" which is not supported by any detail or evidence as to what
specifically he "discovered". It is surprising a people claims to be
researcher and professor in a country that he thinks so high of develops his
/her argument with such poor evidence--most of them can not even be regarded
as evidence in scientific standard at all. Even when we step back and
assume that what these are all solid evidence, Iam withNature's logic in
developing his argument is also wretched. The most notorious logical
fallacies that Iam withNature had in his/her argument was hassle
generalization. How can one claim a nation and its people are cheaters as "a
trend" based on a few specific cases? Can I claim generally that US
researchers have "a widespread trend" to cheat based on previous scientific
misconduct cases in US as listed on wiki here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_misconduct#United_States? Note ironically the wiki page lists more cases of scientific misconducts in US than in China. Further, how come "near perfect" GRE scores have necessary link to cheating? Just like how come Ye's excellent performance in London must come from doping? There are more examples of logic fallacies in Iam withNature's reply, as pointed out by many others' comments on this page, for example in the one by Venti Awake at http://www.nature.com/news/why-great-olympic-feats-raise-suspicions-1.11109?nc=1343953136585#/comment-47886.
2012-08-02 11:59 AMReport this comment | #48103
Tony Zhang said:
If China does has such drug that can not be found, they will certainly use
it for football athletes. They care this much more than caring swimming.
2012-08-03 12:01 PMReport this comment | #48104
Bill Capricorn said:
Why ridiculous news articles in a prestigous academic jounal raise
suspicions
'Regular brain monitoring of editors' could help to dispel doubts.
For news in an academic journal, how ridiculous is too ridiculous? That
question might have dogged the editor of the British academic journal "
Nature". The recent news report by this journal "Why great Olympic feats
raise suspicions" has raised ubiquitous concerns about whether its editor
has experienced severe brain damage.
Was the ridiculousness of that news article anomalous?
Yes. Since Nature's first publication in 1869, never have people seen news
articles this ridiculous approved by its editors. The decision of publishing
this article is absolutely out of readers' expectations.
Dosen't serving as the editor of an academic journal rule of the possibility
of brain damage?
No, says Sister Pheonix, a well-known expert in the field of bran damage
research.
How would ridiculousness of articles be used to test for brain damage of
editors?
Readers need a better way of flagging anomalous ridiculousness of news
articles, says Sister Lotus. The Global Times, a news paper that views China
as simply freaking awesome and the rest
of the world pretty much piece of crap, dabbled in regular brain monitoring
of its editors.
Could an editor then be hospitalized simply for publishing articles too
ridiculous?
"That would be unfair", says Sister Pheonix. "The final verdict is only ever
going to be reached by medical examination. It has to be." Publishing
ridiculous articles is too far removed from brain damage of the editor and
influenced by too many outside factors, Sister Pheonix says. "When we read
this wickedly ridiculous news article approved for publishing by it editor,
that's not proof of anything. It asks a question or two."
2012-08-03 12:02 PMReport this comment | #48105
dayu lu said:
Shame on Nature!
2012-08-03 12:06 PMReport this comment | #48106
Wenjie Liang said:
It's astonishing to see a such unfounded article on this site. The data is
unfounded and the conclusion is also not surpported by the finding in the
past. Lochte didn't do a good job in his last split and ranked 5th also in
the same pool. so what's so surprising? And as a teenager and world champion
, sudden improvement as their body change is not big deal and has been seen
in the past. that really fail this conclusion. Yes, there are rumors (or
should I say they are rumors 'cause there even no story but only judgements)
Ye was doped. But at this sensitive time putting out such a total unfounded
"research" article saying "anormalous" achivement refers to cheating citing
Ye's greating performance, I don't know whether you want Nature's reader to
buy the argument using your logics to charge Ye as cheating (I am sure you
will deny that publicly) or WADA is a tatal failure. Or you would say, man,
I am just doing a scientific research, nothing more.
I always regard Nature as a top norch scientific journal (you are) and a
very inspring source of scientific research and critical thinking. Please
keep make me convinced.
2012-08-03 12:06 PMReport this comment | #48107
KUN ZHANG said:
I strongly suggest you to double check you master thesis if there is
something plagiarized, and indeed I believe you will do that after reading
all these guys' comments. Cause you are a great potential politician to
consider thins by you feet.
2012-08-03 12:06 PMReport this comment | #48108
Peng Qian said:
I guess the author of this journal was pretty disappointed to see that Ye
won the 400m game, by assembling up such "facts" and so called "preformance
profiling" method. The author was hardly detached and unbiased as he ran
over his "evidences". And his ignorance to the world swimming committee's
clarence regarding Ye's issue reminds me a phrase "innocent unitl prove
guilty"...
The author tried to advocate for the "preformance profiling method".
Technically, the method is to find anomalies in the OLPC games and so to
judge the potential dopers. There is a major problem regarding the causal
relation of the judgement. It is never the case that good preformances come
from doping (if you are not cynical). This belief leads to a bifurcated
discussion. On one side, your preformance profiling method suggests serious
treatments towards anthelets with abnormal preformances, which was already
undergone by the swimming committee and the OLPC committee. And this come
back to my previous point that Ewan was somehow blinded and unable to see
the official clarence regarding Ye's test results. On the other side, is
outpreformance a result of doping or it is actually a result of OLPC spirit
that is to compete and become better and faster? A doper will probably be
more sophisticated if he/she chooses to dope in EVERY game rather than
SPECIFIC game he/she participate. Thus, it is probably more plausible to see
steady preformers involved in doping. This is probably why Ewan avoided to
provide names of past dopers such as these on the racing court who were NOT
known for anomalous preformance but rather steady and ingenious type. Thus
the profiling method was flawed in testing dopers(since they were actually
steady preformers) and in non-dopers (who are able to improve greatly giving
the spirit of OLPC and their graduately perfected body/mind). With such
major flaws embeded, Ewan should not draw these strong conclusion towards a
16 year old girl who are still on her way to her culmination!
2012-08-03 12:07 PMReport this comment | #48109
Peng Qian said:
I guess the author of this journal was pretty disappointed to see that Ye
won the 400m game, by assembling up such "facts" and so called "preformance
profiling" method. The author was hardly detached and unbiased as he ran
over his "evidences". And his ignorance to the world swimming committee's
clarence regarding Ye's issue reminds me a phrase "innocent unitl prove
guilty"...
The author tried to advocate for the "preformance profiling method".
Technically, the method is to find anomalies in the OLPC games and so to
judge the potential dopers. There is a major problem regarding the causal
relation of the judgement. It is never the case that good preformances come
from doping (if you are not cynical). This belief leads to a bifurcated
discussion. On one side, your preformance profiling method suggests serious
treatments towards anthelets with abnormal preformances, which was already
undergone by the swimming committee and the OLPC committee. And this come
back to my previous point that Ewan was somehow blinded and unable to see
the official clarence regarding Ye's test results. On the other side, is
outpreformance a result of doping or it is actually a result of OLPC spirit
that is to compete and become better and faster? A doper will probably be
more sophisticated if he/she chooses to dope in EVERY game rather than
SPECIFIC game he/she participate. Thus, it is probably more plausible to see
steady preformers involved in doping. This is probably why Ewan avoided to
provide names of past dopers such as these on the racing court who were NOT
known for anomalous preformance but rather steady and ingenious type. Thus
the profiling method was flawed in testing dopers(since they were actually
steady preformers) and in non-dopers (who are able to improve greatly giving
the spirit of OLPC and their graduately perfected body/mind). With such
major flaws embeded, Ewan should not draw these strong conclusion towards a
16 year old girl who are still on her way to her culmination!
2012-08-03 12:07 PMReport this comment | #48110
Michael Chisnall said:
To Wie Xie -If there are more cases of scientific misconduct in the US than
in China it is because the US has a culture of transparency, and
institutional support for it, that encourages investigation. Contrast this
with China which has a culture of covering up corruption or dishonesty if
there is even a hint that it might be linked to someone in the Party.
2012-08-03 12:08 PMReport this comment | #48111
Summer Xia said:
OK, let me summarize and extend the disgusting "logic" used in this crap and
lots of other craps in these days,
1) Shiwen was doped to win simply. Why? Because her performance was "
anomalous".
2) Other players such as Phelps or Ian Thorpe did the same thing at a
similar age. Why they are not considered as doping? Because Ye is Chinese,
and China has a "history record" of doping.
3) How to explain that she passed all the doping tests? Because she used
some high-tech drugs which are not detectable by current technologies.
4) Since it is high-tech drugs, it should be stolen from some other
countries, let's say US or UK, by some Chinese spies. (If you can not
understand it, go back to study point 2 and do some google search using "
China steal technology" which can give you 14,300,000 results.)
5) OK, so those high-tech drugs were intentionally developed by US or UK or
whatever other high-tech countries originally.
6) Then why did those countries want to develop such things?
Now, please write and publish a new story!
2012-08-03 12:10 PMReport this comment | #48112
Lucy Hong said:
Wow, it's really a good way to become notorious! Mr. Callaway, you did it!!
And Nature, you've proved your level of profession and scientific knowledge.
Should I doubt that your high impact factor has been achieved by cheating?
Nature, you owe Ye and everyone an apology.
2012-08-03 12:10 PMReport this comment | #48113
Shame on Nature said:
What a shameless pseudo-scientific article! It deserves retraction X 100!
What a shame for Nature editors to get this cheap shots on a scientific
journal.
2012-08-03 12:13 PMReport this comment | #48114
Fuxing Zhang said:
I did my best to suppress my anger not to say that word. However, that
couldn't stop me thinking what kind of editors Nature have: a bunch of
racists? or ones without any scientific reasoning mind? What a crap! This is
the biggest shame in scientific community in years! Nature, don't risk
ruining your reputation by doing this.
2012-08-03 12:13 PMReport this comment | #48115
zhao zhao said:
How stupid nature is, considering that it gives us a very good weapon. The
following is a paragraph that we can spread to our academic collegues. (I've
done so already.)
"Nature today published a paper titled "Why great Olympic feats raise
suspicions".
http://www.nature.com/news/why-great-olympic-feats-raise-suspic
Though it is not peer-reviewed but I'm still amazed at how a bad reasoned
article can be published in a serious scientific website.
I believe the way of drawing conclusion in this report is what we should
avoid in writing scientific articles. And this article is already gaining
attentions among biologists."
2012-08-03 12:14 PMReport this comment | #48116
Shuai Zhao said:
shame for you nature
2012-08-03 12:15 PMReport this comment | #48117
Alias Lin said:
Lai Jiang said:
It is a shame to see Nature, which nearly all scientists, including myself,
regard as the one of the most prestigious and influential physical science
magazines to publish a thinly-veiled biased article like this. Granted, this
is not a peer-reviewed scientific article and did not go through the
scrutiny of picking referees. But to serve as a channel for the general
populous to be in touch with and appreciate sciences, the authors and
editors should at least present the readers with facts within proper context
, which they failed to do blatantly. First, to compare a player's
performance increase, the author used Ye's 400m IM time and her performance
at the World championship 2011, which are 4 :28.43 and 4:35.15 respectively,
and reached the conclusion that she has got an "anomalous" increase by ~7
sec (6.72 sec). In fact she's previous personal best was 4:33.79 at Asian
Games 20101. This leads to a 5.38 sec increase. In a sport event that 0.1
sec can be the difference between the gold and silver medal, I see no reason
that 5.38 sec can be treated as 7 sec. Second, as previously pointed out,
Ye is only 16 years old and her body is still developing. Bettering oneself
by 5 sec over two years may seem impossible for an adult swimmer, but
certainly happens among youngsters. Ian Thorpe's interview revealed that his
400m freestyle time increased 5 sec between the age of 15 and 162. For
regular people including the author it may be hard to imagine what an elite
swimmer can achieve as he or she matures, combined with scientific and
persistent training. But jumping to a conclusion that it is "anomalous"
based on "Oh that's so tough I can not imagine it is real" is hardly sound.
Third, to compare Ryan Lochte's last 50m to Ye's is a textbook example of
what we call to cherry pick your data. Yes, Lochte is slower than Ye in the
last 50m, but (as pointed out by Zhenxi) Lochte has a huge lead in the first
300m so that he chose to not push himself too hard to conserve energy for
latter events (whether this conforms to the Olympic spirit and the "use one'
s best efforts to win a match" requirement that the BWF has recently invoked
to disqualify four badminton pairs is another topic worth discussing ,
probably not in Nature, though). On the contrary, Ye is trailing behind
after the first 300m and relies on freestyle, which she has an edge, to win
the game. Failing to mention this strategic difference, as well as the fact
that Lochte is 23.25 sec faster (4:05.18) over all than Ye creates the
illusion that a woman swam faster than the best man in the same sport, which
sounds impossible. Put aside the gender argument, I believe this is still a
leading question that implies the reader that something fishy is going on.
Fourth, another example of cherry picking. In the same event there are four
male swimmers that swam faster than both Lochter (29.10 sec)3 and Ye ( 28.93
sec)4: Hagino (28.52 sec), Phelps (28.44 sec), Horihata (27.87 sec) and
Fraser-Holmes (28.35 sec). As it turns out if we are just talking about the
last 50m in a 400m IM, Lochter would not have been the example to use if I
were the author. What kind of scientific rigorousness that author is trying
to demonstrate here? Is it logical that if Lochter is the champion, we
should assume he leads in every split? That would be a terrible way to teach
the public how science works. Fifth, which is the one I oppose the most.
The author quotes Tucks and implies that a drug test can not rule out the
possibility of doping. Is this kind of agnosticism what Nature really wants
to educate its readers? By that standard I estimate that at least half of
the peer-reviewed scientific papers in Nature should be retracted. How can
one convince the editors and reviewers that their proposed theory works for
every possible case? One cannot. One chooses to apply the theory to typical
examples and demonstrate that in (hopefully) all scenarios considered the
theory works to a degree, and that should warrant a publication, until a
counterexample is found. I could imagine that the author has a skeptical
mind which is critical to scientific thinking, but that would be put into
better use if he can write a real peer-reviewed paper that discusses the
odds of Ye doping on a highly advanced non-detectable drug that the Chinese
has come up within the last 4 years (they obviously did not have it in
Beijing, otherwise why not to use it and woo the audience at home?), based
on data and rational derivation. This paper, however, can be interpreted as
saying that all athletes are doping, and the authorities are just not good
enough to catch them. That may be true, logically, but definitely will not
make the case if there is ever a hearing by FINA to determine if Ye has
doped. To ask the question that if it is possible to false negative in a
drug test looks like a rigged question to me. Of course it is, other than
the drug that the test is not designed to detect, anyone who has taken
Quantum 101 will tell you that everything is probabilistic in nature, and
there is a probability for the drug in an athlete's system to tunnel out
right at the moment of the test. A slight change as it may be, should we
disregard all test results because of it? Let ÃÃ&#
8218;Â￠ÃÂ￠Ã￠a‚¬Å¡Ã&#
8218;¬ÃÂ￠Ã￠a‚¬Å¾Ã
;‚Â￠s be practical and reasonable. And accept WADA is competent
at its job. Her urine sample is stored for 8 years following the contest for
future testing as technology advances. Innocent until proven guilty,
shouldn't it be? Sixth, and the last point I would like to make, is that the
out-of- competition drug test is already in effect, which the author failed
to mention. Per WADA presidentÃÂÂ￠&#
195;ƒÂ￠Ã￠a‚¬Å¡Ã‚¬
;ÃÂ￠Ã￠a‚¬Å¾Ã‚Â￠
;s press release5, drug testing for olympians began at least 6 months prior
to the opening of the London Olympic. Furthermore there are 107 athletes
who are banned from this Olympic for doping. That maybe the reason that &#
195;ƒÆ’& #162;ÃÂ￠Ã￠a‚¬Å&#
161;¬ÃaÃ￠a‚¬Å“
everyone will pass at the Olympic games. Hardly anyone fails in competition
testingÃÂÂ￠ÃÂ￠Ã￠
a‚¬Å¡Ã‚¬&# 194;ÂÂ
;? Because those who did dope are already sanctioned? The author is
free to suggest that a player could have doped beforehand and fool the test
at the game, but this possibility certainly is ruled out for Ye. Over all,
even though the author did not falsify any data, he did ( intentionally or
not) cherry pick data that is far too suggestive to be fair and unbiased, in
my view. If you want to cover a story of a suspected doping from a
scientific point of view, be impartial and provide all the facts for the
reader to judge. You are entitled to your interpretation of the facts, and
the expression thereof in your piece, explicitly or otherwise , but only
showing evidences which favor your argument is hardly good science or
journalism. Such an article in a journal like Nature is not an appropriate
example of how scientific research or report should be done. 1http://www.fina.org/H2O/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=1241 2http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ETPUKlOwV4 3http://www.london2012.com/swimming/event/men-400m-individual-medley/phase=swm054100/index.html 4http://www.london2012.com/swimming/event/women-400m-individual-medley/phase=sww054100/index.html 5http://playtrue.wada-ama.org/news/wada-presidents-addresses-london-2012-press-conference/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wada-presidents-addresses-london-2012-press-conference
2012-08-03 12:15 PMReport this comment | #48118
KUN ZHANG said:
Wow, this article is so wonderful to publish on NATURE. How stupid I am, why
have I never realized that this kind of artcle can be publised on NATURE?
Is the editor a politician to run for presidency? But Americans might not be
that stupid to buy your story.
2012-08-03 12:16 PMReport this comment | #48119
wrong argument said:
what? so what you editors only can do is to delete readers' comments which
frankly point out the problems of this article? Really disappointed!
2012-08-03 12:20 PMReport this comment | #48120
Zhuo Wang said:
The count has now grown to 563, 9:19pm PDT.
Zhuo Wang said:To Audrey Richard
I regret to learn you don't care about the initial debate here anymore. It's
up to you. It's only about a 16-year swimmer, one of the brightest stars of
this Olympics, getting singled out, questioned and attacked again and again
, even after her drug test results came out clean.
Regarding whether Nature.com delibrately deleted or hid certain comments,
you provided evidence suggesting there is a max number, after which a new
post will push the oldest one out of the list. There is also evidence
against that hypothesis. At the website:
http://www.nature.com/news/index.html, there is a number under the link to this piece of you-now-know-what, presumbly the count of itscomments, that kept increasing. It is 515 as of 8:17pm PDT. If this number keep growing, hope you adjust your hypothesis accordingly.
In this age of internet, it requires quite a jump in thought to come up with
such a hypothesis that comments can easily max out at a site like Nature.
com. It escaped me, but I'm willing to explore this a bit more with you.
Now here is the main take home message. If there is clear evidence proving
your hypothesis, or if Nature comes out to say so, I believe most of the
people here will believe it and move on from the issue. Hope you can
appreciate the difference between such an approach and that of the author of
this Nature news report.
2012-08-03 12:21 PMReport this comment | #48121
Ava Lin said:
I agree with Tony Zhang,If China does has such magic drug that can not be
found, they will certainly use it for football athletes firstly!The author
may be too envious and bored to write this article which is against nature &
Nature.
2012-08-03 12:22 PMReport this comment | #48122
Elaine Kim said:
I appreciate all the scientific comments here.
So why did Nature publish the unscientific news?
The only reason is that, it comes from London, GBR.
Just kidding.
Never mind.
2012-08-03 12:23 PMReport this comment | #48123
Hongkai Zhang said:
I feel shame for many of these nonsense comments whose authors have
obviously even not finished reading the article. The author is treated
unfairly, especially given those charge on racism. I am also shocked by
their abuse of this forum by publishing the same thing repeatedly, either
correct or wrong.
I feel so disappointed by the readers of Nature, and I will no longer read
this journal (This is just mocking some of the funny comments...)
Anyway, not all Chinese students are like some of the commentators below.
2012-08-03 12:24 PMReport this comment | #48124
Audrey Richard said:
To Daniel Daniel:
"To Audrey Richard, Why the website is overloaded with so many comments???
Think about it "in the name of science!!!"
=> As I said, my comment was not about the debate per se. I do understand
why maybe the site is having trouble. People made it pretty clear and they
have every right to share their anger and disappointment (to some extent).
Many pointed out that several contributors wrote very interesting comments
shedding another light on the subject and they were right: that was
interesting. But then it went ugly. Many (often claiming they are scientists
) became aggressive, offensive & condescending ; not to mention the stunning
generalizations about either Westerners or Asians, or just British,
American and Chinese people. I'm a Westerner and I don't want anybody to
think for me, thank you very much. And apparently, "the majority of the
viewers here are not normal citizens that can be fouled and stirred up
easily". Oh really?
If some scientists are so angry with pieces published in the News section of
Nature because those lack scientific rigor and accuracy, they'd better look
at themselves before making any very serious allegations about the ethics
of a journal (censorship for example) without any evidence and before
demanding (?) that people resign (??????) and apologize.
Their belief that there is some sort of conspiracy aiming at hiding the
comments reporting robust data combined with their failing to check facts is
, again, kind of ironic considering the number of inappropriate comments (
amongst many other inappropriate comments. Please see comment #48043) that
were made about the author's education and supposed inability to deal with
scientific method.
So, don't worry Daniel, I think about it. I really do. And as justified as
the debate might have been to begin with, now I'm just wondering, as a
scientist, a regular reader of Nature and its News section, a normal citizen
but mostly a simple human being actually: who the Hell do PhDs think they
are?
2012-08-03 12:25 PMReport this comment | #48125
Tao Luo said:
Comments here are good enough for a normal person to make a right judgement.
So all I need to say is SHAME ON NATURE!
2012-08-03 12:25 PMReport this comment | #48126
Pablo Tangent said:
It's shameful! Shameful!!!! I can never believe Nature would publish such
news!
2012-08-03 12:25 PMReport this comment | #48127
Michael Chisnall said:
Yes, the total number of comments on this article is increasing. However if
you go back to the top and look at the first few comments, wait a while,
then look again, you will see that old comments are disappearing. There aren
't being singled out and deleted. This is happening automatically due to the
software.
2012-08-03 12:26 PMReport this comment | #48129
Xiang Gao said:
Shame on the author and the JOURNAL!
After reading "It asks a question or two", I wanna ask TONS of it! Compared
with all those scientific and reasonable criticism provided below, this
paper only expressed the prejudice and arrogance under the cloak of faked,
artificial science, nothing else! Jesus is this the journal we always dream
to publish on? Be Scientific, not politic.
And, you owe Shiwen an apology for the ridiculous paper
2012-08-03 12:31 PMReport this comment | #48130
Howard Hoffman said:
I would have to agree with most of the posters here. The author apparently
have not even googled the event to gather the basic facts. This "article"
does not really fit in a journal such as Nature.
2012-08-03 12:32 PMReport this comment | #48131
Shao Yi said:
I am wondering if you have read the terms or community guidelines of Nature.
the articles suited for publicated here should not be defamatory, abusive,
malicious, threatening, false, misleading, offensive, discriminatory,
harassing, blasphemous, racist or sexist [ quoted from Terms]. Yet somehow
you have achieve all except for the last one. Your view is based on the only
fact that she swam faster than US swimmer Ryan Lochte did. And you try to
unfairly suggest she doped. And that is racist and discriminatory. Another
issue you address "the result of any doping is higher performance" is not
logical. For many factors may contribute to a higher performance. Hence,
with the only and indirect index, higher performance, you can not draw any
conclusion. Your methdology is of low quality. Maybe editors should consider
retracting this unscientific "article".
2012-08-03 12:33 PMReport this comment | #48132
Yue Peng said:
I just can't believe NATURE would post artical on this level! Without any
fact but full of suspicion and prejudice. Shame on you, this "Master degree"
author and NATURE.
2012-08-03 12:34 PMReport this comment | #48133
big joke said:
Why nature selected this garbage article to be published?? What exactly do
you want? WHY Ye Shiwen WHY not the other athletes? Nature,, you are
disappointing people who trust you who respect you and who are proud of you.
. Now i only have to say, i will protest this until the end! the author has
to apologize, you should get off this garbage and apologize!
2012-08-03 12:38 PMReport this comment | #48134
guangyu guo said:
I came here just want to grab a bottle of soy sauce.
2012-08-03 12:41 PMReport this comment | #48135
big joke said:
Why nature selected this garbage article to be publishe? what do you want
exactly?? Why Ye Shiwen why not other athletes? you are disappointing people
who trust you who respect you and you are proud of you! I am gonna to say,
I will protest this until the author apologizes, until you take off this
garbage and apologize!! You are losing your reputation and honor, no doubt.
2012-08-03 12:43 PMReport this comment | #48136
Allon Field said:
After reading the article by Mr. Callaway, I am very concerned about the
quality of the Nature magazine. I am very sad to see such a biased and
unscientific article was allowed to show up in the highest ranked academic
journal in the world. I will suggest our library to reconsider the subscribe
of this journal. Because of Mr. Callaway's article, we have every reason to
suspect all the publications from Nature. They may not be trusted until
they can be continuously proved.
This is a huge stigma for Nature magazine. The author should apologize for
what he did. The magazine should apologize for what happened. Otherwise,
Nature will become "No Nature".
2012-08-03 12:43 PMReport this comment | #48137
bio statistician said:
For an article published on a leading scientific journal by a self-claimed
biomedical reporter, the allegation "Was YeÃ￠a‚¬a„￠s
performance anomalous? Yes" does not live up to the scientific standard.
The author's "anomalous" conclusion is based on — a) 7 sec improvement and
b) comparison to Ryan Lochte. But the author fails to provide the typical
distribution of a)performance improvements of teen-age female top swimmers
and b) distribution of top swimmers in the last split of the 400 IM ( no
offense to Ryan Lochte but he could be the anomalous — the slowest swimmer
in the last leg).
In either case, the author fails to showing the overall distribution data,
and whether Ye's performance is statistically and significantly different (
in terms of Z scores and probabilities) from other top swimmers such as
Missy Franklin, etc.
Given that nature is a top tier science journal known for rigorous proof on
any claim, the appearance of this article is truly anomalous. The "anomalous
" conclusion about Ye, a female Chinese, seems a sexist and racist vent
veiled in a "scientific" news without scientific proof . The author & and
editor of nature need to prove their innocence.
2012-08-03 12:44 PMReport this comment | #48138
L F said:
NPG become more disgusting after messing up all scientific fields with those
crap sub journals. Now they are ready to screw up everything like BBC (
Bloody British Crap). Wow!!! What a fantastic journal publisher!!!
2012-08-03 12:45 PMReport this comment | #48139
Kimberly Zhang said:
æμ‹èˉ•ã#8218;ã#8218;
2012-08-03 12:49 PMReport this comment | #48140
Li Mingsong said:
Get off this garbage and apologize!
2012-08-03 12:50 PMReport this comment | #48141
Chen ZHANG said:
Seems the author do not have any real data to support your arguments. Please
publish the supportive data if there's any.
2012-08-03 12:50 PMReport this comment | #48142
Li Mingsong said:
get off this garbage and apologize!
2012-08-03 12:51 PMReport this comment | #48143
lin min said:
The original subtitle is 'Performance profiling' could help to catch
cheaters in sport
http://esciencenews.com/sources/news.nature/2012/08/01/why.grea
2012-08-03 12:52 PMReport this comment | #48144
Scarlett Yan said:
To Michael Chisnall:
Really? It's because American culture is more transparent? LMAO!! Do you
think in international contests drug tests are performed by each team's own
country? "If there are more cases of scientific misconduct in the US than in
China it is because the US has a culture of transparency" Please provide
evidence for the argument. FYI, "hint", "might be linked" do not count as
evidence.
----------------------------------
Michael Chisnall said:
To Wie Xie -If there are more cases of scientific misconduct in the US than
in China it is because the US has a culture of transparency, and
institutional support for it, that encourages investigation. Contrast this
with China which has a culture of covering up corruption or dishonesty if
there is even a hint that it might be linked to someone in the Party.
2012-08-03 12:53 PMReport this comment | #48145
big joke said:
I have to say, he is "anomalous".............
Ewen joined Nature in August 2010, after 2 years at New Scientist as Boston-
based biomedical reporter.....blablabla,...........The most amazing part is.
.. He spends his free time learning to bicycle on the left side of the road.
.... could any1 explain this?
2012-08-03 12:54 PMReport this comment | #48146
Enoch - said:
During these days I see not only the decay of Olympic spirit but also the
corrupt of scientific spirit in UK! What a shame on Nature!
2012-08-03 12:55 PMReport this comment | #48147
Felix Ma said:
What a shame, Nature! What you have done seriously destroy your dignity! You
totally humiliate your predecessors. All the scientists around this world
would rather treat Nature as a entertainment magazine for now on. Oh, what a
junk!
2012-08-03 12:55 PMReport this comment | #48148
Wei Xie said:
To Michael Chisnall: Of course less listed on wiki does not necessarily mean
less happend. I did not argue or even imply that "there are more cases of
scientific misconduct in the US than in China" at all. If you read the last
paragraph of my reply above again and you will find that I just mentioned
the fact that there are more cases listed on that particular wiki page. That
was a supplementary insertion, not even an evidence along my line of
reasoning because my actual argument there was we should not and could not
judge (or attack, which is more what Iam withNature did) a whole nation and
all its people--either US or China or any country based on several isolated
cases. That is hassle generalization and racist.
Please don't drag me back to comparing US and China again. In fact, general
statements comparing two countries here are mostly overly generalized and
racist. I noticed you did a comparison in your reply to me. Since I do not
favor doing so, I will not comment here as a reply to you on any aspect in
which people generally regard that China has an edge on US. Let's just stop
this racial comparison, as it only brings hassle and hatred--I already
smelled that from your reply.
2012-08-03 12:56 PMReport this comment | #48149
Allon Field said:
Is that the way he trained his biased mind?
2012-08-03 12:56 PMReport this comment | #48150
Kimberly Zhang said:
Please follow Mr. Gallaway on Twitter. @ewencallaway
2012-08-03 12:59 PMReport this comment | #48151
Michael Chu said:
Since when the Nature becomes Gossip Girl by ditching the test evidence and
quoting a#339; A said blah blaha#157; and a#339;B said blah blaha#
157; to spread rumors and unfounded thoughts?
2012-08-03 01:02 AMReport this comment | #48152
Richard Johnson said:
It is appalling to see ppl still saying she swims faster than male. She did
not! Overall Lochte is 23 seconds faster than Shiwen, while Shiwen was ONLY
faster in the "LAST 50m" of the game (talking about 400m medley here). This
could mean many different things. IT could be just a shift in strategy.
Check your facts before publishing on such a prestigious journal, even it is
just the news portion.
2012-08-03 01:06 AMReport this comment | #48153
james blunt said:
acording to this article, Nature, i respect before, turn out to be a tool, a
tool for western racist, for western government, for western commercial
interests, for western values. Nature doesn`t kown how to respect a person,
a group of people, even human beings!
shit!!! shit!!! shit !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2012-08-03 01:08 AMReport this comment | #48154
Jingbo Wang said:
Lai jiang's comment (#47487) has been "anomalously" deleted by online editor
. I re-post it here:
Lai Jiang said:
It is a shame to see Nature, which nearly all scientists, including myself,
regard as the one of the most prestigious and influential physical science
magazines to publish a thinly-veiled biased article like this. Granted, this
is not a peer-reviewed scientific article and did not go through the
scrutiny of picking referees. But to serve as a channel for the general
populous to be in touch with and appreciate sciences, the authors and
editors should at least present the readers with facts within proper context
, which they failed to do blatantly.
First, to compare a player's performance increase, the author used Ye's 400m
IM time and her performance at the World championship 2011, which are 4:28.
43 and 4:35.15 respectively, and reached the conclusion that she has got an
"anomalous" increase by ~7 sec (6.72 sec). In fact she's previous personal
best was 4:33.79 at Asian Games 2010 1. This leads to a 5.38 sec increase.
In
a sport event that 0.1 sec can be the difference between the gold and
silver medal, I see no reason that 5.38 sec can be treated as 7 sec.
Second, as previously pointed out, Ye is only 16 years old and her body is
still developing. Bettering oneself by 5 sec over two years may seem
impossible for an adult swimmer, but certainly happens among youngsters. Ian
Thorpe's interview revealed that his 400m freestyle time increased 5 sec
between the age of 15 and 16 2. For regular people including the author it
may be hard to imagine what an elite swimmer can achieve as he or she
matures, combined with scientific and persistent training. But jumping to a
conclusion that it is "anomalous" based on "Oh that's so tough I can not
imagine it is real" is hardly sound.
Third, to compare Ryan Lochte's last 50m to Ye's is a textbook example of
what we call to cherry pick your data. Yes, Lochte is slower than Ye in the
last 50m, but (as pointed out by Zhenxi) Lochte has a huge lead in the first
300m so that he chose to not push himself too hard to conserve energy for
latter events (whether this conforms to the Olympic spirit and the "use one'
s best efforts to win a match" requirement that the BWF has recently invoked
to disqualify four badminton pairs is another topic worth discussing,
probably not in Nature, though). On the contrary, Ye is trailing behind
after the first 300m and relies on freestyle, which she has an edge, to win
the game. Failing to mention this strategic difference, as well as the fact
that Lochte is 23.25 sec faster (4:05.18) over all than Ye creates the
illusion that a woman swam faster than the best man in the same sport, which
sounds impossible. Put aside the gender argument, I believe this is still a
leading question that implies the reader that something fishy is going on.
Fourth, another example of cherry picking. In the same event there are four
male swimmers that swam faster than both Lochter (29.10 sec) 3 and Ye (28.93
sec) 4: Hagino (28.52 sec), Phelps (28.44 sec), Horihata (27.87 sec) and
Fraser-Holmes (28.35 sec). As it turns out if we are just talking about the
last 50m in a 400m IM, Lochter would not have been the example to use if I
were the author. What kind of scientific rigorousness that author is trying
to demonstrate here? Is it logical that if Lochter is the champion, we
should assume he leads in every split? That would be a terrible way to teach
the public how science works.
Fifth, which is the one I oppose the most. The author quotes Tucks and
implies that a drug test can not rule out the possibility of doping. Is this
kind of agnosticism what Nature really wants to educate its readers? By
that standard I estimate that at least half of the peer-reviewed scientific
papers in Nature should be retracted. How can one convince the editors and
reviewers that their proposed theory works for every possible case? One
cannot. One chooses to apply the theory to typical examples and demonstrate
that in (hopefully) all scenarios considered the theory works to a degree,
and that should warrant a publication, until a counterexample is found. I
could imagine that the author has a skeptical mind which is critical to
scientific thinking, but that would be put into better use if he can write a
real peer-reviewed paper that discusses the odds of Ye doping on a highly
advanced non-detectable drug that the Chinese has come up within the last 4
years (they obviously did not have it in Beijing, otherwise why not to use
it and woo the audience at home?), based on data and rational derivation.
This paper, however, can be interpreted as saying that all athletes are
doping, and the authorities are just not good enough to catch them. That may
be true, logically, but definitely will not make the case if there is ever
a hearing by FINA to determine if Ye has doped. To ask the question that if
it is possible to false negative in a drug test looks like a rigged question
to me. Of course it is, other than the drug that the test is not designed
to detect, anyone who has taken Quantum 101 will tell you that everything is
probabilistic in nature, and there is a probability for the drug in an
athlete's system to tunnel out right at the moment of the test. A slight
change as it may be, should we disregard all test results because of it? Let
's be
practical and reasonable. And accept WADA is competent at its job. Her
urine sample is stored for 8 years following the contest for future testing
as technology advances. Innocent until proven guilty, shouldn't it be?
Sixth, and the last point I would like to make, is that the out-of-
competition drug test is already in effect, which the author failed to
mention. Per WADA president's press release 5, drug testing for olympians
began at
least 6 months prior to the opening of the London Olympic. Furthermore
there are 107 athletes who are banned from this Olympic for doping. That
maybe the reason that everyone will pass at the Olympic games. Hardly anyone
fails in
competition testing? Because those who did dope are already sanctioned? The
author is free
to suggest that a player could have doped beforehand and fool the test at
the game, but this possibility certainly is ruled out for Ye.
Over all, even though the author did not falsify any data, he did (
intentionally or not) cherry pick data that is far too suggestive to be fair
and unbiased, in my view. If you want to cover a story of a suspected
doping from a scientific point of view, be impartial and provide all the
facts for the reader to judge. You are entitled to your interpretation of
the facts, and the expression thereof in your piece, explicitly or otherwise
, but only showing evidences which favor your argument is hardly good
science or journalism. Such an article in a journal like Nature is not an
appropriate example of how scientific research or report should be done.
1 http://www.fina.org/H2O/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=1241
2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ETPUKlOwV4
3 http://www.london2012.com/swimming/event/men-400m-individual-medley/phase=swm054100/index.html
4 http://www.london2012.com/swimming/event/women-400m-individual-medley/phase=sww054100/index.html
5 http://playtrue.wada-ama.org/news/wada-presidents-addresses-london-2012-press-conference/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wada-presidents-addresses-london-2012-press-conference |
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