News
Former UCLA boss cries foul in Landis case
Carlton Reid Apr 23 2007, 6:15pm
When USADA asked for re-testing on the remaining Floyd Landis urine from stage 17 of last year's Tour de France, the Landis camp asked for it to be done by an independent lab. Instead the sampling was handed to the same French lab that did the first tests. A top lab boss says he is shocked at this "bad science"
There's no official news about the retest results from Laboratoire National de Dépistage du Dopage (LNDD) but, as is now to be expected, the results have been leaked by L'Equipe.
One of the complaints throughout this case has been the ease which L'Equipe has been able to get its hands on confidential lab results.
LNDD has retested the Floyd Landis samples and has replicated its original results. So, all is done and dusted, then? Far from it. Good science demands that tests are replicated by independent researchers using double blind protocols.
Landis had demanded his samples were split so he could get UCLA to do testing too. UCLA of California is the world's biggest and best anti-doping lab. The Landis request was refused and the samples were retested by LNDD despite this lab having a long and well-publicised history of malpractice.
Paul Scott, former director of client services at the UCLA lab, is now working as a consultant to the Landis team. He was one of the experts appointed by Landis to watch over the LNDD retesting. However, Scott claims he was denied full access to all of the retesting, a breach of WADA's rules.
“In my years at the UCLA lab, I’ve never seen anything like what I experienced at the LNDD yesterday. The limitation placed on me and Simon [Davis – an Isotope Ratio Mass Spectometry expert also selected by Landis to observe the retesting] demonstrates the lack of objectivity in this process.
"USADA’s interest in controlling and limiting our observation of the retesting is an example of one of the most egregious problems in the fundamental science of anti-doping that I have experienced."
He said he was denied entry to the LNDD yesterday. As such, the analysis of two samples was conducted without a Landis representative as witness. Why were the two Landis experts refused access to key tests? Because the two experts from USADA decided not to be present: and instructions had been left that, if the USADA bods were missing, the Landis bods would be excluded.
"Such behaviour constitutes a clear and direct infringement of Landis’ rights while casting severe doubt on the integrity of an already dubious process," said a statement from the Landis camp.
Scott said: “Good science does not fear being an open book. Any science that is not neutral and objective is not science at all. Labs acting under the direction of prosecuting Anti-Doping Organizations (ADOs) are, by definition, not independent. As service providers hired by ADOs, they have a vested interest in the results desired by their client. In this case, the client is USADA and the lab is the LNDD. From what I have witnessed so far, I have significant concerns that their analysis will render results that are scientifically invalid.”
All the B samples have now been destroyed in the retesting and Landis cannot have them independently evaluated.
Lots more Landis news at Trust But Verify.
