Baker's Slide Show 3.0

Arnie Baker has posted version 3.0 of his slide show, reflecting what he said in Lancaster on Sunday. We won't go over it slide by slide, but give a rundown of the changes from previous versions. For the most part, the changes are refutations of arguments that have been made against Landis, and extended documentation of charges that Baker has previously made about the testing procedure.

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Page 2 begins an argument against the claim that Landis' performance on Stage 17 to Morzine was somehow "superhuman" and therefore evidence in itself of doping.

Baker argues it was a combination of factors, mainly tactical, that led to the win. The physical effort was not extraordinary for Landis (or probably any other contender who had been equally willing to take the risk.)












Page 3 documents similar power outputs from Landis at other races, to document the point that is was not out of line with previous race efforts.















Page 4 tries to show that Morzine wasn't even out of line for a training run, showing a "commute" from Landis's home in Murrieta over Mt. Palomar to San Diego, concluding with some hill intervals.

(The folks at Saris will be disappointed to see Baker is using CyclingPeaks WKO+)












Page 9 shows an example of changes to "original" documents between the version of the LDP provided to USADA and then to the AFLD. Baker calls this "scientific misconduct".
















Page 13 has been seen at TBV before, isolated, but is here in context. Baker is showing raised stakes on what had previously appeared to be a simple typo on a sample number might be confused with an actual sample.

It's not clear this is a real problem when one looks at the timelines of when the samples were processed, but Baker dodges that complaint by suggesting this was why USADA fought so hard to delay giving the information to Landis.








Page 14 makes another charge about the "original" LDP sets, because one of the pages of the USADA pack cited in an early slide show has somehow gone "missing" from the version in the AFLD LDP.

This raises the question about what other exculpatory material might be intentionally missing from either LDP.












Page 26 goes over a page that seems ripe with errors, compromising its documentary value.

What becomes particularly interesting in this page are the things boxed in green, which appear to document errors in the reference solutions used in the process. This is important, because unlike many other typos, it speaks directly to the proper or improper execution of the test protocol, and could significantly affect the analytical results.

It raises questions about all the reference solutions and the concentrations used in all procedures.







Page 36 documents an argument that the apparent LNDD criteria would declare known-to-be-clean members of the control group in the UCLA validation study to be dopers.

This argues against interpreting the -3.57 value as a positive indication in an absolute sense, but still runs into the WADA criteria of 3.0 that is supposedly beyond question by the rules of the process. It also doesn't address the metabolite that came in at -6.

Nevertheless, there appear to be questions about the "single metabolite" theory that LNDD ought to answer.







Page 37 shows a two lab report from UCLA, where onet has a -4.4 reading for one metabolite and another a -3.5, and neither was declared a positive, where the LNDD criteria would apparently call both dopers.

Baker is complaining about unequal interpretation of results between labs. The larger question may be unanswerable by the hearing, and it may or may not be useful in arguing against LNDD's criteria.










Page 48 documents that LNDD admitted in Landaluce, a previous case, to breaking rules when it considers it expedient to do so.
















Page 49 documents the possibility of a problem similar to Landaluce, where Operator 18 appears to have worked on both Landis' A and B samples.

This has been argued in various forums, and it is not clear from the records what Operator 18 did on both. So far, Landis has not been able to ask questions that would resolve the issue one way or the other.

Baker says they are less concerned about the duplicate operator than they are the Landaluce admission of a lab willing to break rules, and the equity of a system that doesn't let them get the information to resolve the open question.





This leaves us with the impression Baker is tuning the public presentation of existing arguments to address criticisms that have been heard on previous versions. It doesn't, to us, add appreciable weight to the factual arguments already known. However, it is still an important evolution, because testing the presentations of the arguments has two important goals.

First, much of the public still remains oblivious to the details of the case, and may only see the final version as summarized by various media at the time of the hearing. Bolstering good arguments and weeding week ones or ones subject to ridicule ("vanishing twin") will make the ultimate version more persuasive.

Second, there is only a limited amount of time for case presentations at the hearing, and practicing points to be made and organizing the message are important. While we believe some of the big arguments are being hidden at this time, every bit of practice with the weaker arguments is still useful.

It is troubling to see that the agencies appear to be willing to alter "original" evidence to address criticisms made in public, and admit to breaking procedural rules when it appears to be convenient.