Hue - Sad Professor

USADA calls Dr. Shackelton from Great Britain. He has never testified before. He is the guy USADA wants to establish IRMS as a science. Landis isn't challenging the underlying foundation of the IRMS test so I'll pause because the yam and soy product derivatives don't excite me, much.

I feel sorry for Dr. Schackelton. Mr. Young is still somewhat struggling with technology use and as an opening witness, this one should be the one everyone wants to hear. Dr Schackelton is not that witness and the whole press crew has gone into "business as usual" with chatting and telephone use. In the hearing room, Floyd looks interested and is confering with counsel. his Mom looks confident and proud of her son.

Young tries to establish the theory of his opening, that the different metabolites don't go up and down together. The doctor says all this is so individualized you could see anything. So he is a proponant of the single metabolite theory. In other words, any result such as starting out with a particular metabolite >3 and then dropping to a lower level but then seeing another metabolite >3 is consistant.

Brunet struggles with microphone technology. He is using a waterbottle to hold the "mute" button down. This is going to be long and slow. Nobody but Suh seems to have found their footing.

Floyd puts his gum in a piece of paper. I'm going to try to get it for Ebay (not really).

More problems with the tablet tripod as it falls over. The Dr suggests that they invest in a better device. More problems with microphone placement. The final question is whether you could eat or drink anything other than testosterone that would cause the results seen.

Jacobs starts the cross examination. The Dr is not an MD nor is he an endocronologist. Jacobs establishes a comparison between the testosterone metabolite and the reference compound can consistantly go up and down together. Jacobs puts up a chart showing all the "B" sample testing results. Jacobs shows July 11 and July 13 non-negative results. On both days the delta delta values go down to zero the next day. He wants to know if this makes sense but the doctor says this isn't in his area of expertice. The doctor testifies ANY result seen is consistant with testosterone use because everyone is unique and every/any dose is unknown.

Brunet introduces the head of the WADA lab in Rome, as the Panel's Independant Expert, who will sit with the Panel and help them with scientific evidence.

Jacobs establishes that a pair of metabolites must both go down to return to normal. Correspondingly, both must go up when the testosterone is taking effect. One metabolite must not be returning to normal while another is going up. The doctor is having difficulty with this because he is expert in some areas but not in others. This seems important to get a handle on, later.

Suh begins his questioning. The doctor gets $200/hr and has billed about $2000 so far. The doctor has some difficulty, being new to the game as to how/where he qualifies as an expert. Again, I feel bad for him.

The doctor started with the proposition that all data he examined was valid. He says good chromotography is essential. Suh shows the doctor a copy of his paper on chromotography. Suh is very agressive and his animated style seems to wake everyone from their sluggishness.

Brunet makes a bad joke about Suh "having some nuts". He clarifies to mean the fruit. That draws laughter but Landis doesn't seem very amused.

The Landis guys seem off put that they couldn't break for lunch at 12 noon. The Panel wants to go to 12:30 instead.

The doctor says life is not a dream, that anything gets as close to perfect in science as it can, especially pertaining to coalluding peaks. You should use such data but a machine might correct for it. If it doesn't the doctor wouldn't use it. Suh apparantly believes that a machine did not correct this in Landis' case, that a human did and that the Landis team only found out about that last week.

Downsloping baselines are not a problem for the doctor as long as you try to understand the involitals that explain them. He believes that LNDD would "of course" have done that. Apparantly Suh believes that LNDD did not do that.

Brunet seems somewhat lost in his task because he doesn't seem to understand what cross examination is or the opportunity for USADA in rebuttal to clarify. He asks Suh not to put words in the witnesses mouth but that is exactly what a defense attorney should do if he can. Brunet admonishes Suh but he should be admonishing the witness to simply answer the question asked without engaging in an argument. Brunet also admonishes Suh "to be more precise" but I'm following it pretty well and Campbell says he is too. Campbell would like to hear some answers and let USADA follow up in clarification. Campbell would like to hear some answers to the questions.

This expert is convinced he can "eyeball" the graphs and know what is significant and what isn't. He "knows" that the graphs look good from their size. Young can't be happy with this kind of testimony because it is the opposite of science and that is precisely Suh's point.

Lunch break.