Ha Ha, Idiots R Us.

Oh how they laughed!

In "Idiots look at Data: Part I", we didn't have the actual page with the data we wanted, and we misinterpreted what we did have. There's a reason for the "idiots" in the title.

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The only part of the page we could find was this partial image from the video, which we spent quite a bit of time locating:

Figure 1: April 19, pm session 43:50



Figure 2: 43:50 zoomed in. Two peaks, no noise, flat baseline.

And we went on, digging deeper:

So, it does appear possible to generate pretty clear chromatograms in a Testosterone IRMS. It is not the fundamental science of the method that produces garbage.

Slightly later, the document was moved on the screen, revealing another peak.

Figure 3: 44:19 another peak revealed.

When we look at that more closely,

Figure 4: 44:19, zoomed in; third peak equally well resolved

What we don't see in this chromatogram is all of the junk at the beginning of the chromatogram typical in an LNDD result. Nor do we see anything that hints of an adjacent peak, or a shoulder, or a background that might be confused with a hidden peak.

Clean looking data.

These look very much like our pure, theoretical examples.

If there is support for the claim they are pure peaks, this is a very reliable looking case. We compliment the scientists and lab technicians at UCLA for producing excellent results, even if Don only wants to call them "pretty good". We understand the IRMS chromatograms produced by Ayotte's group at Montreal are about the same quality.

We can see why USADA didn't much like this being shown. Without this, you might think that what LNDD produces is typical.

Disbelief in comments, even Larry expressing incredulity.

Then M found the right graph for us and we found out that those nice clean peaks were the injected reference marks, and the real spectrum was off screen to the right. No wonder it looked so good! Ha! ha! A good laugh was had by all.

The original post has been updated to reflect reality. The basic point doesn't change much, though.

No coverup here! It was a factual botch and we'll fix it.

For what little it's worth, I did learn how to frame grab out of WMP.