The Statistics of Sports Doping

The Summer Olympics are finally upon us. No doubt there will be some interesting sports doping cases arising. While we’re waiting, might as well beat a dead horse and see if we can get anything out of it. The latest issue of Nature contains a commentary from Donald A. Berry on the “flawed statistics and flawed logic” of detecting sports doping. I’ll get to that after the jump but first the Nature editorial team issued a fairly strident position:

Nature believes that accepting ‘legal limits’ of specific metabolites without such rigorous verification goes against the foundational standards of modern science, and results in an arbitrary test for which the rate of false positives and false negatives can never be known. By leaving these rates unknown, and by not publishing and opening to broader scientific scrutiny the methods by which testing labs engage in study, it is Nature’s view that the anti-doping authorities have fostered a sporting culture of suspicion, secrecy and fear.

Preach on! [Update 8/7/08: roundup of commentary on this story from Trust but Verify blog]

Are Stable Research Career Tracks the Solution to "Structural Disequilibria" in the NIH Racket?

A Policy Forum piece by Michael S. Teitelbaum in Science opines at length on the so-called “structural disequilibria” in biomedical research [h/t: writedit]. This is mostly a recitation of all of the familiar NIH funding woes (including reference to the NIH budget undoubling analysis); if not entirely novel in theme, at least there is a new focus here since Teitelbaum is arguing that until serious changes in the structure of the biomedical research/funding enterprise are put into place we will continue to experience boom/bust cycles no matter what the NIH budget may be. Much is familiar so your eyes may have glazed over after the first or second sub-sections. I wish to draw your attention to something interesting Teitelbaum mentioned right at the end.