Doping experts have long known that drug tests catch only a tiny fraction of the athletes who use banned substances because athletes are constantly finding new drugs and techniques to evade detection. So in 2011, the World Anti-Doping Agency convened a team of researchers to try to determine more accurately how many athletes use performance-enhancing drugs.
Readers’ Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
Read All Comments (41) »
More than 2,000 track and field athletes participated in the study, and according to the findings, which were reviewed by The New York Times, an estimated 29 percent of the athletes at the 2011 world championships and 45 percent of the athletes at the 2011 Pan-Arab Games said in anonymous surveys that they had doped in the past year.
By contrast, less than 2 percent of drug tests examined by WADA laboratories in 2010 were positive.
The researchers were eager to publish their results, which they believed would expose a harsh reality of modern sports: that far more athletes are doping than might be imagined, and that current drug-testing protocols catch few of the cheaters. But after a final draft of the study was submitted to the antidoping agency, the organization ultimately told the researchers they could not publish their findings at this time, according to three of the researchers, who requested anonymity because they signed nondisclosure agreements with the agency. The agency said track and field’s world governing body needed to review the findings first, the researchers said.
“It was going to be a really sensitive issue, and they needed time to figure out how to deal with it,” one of the researchers said. “What was going to be the international response?”
Nick Davies, a spokesman for track’s governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations, said in an e-mail that the original study “was not complete for publication,” adding that it was “based only on a social science protocol, a kind of vox pop of athletes’ opinions.” Davies indicated blood tests from the world championships this month in Moscow would be combined with the previous research to produce what the I.A.A.F. believed would be a more comprehensive study.
In an e-mail, WADA confirmed “the position as set out by the I.A.A.F.”
The researchers said that their work was important and sound enough to stand alone, and that it made little scientific sense to combine their work with that of a study they did not conduct.
The project began in 2011 when the researchers created a randomized-response survey, a common research technique that is used to ask sensitive questions while ensuring a subject’s confidentiality. The researchers conducted their interviews at two major track and field events: the world championships in Daegu, South Korea, and the Pan-Arab Games in Doha, Qatar.
Athletes at the events answered questions on tablet computers and were asked initially to think of a birthday, either their own or that of someone close to them. Then, depending on the date of the birthday, they were instructed to answer one of two questions that appeared on the same screen: one asked if the birthday fell sometime between January and June, and the other asked, “Have you knowingly violated anti-doping regulations by using a prohibited substance or method in the past 12 months?”
The study was designed this way, the researchers said, so only the athlete knew which of the two questions he or she was answering. Then, using statistical analysis, the researchers could estimate how many of the athletes admitted to doping.
The researchers noted that not every athlete participated, and those who did could have lied on the questionnaire, or chosen to answer the birthday question. They concluded that their results, which found that nearly a third of the athletes at the world championships and nearly half at the Pan-Arab Games had doped in the past year, probably underestimated the reality.
The team examined its data and in the spring of 2012 had a manuscript it was prepared to publish. But when the final draft was submitted to WADA, the agency told the team not to publish. WADA wanted it to do more research at another event. The agency’s reasoning was not exactly clear to the researchers, who mostly opposed the idea, the three researchers said.
For the next several months, the team and WADA exchanged correspondence, debating whether to publish. In January 2013, after WADA gave permission, an inquiry was sent to the journal Science, which decided not to consider the study for publication. The researchers said it was rejected because the subject matter did not fit. A spokeswoman for Science said she could not comment specifically, but said the journal declined the vast majority of submissions.
Readers’ Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
Read All Comments (41) »
WADA expressed support in submitting the study to other journals. Then, in March, the researchers said, the agency told them not to publish but to wait for the I.A.A.F. to review the findings. The researchers said they were blindsided.
John Hoberman, a University of Texas professor who is an expert on performance-enhancing drugs, said the study’s findings dispelled the notion that doping was a deviant behavior among a few athletes.
“Either the sport is recruiting huge numbers of deviants,” he said, “or this is simply routine behavior being engaged in by, more or less, normal people.”
He added, “That’s dangerous for WADA, because that’s a character issue.”
In May, Dick Pound, a former WADA chairman, presented a report, ordered by the agency, on the current state of drug testing. In part, he and his team concluded, “There is no general appetite to undertake the effort and expense of a successful effort to deliver doping-free sport.”
Pound said in a telephone interview Thursday: “There’s this psychological aspect about it: nobody wants to catch anybody. There’s no incentive. Countries are embarrassed if their nationals are caught. And sports are embarrassed if someone from their sport is caught.”
Don Catlin, a prominent antidoping scientist, said he was not sure that WADA had the resources to rein in doping.
“Those are profound numbers,” Catlin said about the researchers’ findings. “It’s disturbing. I’m not surprised, though.”
