Guilty or not, this sucks.

Tyler Hamilton's appeal was turned down by the CAS. I have mixed feelings about his ban because, frankly, I don't know if he is guilty or innocent. I do, however, have pretty strong feelings about WADA and the test.

The bottom line is that for all the talk of how reliable these tests are, WADA has not provided any examples of independent replication of the test for use as an anti-doping procedure.

I understand the natural desire to support collegues, but the beauty of science is that it is not based on reputation. A reputation may get you the benefot of the doubt in getting your initial findigns published or interest generated in a new hypothesis, test or whatever. But at the end of the day, Scientific Validation requires independently verifiable replication of the protocols.

To my knowledge these don't exist, and until they do the correct statement is that "WADA believes the tests are valid, they pass the *legal* threshold for the use we are applying to them, but we recognize that they haven't been validated by the scientific community yet". If these independent studies do exist, I am perplexed as to why they are being kept secret. And labs that depend on WADA for accredation to do their job are not, in fact, independent.

What further bothers me is what seems to me to be statements on WADA's website and also by the CAS that imply there is a correlation between their rulings and scientific validity. There is not: The CAS has no place in decalring something scientifically valid or not.