Could an athlete then be disciplined simply for performing too well? “That would be unfair,” says Tucker. “The final verdict is only ever going to be reached by testing. It has to be.” In recent years, cycling authorities have successfully prosecuted athletes for having anomalous blood profiles, even when banned substances such as EPO could not be found. But performance is too far removed from taking a banned substance and influenced by too many outside factors to convict someone of doping, Tucker says. “When we look at this young swimmer from China who breaks a world record, that’s not proof of anything. It asks a question or two.” .....
nature上面一位叫Lai Jiang的同志回复得非常好，逻辑严密，义正词严，特此摘抄： Lai Jiang said: It is a shame to see Nature, which nearly all scientists, including myself, regard as the one of the most prestigious and influential physical science magazines to publish a thinly-veiled biased article like this. Granted, this is not a peer-reviewed scientific article and did not go through the scrutiny of picking referees. But to serve as a channel for the general populous to be in touch with and appreciate sciences, the authors and editors should at least present the readers with facts within proper context, which they failed to do blatantly. First, to compare a player's performance increase, the author used Ye's 400m IM time and her performance at the World championship 2011, which are 4:28.43 and 4:35.15 respectively, and reached the conclusion that she has got an "anomalous" increase by ~7 sec (6.72 sec). In fact she's previous personal best was 4:33.79 at Asian Games 20101. This leads to a 5.38 sec increase. In a sport event that 0.1 sec can be the difference between the gold and silver medal, I see no reason that 5.38 sec can be treated as 7 sec. Second, as previously pointed out, Ye is only 16 years old and her body is still developing. Bettering oneself by 5 sec over two years may seem impossible for an adult swimmer, but certainly happens among youngsters. Ian Thorpe's interview revealed that his 400m freestyle time increased 5 sec between the age of 15 and 162. For regular people including the author it may be hard to imagine what an elite swimmer can achieve as he or she matures, combined with scientific and persistent training. But jumping to a conclusion that it is "anomalous" based on "Oh that's so tough I can not imagine it is real" is hardly sound. Third, to compare Ryan Lochte's last 50m to Ye's is a textbook example of what we call to cherry pick your data. Yes, Lochte is slower than Ye in the last 50m, but (as pointed out by Zhenxi) Lochte has a huge lead in the first 300m so that he chose to not push himself too hard to conserve energy for latter events (whether this conforms to the Olympic spirit and the "use one's best efforts to win a match" requirement that the BWF has recently invoked to disqualify four badminton pairs is another topic worth discussing, probably not in Nature, though). On the contrary, Ye is trailing behind after the first 300m and relies on freestyle, which she has an edge, to win the game. Failing to mention this strategic difference, as well as the fact that Lochte is 23.25 sec faster (4:05.18) over all than Ye creates the illusion that a woman swam faster than the best man in the same sport, which sounds impossible. Put aside the gender argument, I believe this is still a leading question that implies the reader that something fishy is going on. Fourth, another example of cherry picking. In the same event there are four male swimmers that swam faster than both Lochter (29.10 sec)3 and Ye (28.93 sec)4: Hagino (28.52 sec), Phelps (28.44 sec), Horihata (27.87 sec) and Fraser-Holmes (28.35 sec). As it turns out if we are just talking about the last 50m in a 400m IM, Lochter would not have been the example to use if I were the author. What kind of scientific rigorousness that author is trying to demonstrate here? Is it logical that if Lochter is the champion, we should assume he leads in every split? That would be a terrible way to teach the public how science works. Fifth, which is the one I oppose the most. The author quotes Tucks and implies that a drug test can not rule out the possibility of doping. Is this kind of agnosticism what Nature really wants to educate its readers? By that standard I estimate that at least half of the peer-reviewed scientific papers in Nature should be retracted. How can one convince the editors and reviewers that their proposed theory works for every possible case? One cannot. One chooses to apply the theory to typical examples and demonstrate that in (hopefully) all scenarios considered the theory works to a degree, and that should warrant a publication, until a counterexample is found. I could imagine that the author has a skeptical mind which is critical to scientific thinking, but that would be put into better use if he can write a real peer-reviewed paper that discusses the odds of Ye doping on a highly advanced non-detectable drug that the Chinese has come up within the last 4 years (they obviously did not have it in Beijing, otherwise why not to use it and woo the audience at home?), based on data and rational derivation. This paper, however, can be interpreted as saying that all athletes are doping, and the authorities are just not good enough to catch them. That may be true, logically, but definitely will not make the case if there is ever a hearing by FINA to determine if Ye has doped. To ask the question that if it is possible to false negative in a drug test looks like a rigged question to me. Of course it is, other than the drug that the test is not designed to detect, anyone who has taken Quantum 101 will tell you that everything is probabilistic in nature, and there is a probability for the drug in an athlete's system to tunnel out right at the moment of the test. A slight change as it may be, should we disregard all test results because of it? Let?￠a??a?￠s be practical and reasonable. And accept WADA is competent at its job. Her urine sample is stored for 8 years following the contest for future testing as technology advances. Innocent until proven guilty, shouldn't it be? Sixth, and the last point I would like to make, is that the out-of-competition drug test is already in effect, which the author failed to mention. Per WADA president?￠a??a?￠s press release5, drug testing for olympians began at least 6 months prior to the opening of the London Olympic. Furthermore there are 107 athletes who are banned from this Olympic for doping. That maybe the reason that ?￠a???“everyone will pass at the Olympic games. Hardly anyone fails in competition testing?￠a????? Because those who did dope are already sanctioned? The author is free to suggest that a player could have doped beforehand and fool the test at the game, but this possibility certainly is ruled out for Ye. Over all, even though the author did not falsify any data, he did (intentionally or not) cherry pick data that is far too suggestive to be fair and unbiased, in my view. If you want to cover a story of a suspected doping from a scientific point of view, be impartial and provide all the facts for the reader to judge. You are entitled to your interpretation of the facts, and the expression thereof in your piece, explicitly or otherwise, but only showing evidences which favor your argument is hardly good science or journalism. Such an article in a journal like Nature is not an appropriate example of how scientific research or report should be done. 1http://www.fina.org/H2O/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=1241 2
It is a shame to see Nature, which nearly all scientists, including myself, regard as the one of the most prestigious and influential physical science magazines to publish a thinly-veiled biased article like this. Granted, this is not a peer-reviewed scientific article and did not go through the scrutiny of picking referees. But to serve as a channel for the general populous to be in touch with and appreciate sciences, the authors and editors should at least present the readers with facts within proper context, which they failed to do blatantly.
First, to compare a player's performance increase, the author used Ye's 400m IM time and her performance at the World championship 2011, which are 4:28.43 and 4:35.15 respectively, and reached the conclusion that she has got an "anomalous" increase by ~7 sec (6.72 sec). In fact she's previous personal best was 4:33.79 at Asian Games 20101. This leads to a 5.38 sec increase. In a sport event that 0.1 sec can be the difference between the gold and silver medal, I see no reason that 5.38 sec can be treated as 7 sec.
Second, as previously pointed out, Ye is only 16 years old and her body is still developing. Bettering oneself by 5 sec over two years may seem impossible for an adult swimmer, but certainly happens among youngsters. Ian Thorpe's interview revealed that his 400m freestyle time increased 5 sec between the age of 15 and 162. For regular people including the author it may be hard to imagine what an elite swimmer can achieve as he or she matures, combined with scientific and persistent training. But jumping to a conclusion that it is "anomalous" based on "Oh that's so tough I can not imagine it is real" is hardly sound.
Third, to compare Ryan Lochte's last 50m to Ye's is a textbook example of what we call to cherry pick your data. Yes, Lochte is slower than Ye in the last 50m, but (as pointed out by Zhenxi) Lochte has a huge lead in the first 300m so that he chose to not push himself too hard to conserve energy for latter events (whether this conforms to the Olympic spirit and the "use one's best efforts to win a match" requirement that the BWF has recently invoked to disqualify four badminton pairs is another topic worth discussing, probably not in Nature, though). On the contrary, Ye is trailing behind after the first 300m and relies on freestyle, which she has an edge, to win the game. Failing to mention this strategic difference, as well as the fact that Lochte is 23.25 sec faster (4:05.18) over all than Ye creates the illusion that a woman swam faster than the best man in the same sport, which sounds impossible. Put aside the gender argument, I believe this is still a leading question that implies the reader that something fishy is going on.
Fourth, another example of cherry picking. In the same event there are four male swimmers that swam faster than both Lochter (29.10 sec)3 and Ye (28.93 sec)4: Hagino (28.52 sec), Phelps (28.44 sec), Horihata (27.87 sec) and Fraser-Holmes (28.35 sec). As it turns out if we are just talking about the last 50m in a 400m IM, Lochter would not have been the example to use if I were the author. What kind of scientific rigorousness that author is trying to demonstrate here? Is it logical that if Lochter is the champion, we should assume he leads in every split? That would be a terrible way to teach the public how science works.
Fifth, which is the one I oppose the most. The author quotes Tucks and implies that a drug test can not rule out the possibility of doping. Is this kind of agnosticism what Nature really wants to educate its readers? By that standard I estimate that at least half of the peer-reviewed scientific papers in Nature should be retracted. How can one convince the editors and reviewers that their proposed theory works for every possible case? One cannot. One chooses to apply the theory to typical examples and demonstrate that in (hopefully) all scenarios considered the theory works to a degree, and that should warrant a publication, until a counterexample is found. I could imagine that the author has a skeptical mind which is critical to scientific thinking, but that would be put into better use if he can write a real peer-reviewed paper that discusses the odds of Ye doping on a highly advanced non-detectable drug that the Chinese has come up within the last 4 years (they obviously did not have it in Beijing, otherwise why not to use it and woo the audience at home?), based on data and rational derivation. This paper, however, can be interpreted as saying that all athletes are doping, and the authorities are just not good enough to catch them. That may be true, logically, but definitely will not make the case if there is ever a hearing by FINA to determine if Ye has doped. To ask the question that if it is possible to false negative in a drug test looks like a rigged question to me. Of course it is, other than the drug that the test is not designed to detect, anyone who has taken Quantum 101 will tell you that everything is probabilistic in nature, and there is a probability for the drug in an athlete's system to tunnel out right at the moment of the test. A slight change as it may be, should we disregard all test results because of it? Let?￠a??a?￠s be practical and reasonable. And accept WADA is competent at its job. Her urine sample is stored for 8 years following the contest for future testing as technology advances. Innocent until proven guilty, shouldn't it be?
Sixth, and the last point I would like to make, is that the out-of-competition drug test is already in effect, which the author failed to mention. Per WADA president?￠a??a?￠s press release5, drug testing for olympians began at least 6 months prior to the opening of the London Olympic. Furthermore there are 107 athletes who are banned from this Olympic for doping. That maybe the reason that ?￠a???“everyone will pass at the Olympic games. Hardly anyone fails in competition testing?￠a????? Because those who did dope are already sanctioned? The author is free to suggest that a player could have doped beforehand and fool the test at the game, but this possibility certainly is ruled out for Ye.
Over all, even though the author did not falsify any data, he did (intentionally or not) cherry pick data that is far too suggestive to be fair and unbiased, in my view. If you want to cover a story of a suspected doping from a scientific point of view, be impartial and provide all the facts for the reader to judge. You are entitled to your interpretation of the facts, and the expression thereof in your piece, explicitly or otherwise, but only showing evidences which favor your argument is hardly good science or journalism. Such an article in a journal like Nature is not an appropriate example of how scientific research or report should be done.
I couldn't help but jokingly categorize you as a 2B Wenyi young man, in reasons that: You are so 2B to come up with such an article; and You are so Wenyi to have managed to publish it on Nature online.
It is a shame to see Nature, which nearly all scientists, including myself, regard as the one of the most prestigious and influential physical science magazines to publish a thinly-veiled biased article like this. Granted, this is not a peer-reviewed scientific article and did not go through the scrutiny of picking referees. But to serve as a channel for the general populous to be in touch with and appreciate sciences, the authors and editors should at least present the readers with facts within proper context, which they failed to do blatantly.
First, to compare a player's performance increase, the author used Ye's 400m IM time and her performance at the World championship 2011, which are 4:28.43 and 4:35.15 respectively, and reached the conclusion that she has got an "anomalous" increase by ~7 sec (6.72 sec). In fact she's previous personal best was 4:33.79 at Asian Games 20101. This leads to a 5.38 sec increase. In a sport event that 0.1 sec can be the difference between the gold and silver medal, I see no reason that 5.38 sec can be treated as 7 sec.
Second, as previously pointed out, Ye is only 16 years old and her body is still developing. Bettering oneself by 5 sec over two years may seem impossible for an adult swimmer, but certainly happens among youngsters. Ian Thorpe's interview revealed that his 400m freestyle time increased 5 sec between the age of 15 and 162. For regular people including the author it may be hard to imagine what an elite swimmer can achieve as he or she matures, combined with scientific and persistent training. But jumping to a conclusion that it is "anomalous" based on "Oh that's so tough I can not imagine it is real" is hardly sound.
Third, to compare Ryan Lochte's last 50m to Ye's is a textbook example of what we call to cherry pick your data. Yes, Lochte is slower than Ye in the last 50m, but (as pointed out by Zhenxi) Lochte has a huge lead in the first 300m so that he chose to not push himself too hard to conserve energy for latter events (whether this conforms to the Olympic spirit and the "use one's best efforts to win a match" requirement that the BWF has recently invoked to disqualify four badminton pairs is another topic worth discussing, probably not in Nature, though). On the contrary, Ye is trailing behind after the first 300m and relies on freestyle, which she has an edge, to win the game. Failing to mention this strategic difference, as well as the fact that Lochte is 23.25 sec faster (4:05.18) over all than Ye creates the illusion that a woman swam faster than the best man in the same sport, which sounds impossible. Put aside the gender argument, I believe this is still a leading question that implies the reader that something fishy is going on.
Fourth, another example of cherry picking. In the same event there are four male swimmers that swam faster than both Lochter (29.10 sec)3 and Ye (28.93 sec)4: Hagino (28.52 sec), Phelps (28.44 sec), Horihata (27.87 sec) and Fraser-Holmes (28.35 sec). As it turns out if we are just talking about the last 50m in a 400m IM, Lochter would not have been the example to use if I were the author. What kind of scientific rigorousness that author is trying to demonstrate here? Is it logical that if Lochter is the champion, we should assume he leads in every split? That would be a terrible way to teach the public how science works.
Fifth, which is the one I oppose the most. The author quotes Tucks and implies that a drug test can not rule out the possibility of doping. Is this kind of agnosticism what Nature really wants to educate its readers? By that standard I estimate that at least half of the peer-reviewed scientific papers in Nature should be retracted. How can one convince the editors and reviewers that their proposed theory works for every possible case? One cannot. One chooses to apply the theory to typical examples and demonstrate that in (hopefully) all scenarios considered the theory works to a degree, and that should warrant a publication, until a counterexample is found. I could imagine that the author has a skeptical mind which is critical to scientific thinking, but that would be put into better use if he can write a real peer-reviewed paper that discusses the odds of Ye doping on a highly advanced non-detectable drug that the Chinese has come up within the last 4 years (they obviously did not have it in Beijing, otherwise why not to use it and woo the audience at home?), based on data and rational derivation. This paper, however, can be interpreted as saying that all athletes are doping, and the authorities are just not good enough to catch them. That may be true, logically, but definitely will not make the case if there is ever a hearing by FINA to determine if Ye has doped. To ask the question that if it is possible to false negative in a drug test looks like a rigged question to me. Of course it is, other than the drug that the test is not designed to detect, anyone who has taken Quantum 101 will tell you that everything is probabilistic in nature, and there is a probability for the drug in an athlete's system to tunnel out right at the moment of the test. A slight change as it may be, should we disregard all test results because of it? Let?￠a??a?￠s be practical and reasonable. And accept WADA is competent at its job. Her urine sample is stored for 8 years following the contest for future testing as technology advances. Innocent until proven guilty, shouldn't it be?
Sixth, and the last point I would like to make, is that the out-of-competition drug test is already in effect, which the author failed to mention. Per WADA president?￠a??a?￠s press release5, drug testing for olympians began at least 6 months prior to the opening of the London Olympic. Furthermore there are 107 athletes who are banned from this Olympic for doping. That maybe the reason that ?￠a???“everyone will pass at the Olympic games. Hardly anyone fails in competition testing?￠a????? Because those who did dope are already sanctioned? The author is free to suggest that a player could have doped beforehand and fool the test at the game, but this possibility certainly is ruled out for Ye.
Over all, even though the author did not falsify any data, he did (intentionally or not) cherry pick data that is far too suggestive to be fair and unbiased, in my view. If you want to cover a story of a suspected doping from a scientific point of view, be impartial and provide all the facts for the reader to judge. You are entitled to your interpretation of the facts, and the expression thereof in your piece, explicitly or otherwise, but only showing evidences which favor your argument is hardly good science or journalism. Such an article in a journal like Nature is not an appropriate example of how scientific research or report should be done.
It is a shame to see Nature, which nearly all scientists, including myself, regard as the one of the most prestigious and influential physical science magazines to publish a thinly-veiled biased article like this. Granted, this is not a peer-reviewed scientific article and did not go through the scrutiny of picking referees. But to serve as a channel for the general populous to be in touch with and appreciate sciences, the authors and editors should at least present the readers with facts within proper context, which they failed to do blatantly.
First, to compare a player's performance increase, the author used Ye's 400m IM time and her performance at the World championship 2011, which are 4:28.43 and 4:35.15 respectively, and reached the conclusion that she has got an "anomalous" increase by ~7 sec (6.72 sec). In fact she's previous personal best was 4:33.79 at Asian Games 20101. This leads to a 5.38 sec increase. In a sport event that 0.1 sec can be the difference between the gold and silver medal, I see no reason that 5.38 sec can be treated as 7 sec.
Second, as previously pointed out, Ye is only 16 years old and her body is still developing. Bettering oneself by 5 sec over two years may seem impossible for an adult swimmer, but certainly happens among youngsters. Ian Thorpe's interview revealed that his 400m freestyle time increased 5 sec between the age of 15 and 162. For regular people including the author it may be hard to imagine what an elite swimmer can achieve as he or she matures, combined with scientific and persistent training. But jumping to a conclusion that it is "anomalous" based on "Oh that's so tough I can not imagine it is real" is hardly sound.
Third, to compare Ryan Lochte's last 50m to Ye's is a textbook example of what we call to cherry pick your data. Yes, Lochte is slower than Ye in the last 50m, but (as pointed out by Zhenxi) Lochte has a huge lead in the first 300m so that he chose to not push himself too hard to conserve energy for latter events (whether this conforms to the Olympic spirit and the "use one's best efforts to win a match" requirement that the BWF has recently invoked to disqualify four badminton pairs is another topic worth discussing, probably not in Nature, though). On the contrary, Ye is trailing behind after the first 300m and relies on freestyle, which she has an edge, to win the game. Failing to mention this strategic difference, as well as the fact that Lochte is 23.25 sec faster (4:05.18) over all than Ye creates the illusion that a woman swam faster than the best man in the same sport, which sounds impossible. Put aside the gender argument, I believe this is still a leading question that implies the reader that something fishy is going on.
Fourth, another example of cherry picking. In the same event there are four male swimmers that swam faster than both Lochter (29.10 sec)3 and Ye (28.93 sec)4: Hagino (28.52 sec), Phelps (28.44 sec), Horihata (27.87 sec) and Fraser-Holmes (28.35 sec). As it turns out if we are just talking about the last 50m in a 400m IM, Lochter would not have been the example to use if I were the author. What kind of scientific rigorousness that author is trying to demonstrate here? Is it logical that if Lochter is the champion, we should assume he leads in every split? That would be a terrible way to teach the public how science works.
Fifth, which is the one I oppose the most. The author quotes Tucks and implies that a drug test can not rule out the possibility of doping. Is this kind of agnosticism what Nature really wants to educate its readers? By that standard I estimate that at least half of the peer-reviewed scientific papers in Nature should be retracted. How can one convince the editors and reviewers that their proposed theory works for every possible case? One cannot. One chooses to apply the theory to typical examples and demonstrate that in (hopefully) all scenarios considered the theory works to a degree, and that should warrant a publication, until a counterexample is found. I could imagine that the author has a skeptical mind which is critical to scientific thinking, but that would be put into better use if he can write a real peer-reviewed paper that discusses the odds of Ye doping on a highly advanced non-detectable drug that the Chinese has come up within the last 4 years (they obviously did not have it in Beijing, otherwise why not to use it and woo the audience at home?), based on data and rational derivation. This paper, however, can be interpreted as saying that all athletes are doping, and the authorities are just not good enough to catch them. That may be true, logically, but definitely will not make the case if there is ever a hearing by FINA to determine if Ye has doped. To ask the question that if it is possible to false negative in a drug test looks like a rigged question to me. Of course it is, other than the drug that the test is not designed to detect, anyone who has taken Quantum 101 will tell you that everything is probabilistic in nature, and there is a probability for the drug in an athlete's system to tunnel out right at the moment of the test. A slight change as it may be, should we disregard all test results because of it? Let?￠a??a?￠s be practical and reasonable. And accept WADA is competent at its job. Her urine sample is stored for 8 years following the contest for future testing as technology advances. Innocent until proven guilty, shouldn't it be?
Sixth, and the last point I would like to make, is that the out-of-competition drug test is already in effect, which the author failed to mention. Per WADA president?￠a??a?￠s press release5, drug testing for olympians began at least 6 months prior to the opening of the London Olympic. Furthermore there are 107 athletes who are banned from this Olympic for doping. That maybe the reason that ?￠a???“everyone will pass at the Olympic games. Hardly anyone fails in competition testing?￠a????? Because those who did dope are already sanctioned? The author is free to suggest that a player could have doped beforehand and fool the test at the game, but this possibility certainly is ruled out for Ye.
Over all, even though the author did not falsify any data, he did (intentionally or not) cherry pick data that is far too suggestive to be fair and unbiased, in my view. If you want to cover a story of a suspected doping from a scientific point of view, be impartial and provide all the facts for the reader to judge. You are entitled to your interpretation of the facts, and the expression thereof in your piece, explicitly or otherwise, but only showing evidences which favor your argument is hardly good science or journalism. Such an article in a journal like Nature is not an appropriate example of how scientific research or report should be done.
I am sending emails to the Editor-in-Chief and Executive Editor and all other editors I can find. Very soon Nature will be changed into a gossip tabloid. At the same time, I would seriously suggest that Mr. Callaway and Mr. Owens changing their career paths. Trust me, science is not for you guys. You should send our your resumes right now before bringing more humiliation to the scientific community. Rupert Murdoch may give you higher salaries.
Laura, Ph.D, even though I have no publication on Nature, I am a real scientist and I am proud of both facts
nature上面一位叫Lai Jiang的同志回复得非常好，逻辑严密，义正词严，特此摘抄： Lai Jiang said: It is a shame to see Nature, which nearly all scientists, including myself, regard as the one of the most prestigious and influential physical science magazines to publish a thinly-veiled biased article like this. Granted, this is not a peer-reviewed scientific article and did not go through the scrutiny of picking referees. But to serve as a channel for the general populous to be in touch with and appreciate sciences, the authors and editors should at least present the readers with facts within proper context, which they failed to do blatantly. First, to compare a player's performance increase, the author used Ye's 400m IM time and her performance at the World championship 2011, which are 4:28.43 and 4:35.15 respectively, and reached the conclusion that she has got an "anomalous" increase by ~7 sec (6.72 sec). In fact she's previous personal best was 4:33.79 at Asian Games 20101. This leads to a 5.38 sec increase. In a sport event that 0.1 sec can be the difference between the gold and silver medal, I see no reason that 5.38 sec can be treated as 7 sec. Second, as previously pointed out, Ye is only 16 years old and her body is still developing. Bettering oneself by 5 sec over two years may seem impossible for an adult swimmer, but certainly happens among youngsters. Ian Thorpe's interview revealed that his 400m freestyle time increased 5 sec between the age of 15 and 162. For regular people including the author it may be hard to imagine what an elite swimmer can achieve as he or she matures, combined with scientific and persistent training. But jumping to a conclusion that it is "anomalous" based on "Oh that's so tough I can not imagine it is real" is hardly sound. Third, to compare Ryan Lochte's last 50m to Ye's is a textbook example of what we call to cherry pick your data. Yes, Lochte is slower than Ye in the last 50m, but (as pointed out by Zhenxi) Lochte has a huge lead in the first 300m so that he chose to not push himself too hard to conserve energy for latter events (whether this conforms to the Olympic spirit and the "use one's best efforts to win a match" requirement that the BWF has recently invoked to disqualify four badminton pairs is another topic worth discussing, probably not in Nature, though). On the contrary, Ye is trailing behind after the first 300m and relies on freestyle, which she has an edge, to win the game. Failing to mention this strategic difference, as well as the fact that Lochte is 23.25 sec faster (4:05.18) over all than Ye creates the illusion that a woman swam faster than the best man in the same sport, which sounds impossible. Put aside the gender argument, I believe this is still a leading question that implies the reader that something fishy is going on. Fourth, another example of cherry picking. In the same event there are four male swimmers that swam faster than both Lochter (29.10 sec)3 and Ye (28.93 sec)4: Hagino (28.52 sec), Phelps (28.44 sec), Horihata (27.87 sec) and Fraser-Holmes (28.35 sec). As it turns out if we are just talking about the last 50m in a 400m IM, Lochter would not have been the example to use if I were the author. What kind of scientific rigorousness that author is trying to demonstrate here? Is it logical that if Lochter is the champion, we should assume he leads in every split? That would be a terrible way to teach the public how science works. Fifth, which is the one I oppose the most. The author quotes Tucks and implies that a drug test can not rule out the possibility of doping. Is this kind of agnosticism what Nature really wants to educate its readers? By that standard I estimate that at least half of the peer-reviewed scientific papers in Nature should be retracted. How can one convince the editors and reviewers that their proposed theory works for every possible case? One cannot. One chooses to apply the theory to typical examples and demonstrate that in (hopefully) all scenarios considered the theory works to a degree, and that should warrant a publication, until a counterexample is found. I could imagine that the author has a skeptical mind which is critical to scientific thinking, but that would be put into better use if he can write a real peer-reviewed paper that discusses the odds of Ye doping on a highly advanced non-detectable drug that the Chinese has come up within the last 4 years (they obviously did not have it in Beijing, otherwise why not to use it and woo the audience at home?), based on data and rational derivation. This paper, however, can be interpreted as saying that all athletes are doping, and the authorities are just not good enough to catch them. That may be true, logically, but definitely will not make the case if there is ever a hearing by FINA to determine if Ye has doped. To ask the question that if it is possible to false negative in a drug test looks like a rigged question to me. Of course it is, other than the drug that the test is not designed to detect, anyone who has taken Quantum 101 will tell you that everything is probabilistic in nature, and there is a probability for the drug in an athlete's system to tunnel out right at the moment of the test. A slight change as it may be, should we disregard all test results because of it? Let?￠a??a?￠s be practical and reasonable. And accept WADA is competent at its job. Her urine sample is stored for 8 years following the contest for future testing as technology advances. Innocent until proven guilty, shouldn't it be? Sixth, and the last point I would like to make, is that the out-of-competition drug test is already in effect, which the author failed to mention. Per WADA president?￠a??a?￠s press release5, drug testing for olympians began at least 6 months prior to the opening of the London Olympic. Furthermore there are 107 athletes who are banned from this Olympic for doping. That maybe the reason that ?￠a???“everyone will pass at the Olympic games. Hardly anyone fails in competition testing?￠a????? Because those who did dope are already sanctioned? The author is free to suggest that a player could have doped beforehand and fool the test at the game, but this possibility certainly is ruled out for Ye. Over all, even though the author did not falsify any data, he did (intentionally or not) cherry pick data that is far too suggestive to be fair and unbiased, in my view. If you want to cover a story of a suspected doping from a scientific point of view, be impartial and provide all the facts for the reader to judge. You are entitled to your interpretation of the facts, and the expression thereof in your piece, explicitly or otherwise, but only showing evidences which favor your argument is hardly good science or journalism. Such an article in a journal like Nature is not an appropriate example of how scientific research or report should be done. 1http://www.fina.org/H2O/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=1241 2
To Brian Owens: All the British are murders even we cannot prove it now. You know, there are always ahead of the law. We appreciate that accusing British people as murders is a sensitive one for some readers. However, I would like to point out that this story was not intended to insinuate that British are guilty of anything. As I point out in the first paragraph, many British has never failed a criminal charge and so is they are innocent. I wanted to use the controversy as a way to highlight what science can and can't tell us with respect to a persona€?s criminal record. We have done similar stories before, for example in the case of a non-British nation.
We appreciate that the case of Ye Shiwen is a sensitive one for some readers . However, I would like to point out that this story was not intended to insinuate that Ye is guilty of anything. As we point out in the first paragraph, she has never failed a drug test and so is the rightful Olympic champion.
We wanted to use the controversy as a way to highlight what science can and can't tell us with respect to athletes' performance. We have done similar stories before, for example in the case of South African runner Caster Semenya
Congratulations to Ye Shiwen on her incredible win!
It is a shame to see Nature, which nearly all scientists, including myself, regard as the one of the most prestigious and influential physical science magazines to publish a thinly-veiled biased article like this. Granted, this is not a peer-reviewed scientific article and did not go through the scrutiny of picking referees. But to serve as a channel for the general populous to be in touch with and appreciate sciences, the authors and editors should at least present the readers with facts within proper context, which they failed to do blatantly.
First, to compare a player's performance increase, the author used Ye's 400m IM time and her performance at the World championship 2011, which are 4 :28.43 and 4:35.15 respectively, and reached the conclusion that she has got an "anomalous" increase by ~7 sec (6.72 sec). In fact she's previous personal best was 4:33.79 at Asian Games 20101. This leads to a 5.38 sec increase. In a sport event that 0.1 sec can be the difference between the gold and silver medal, I see no reason that 5.38 sec can be treated as 7 sec.
Second, as previously pointed out, Ye is only 16 years old and her body is still developing. Bettering oneself by 5 sec over two years may seem impossible for an adult swimmer, but certainly happens among youngsters. Ian Thorpe's interview revealed that his 400m freestyle time increased 5 sec between the age of 15 and 162. For regular people including the author it may be hard to imagine what an elite swimmer can achieve as he or she matures, combined with scientific and persistent training. But jumping to a conclusion that it is "anomalous" based on "Oh that's so tough I can not imagine it is real" is hardly sound.
Third, to compare Ryan Lochte's last 50m to Ye's is a textbook example of what we call to cherry pick your data. Yes, Lochte is slower than Ye in the last 50m, but (as pointed out by Zhenxi) Lochte has a huge lead in the first 300m so that he chose to not push himself too hard to conserve energy for latter events (whether this conforms to the Olympic spirit and the "use one's best efforts to win a match" requirement that the BWF has recently invoked to disqualify four badminton pairs is another topic worth discussing , probably not in Nature, though). On the contrary, Ye is trailing behind after the first 300m and relies on freestyle, which she has an edge, to win the game. Failing to mention this strategic difference, as well as the fact that Lochte is 23.25 sec faster (4:05.18) over all than Ye creates the illusion that a woman swam faster than the best man in the same sport, which sounds impossible. Put aside the gender argument, I believe this is still a leading question that implies the reader that something fishy is going on.
Fourth, another example of cherry picking. In the same event there are four male swimmers that swam faster than both Lochter (29.10 sec)3 and Ye ( 28.93 sec)4: Hagino (28.52 sec), Phelps (28.44 sec), Horihata (27.87 sec) and Fraser-Holmes (28.35 sec). As it turns out if we are just talking about the last 50m in a 400m IM, Lochter would not have been the example to use if I were the author. What kind of scientific rigorousness that author is trying to demonstrate here? Is it logical that if Lochter is the champion, we should assume he leads in every split? That would be a terrible way to teach the public how science works.
Fifth, which is the one I oppose the most. The author quotes Tucks and implies that a drug test can not rule out the possibility of doping. Is this kind of agnosticism what Nature really wants to educate its readers? By that standard I estimate that at least half of the peer-reviewed scientific papers in Nature should be retracted. How can one convince the editors and reviewers that their proposed theory works for every possible case? One cannot. One chooses to apply the theory to typical examples and demonstrate that in (hopefully) all scenarios considered the theory works to a degree, and that should warrant a publication, until a counterexample is found. I could imagine that the author has a skeptical mind which is critical to scientific thinking, but that would be put into better use if he can write a real peer-reviewed paper that discusses the odds of Ye doping on a highly advanced non-detectable drug that the Chinese has come up within the last 4 years (they obviously did not have it in Beijing, otherwise why not to use it and woo the audience at home?), based on data and rational derivation. This paper, however, can be interpreted as saying that all athletes are doping, and the authorities are just not good enough to catch them. That may be true, logically, but definitely will not make the case if there is ever a hearing by FINA to determine if Ye has doped. To ask the question that if it is possible to false negative in a drug test looks like a rigged question to me. Of course it is, other than the drug that the test is not designed to detect, anyone who has taken Quantum 101 will tell you that everything is probabilistic in nature, and there is a probability for the drug in an athlete's system to tunnel out right at the moment of the test. A slight change as it may be, should we disregard all test results because of it? Let ?￠a??a?￠s be practical and reasonable. And accept WADA is competent at its job. Her urine sample is stored for 8 years following the contest for future testing as technology advances. Innocent until proven guilty, shouldn 't it be?
Sixth, and the last point I would like to make, is that the out-of- competition drug test is already in effect, which the author failed to mention. Per WADA president?￠a??a?￠s press release5, drug testing for olympians began at least 6 months prior to the opening of the London Olympic . Furthermore there are 107 athletes who are banned from this Olympic for doping. That maybe the reason that ?￠a???“everyone will pass at the Olympic games. Hardly anyone fails in competition testing?￠a????? Because those who did dope are already sanctioned? The author is free to suggest that a player could have doped beforehand and fool the test at the game, but this possibility certainly is ruled out for Ye.
Over all, even though the author did not falsify any data, he did ( intentionally or not) cherry pick data that is far too suggestive to be fair and unbiased, in my view. If you want to cover a story of a suspected doping from a scientific point of view, be impartial and provide all the facts for the reader to judge. You are entitled to your interpretation of the facts, and the expression thereof in your piece, explicitly or otherwise , but only showing evidences which favor your argument is hardly good science or journalism. Such an article in a journal like Nature is not an appropriate example of how scientific research or report should be done.
We appreciate that the case of Ye Shiwen is a sensitive one for some readers . However, I would like to point out that this story was not intended to insinuate that Ye is guilty of anything. As we point out in the first paragraph, she has never failed a drug test and so is the rightful Olympic champion.
We wanted to use the controversy as a way to highlight what science can and can't tell us with respect to athletes' performance. We have done similar stories before, for example in the case of South African runner Caster Semenya
Congratulations to Ye Shiwen on her incredible win!
Brian Owens Online news editor
太狡辩了 我也给这editor回信了
I can only say I am even more disappointed after reading your response here. By ‘Ye Shiwen is a sensitive one for some readers’, you are cleverly implying the readers who replied here have biased opinions, and the outrage you sensed here is simply because reader are too ‘sensitive’. However, if you really want to take a closer look at the facts that some of us listed here, you can easily see that we are simply pointing out how lack of evidence and fact that the original article is. Ewen Callaway not only cited wrong and misleading facts, and cannot wait to rudely jump to a conclusion that ‘Ye’s performance is anomalous’, not mentioning the unbelievable original subtitle 'Performance profiling' could help to CATCH CHEATERS in sports’. This undoubtedly shows his lack of scientific professionalism. Nonetheless, if this is his facebook page or personal blog, he has every right to show his opinion (and of course, exposing his lack of scientific training by doing so). However, this is not his facebook page or blog; this is Nature.com, the website of the top-tier journals of the worldwide scientific community. Is it the editor’s job to screen the articles that can decently represent the level of Nature? As a scientist who also published papers in Nature’s sister journals, and still want to regard Nature.com as a respectful and unbiased media instead of a misleading gossip tabloid, I urge you to withdraw this article, and issue an apology.
We appreciate that the case of Ye Shiwen is a sensitive one for some readers . However, I would like to point out that this story was not intended to insinuate that Ye is guilty of anything. As we point out in the first paragraph, she has never failed a drug test and so is the rightful Olympic champion.
We wanted to use the controversy as a way to highlight what science can and can't tell us with respect to athletes' performance. We have done similar stories before, for example in the case of South African runner Caster Semenya
Congratulations to Ye Shiwen on her incredible win!
I can only say I am even more disappointed after reading your response here. By ‘Ye Shiwen is a sensitive one for some readers’, you are cleverly implying the readers who replied here have biased opinions, and the outrage you sensed here is simply because reader are too ‘sensitive’. However, if you really want to take a closer look at the facts that some of us listed here, you can easily see that we are simply pointing out how lack of evidence and fact that the original article is. Ewen Callaway not only cited wrong and misleading facts, and cannot wait to rudely jump to a conclusion that ‘Ye’s performance is anomalous’, not mentioning the unbelievable original subtitle 'Performance profiling' could help to CATCH CHEATERS in sports’. This undoubtedly shows his lack of scientific professionalism. Nonetheless, if this is his facebook page or personal blog, he has every right to show his opinion (and of course, exposing his lack of scientific training by doing so). However, this is not his facebook page or blog; this is Nature.com, the website of the top-tier journals of the worldwide scientific community. Is it the editor’s job to screen the articles that can decently represent the level of Nature? As a scientist who also published papers in Nature’s sister journals, and still want to regard Nature.com as a respectful and unbiased media instead of a misleading gossip tabloid, I urge you to withdraw this article, and issue an apology.
I think all the points have been made previous to this comment, so I won't re-raise them. Suffice it to say, that the editors and "journalist" of this publication make serious errors in judgment and do not gain support, popularity, or editorial credit for this piece, and it shades this particular reader's future (happenstance) readings by this publication group towards the negative.
Snide, inciteful (not insightful), and generally ignorant are the adjectives that are now attached to the writer, Ewen Callaway, and Nature's editorial team. A tawdry and cheap attempt to gain readership. Your new readers walk away from reading your material with regret, anger, and impassioned verve to right the slight you inflict.
Somebody provided a copy of two of the best comments that Nature had deleted in #47909
Pasted below...
***********************
John Rees said:
When I saw the article this morning, I was regretful. However, I was deeply offended when Nature editors would delete the best comments with solid, objective analysis. What are you doing, editors? Is this something a respectable journal like Nature would do? For new readers' information, I copy the deleted comments below:
Lai Jiang said: It is a shame to see Nature, which nearly all scientists, including myself, regard as the one of the most prestigious and influential physical science magazines to publish a thinly-veiled biased article like this. Granted, this is not a peer-reviewed scientific article and did not go through the scrutiny of picking referees. But to serve as a channel for the general populous to be in touch with and appreciate sciences, the authors and editors should at least present the readers with facts within proper context, which they failed to do blatantly. First, to compare a player's performance increase, the author used Ye's 400m IM time and her performance at the World championship 2011, which are 4:28.43 and 4:35.15 respectively, and reached the conclusion that she has got an "anomalous" increase by ~7 sec (6.72 sec). In fact she's previous personal best was 4:33.79 at Asian Games 20101. This leads to a 5.38 sec increase. In a sport event that 0.1 sec can be the difference between the gold and silver medal, I see no reason that 5.38 sec can be treated as 7 sec. Second, as previously pointed out, Ye is only 16 years old and her body is still developing. Bettering oneself by 5 sec over two years may seem impossible for an adult swimmer, but certainly happens among youngsters. Ian Thorpe's interview revealed that his 400m freestyle time increased 5 sec between the age of 15 and 162. For regular people including the author it may be hard to imagine what an elite swimmer can achieve as he or she matures, combined with scientific and persistent training. But jumping to a conclusion that it is "anomalous" based on "Oh that's so tough I can not imagine it is real" is hardly sound. Third, to compare Ryan Lochte's last 50m to Ye's is a textbook example of what we call to cherry pick your data. Yes, Lochte is slower than Ye in the last 50m, but (as pointed out by Zhenxi) Lochte has a huge lead in the first 300m so that he chose to not push himself too hard to conserve energy for latter events (whether this conforms to the Olympic spirit and the "use one's best efforts to win a match" requirement that the BWF has recently invoked to disqualify four badminton pairs is another topic worth discussing, probably not in Nature, though). On the contrary, Ye is trailing behind after the first 300m and relies on freestyle, which she has an edge, to win the game. Failing to mention this strategic difference, as well as the fact that Lochte is 23.25 sec faster (4:05.18) over all than Ye creates the illusion that a woman swam faster than the best man in the same sport, which sounds impossible. Put aside the gender argument, I believe this is still a leading question that implies the reader that something fishy is going on. Fourth, another example of cherry picking. In the same event there are four male swimmers that swam faster than both Lochter (29.10 sec)3 and Ye (28.93 sec)4: Hagino (28.52 sec), Phelps (28.44 sec), Horihata (27.87 sec) and Fraser-Holmes (28.35 sec). As it turns out if we are just talking about the last 50m in a 400m IM, Lochter would not have been the example to use if I were the author. What kind of scientific rigorousness that author is trying to demonstrate here? Is it logical that if Lochter is the champion, we should assume he leads in every split? That would be a terrible way to teach the public how science works. Fifth, which is the one I oppose the most. The author quotes Tucks and implies that a drug test can not rule out the possibility of doping. Is this kind of agnosticism what Nature really wants to educate its readers? By that standard I estimate that at least half of the peer-reviewed scientific papers in Nature should be retracted. How can one convince the editors and reviewers that their proposed theory works for every possible case? One cannot. One chooses to apply the theory to typical examples and demonstrate that in (hopefully) all scenarios considered the theory works to a degree, and that should warrant a publication, until a counterexample is found. I could imagine that the author has a skeptical mind which is critical to scientific thinking, but that would be put into better use if he can write a real peer-reviewed paper that discusses the odds of Ye doping on a highly advanced non-detectable drug that the Chinese has come up within the last 4 years (they obviously did not have it in Beijing, otherwise why not to use it and woo the audience at home?), based on data and rational derivation. This paper, however, can be interpreted as saying that all athletes are doping, and the authorities are just not good enough to catch them. That may be true, logically, but definitely will not make the case if there is ever a hearing by FINA to determine if Ye has doped. To ask the question that if it is possible to false negative in a drug test looks like a rigged question to me. Of course it is, other than the drug that the test is not designed to detect, anyone who has taken Quantum 101 will tell you that everything is probabilistic in nature, and there is a probability for the drug in an athlete's system to tunnel out right at the moment of the test. A slight change as it may be, should we disregard all test results because of it? Let???￠?￠a€????￠a€??￠s be practical and reasonable. And accept WADA is competent at its job. Her urine sample is stored for 8 years following the contest for future testing as technology advances. Innocent until proven guilty, shouldn't it be? Sixth, and the last point I would like to make, is that the out-of-competition drug test is already in effect, which the author failed to mention. Per WADA president???￠?￠a€????￠a€??￠s press release5, drug testing for olympians began at least 6 months prior to the opening of the London Olympic. Furthermore there are 107 athletes who are banned from this Olympic for doping. That maybe the reason that ???￠?￠a€????…a€?everyone will pass at the Olympic games. Hardly anyone fails in competition testing???￠?￠a€???????? Because those who did dope are already sanctioned? The author is free to suggest that a player could have doped beforehand and fool the test at the game, but this possibility certainly is ruled out for Ye. Over all, even though the author did not falsify any data, he did (intentionally or not) cherry pick data that is far too suggestive to be fair and unbiased, in my view. If you want to cover a story of a suspected doping from a scientific point of view, be impartial and provide all the facts for the reader to judge. You are entitled to your interpretation of the facts, and the expression thereof in your piece, explicitly or otherwise, but only showing evidences which favor your argument is hardly good science or journalism. Such an article in a journal like Nature is not an appropriate example of how scientific research or report should be done. 1http://www.fina.org/H2O/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=1241 2https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ETPUKlOwV4 3http://www.london2012.com/swimming/event/men-400m-individual-medley/phase=swm054100/index.html 4http://www.london2012.com/swimming/event/women-400m-individual-medley/phase=sww054100/index.html 5http://playtrue.wada-ama.org/news/wada-presidents-addresses-london-2012-press-conference/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wada-presidents-addresses-london-2012-press-conference
Zhenxi Zhang said: I just want to add this: Phelps improved 4+ seconds in his 200 fly between 14-15 years old. Ian Thorpe also had a similar performance improvement. Ye is now 16. She was 160 cm in height and now 170 cm. Human biology also play a role a€“ she gets stronger and bigger naturally. Yes she can make up 5 seconds (NOT 7 seconds in the article) in a 400 IM that has more room for improvement, with good training she got in Australia. In both the 400 IM and 200 IM finals, Ye were behind until freestyle. Well I guess there is "drug" that just enhances freestyle, but not the backstroke, breast, and fly. Does that make sense? Also, it is not professional to only mention that 'her showing in the last 50 metres, which she swam faster than US swimmer Ryan Lochte did when he won gold in the men?￠a??a?￠s 400 IM'. The whole fact is that Ye is more than 23 second slower than Lochte in 400 IM. Plus, Freestyle isn't Lochte's best leg, but it is Shiwen's best leg. Lochte had a huge lead on the field, and almost coasted to the finish. He wasn't pressured by the field to go all out that last few meters. And before we get into the fact there's no way a woman should be able to come close to man's time for a final leg of 50m. May I present the following: Kate Ziegler set a WR in the 1500m freestyle. In the last 50m of her race she had a split of 29.27, which is ONLY 0.17s slower than Lochte final 50m. This was after she swam for 1100m longer than Lochte! I feel the author would probably not write such a piece if Ye is an American or British. Neither country is clean from athletes caught by doping (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_performance-enhancing_drugs_in_the_Olympic_Games). Let's try not to use double standards on the great performance from countries other than US and European countries.
以下是引用 人头猪脑 的发言： 这么通篇的说，虽然没证据说你杀了人，但是因为也没有证据表示你没杀人，所以祝贺你现在被释放了。..............他们是脱了裤子放屁么？写这个文章的目的，科学研究的目的就........ ★ Sent from iPhone App: i-Reader Huaren Lite 7.56
这个才是说对了~~~西方人惯常的虚伪~~~
歧视只不过是一个工具，需要的时候拿过来用，歧视还是不歧视，depends on自己的利益在哪一方~~~
Could an athlete then be disciplined simply for performing too well?
“That would be unfair,” says Tucker. “The final verdict is
only ever going to be reached by testing. It has to be.” In recent
years, cycling authorities have successfully prosecuted athletes for
having anomalous blood profiles, even when banned substances such as EPO
could not be found. But performance is too far removed from taking a
banned substance and influenced by too many outside factors to convict
someone of doping, Tucker says. “When we look at this young swimmer from
China who breaks a world record, that’s not proof of anything. It asks a
question or two.”
.....
搞笑,照他这理论,所有运动员都有吃兴奋剂的嫌疑,即使查出来是阴性.这种就等于假定所有人都是有罪.即使没有任何证据,你也可能有罪.tnnd啥逻辑.
刚从fb上逛了一圈回来，看到不少老外朋友还是相信小叶子清白的，可还是看到一个越南女银说她绝对不相信，而且还强调她是asian
尼玛，人家就是因为你是asian才怀疑你 ，脑残到不行
大笑三声
好多人回复的太牛了，看署名是中国人，还带参考文献的
nature上面一位叫Lai Jiang的同志回复得非常好，逻辑严密，义正词严，特此摘抄：
Lai Jiang said:
It is a shame to see Nature, which nearly all scientists, including myself, regard as the one of the most prestigious and influential physical science magazines to publish a thinly-veiled biased article like this. Granted, this is not a peer-reviewed scientific article and did not go through the scrutiny of picking referees. But to serve as a channel for the general populous to be in touch with and appreciate sciences, the authors and editors should at least present the readers with facts within proper context, which they failed to do blatantly.
First, to compare a player's performance increase, the author used Ye's 400m IM time and her performance at the World championship 2011, which are 4:28.43 and 4:35.15 respectively, and reached the conclusion that she has got an "anomalous" increase by ~7 sec (6.72 sec). In fact she's previous personal best was 4:33.79 at Asian Games 20101. This leads to a 5.38 sec increase. In a sport event that 0.1 sec can be the difference between the gold and silver medal, I see no reason that 5.38 sec can be treated as 7 sec.
Second, as previously pointed out, Ye is only 16 years old and her body is still developing. Bettering oneself by 5 sec over two years may seem impossible for an adult swimmer, but certainly happens among youngsters. Ian Thorpe's interview revealed that his 400m freestyle time increased 5 sec between the age of 15 and 162. For regular people including the author it may be hard to imagine what an elite swimmer can achieve as he or she matures, combined with scientific and persistent training. But jumping to a conclusion that it is "anomalous" based on "Oh that's so tough I can not imagine it is real" is hardly sound.
Third, to compare Ryan Lochte's last 50m to Ye's is a textbook example of what we call to cherry pick your data. Yes, Lochte is slower than Ye in the last 50m, but (as pointed out by Zhenxi) Lochte has a huge lead in the first 300m so that he chose to not push himself too hard to conserve energy for latter events (whether this conforms to the Olympic spirit and the "use one's best efforts to win a match" requirement that the BWF has recently invoked to disqualify four badminton pairs is another topic worth discussing, probably not in Nature, though). On the contrary, Ye is trailing behind after the first 300m and relies on freestyle, which she has an edge, to win the game. Failing to mention this strategic difference, as well as the fact that Lochte is 23.25 sec faster (4:05.18) over all than Ye creates the illusion that a woman swam faster than the best man in the same sport, which sounds impossible. Put aside the gender argument, I believe this is still a leading question that implies the reader that something fishy is going on.
Fourth, another example of cherry picking. In the same event there are four male swimmers that swam faster than both Lochter (29.10 sec)3 and Ye (28.93 sec)4: Hagino (28.52 sec), Phelps (28.44 sec), Horihata (27.87 sec) and Fraser-Holmes (28.35 sec). As it turns out if we are just talking about the last 50m in a 400m IM, Lochter would not have been the example to use if I were the author. What kind of scientific rigorousness that author is trying to demonstrate here? Is it logical that if Lochter is the champion, we should assume he leads in every split? That would be a terrible way to teach the public how science works.
Fifth, which is the one I oppose the most. The author quotes Tucks and implies that a drug test can not rule out the possibility of doping. Is this kind of agnosticism what Nature really wants to educate its readers? By that standard I estimate that at least half of the peer-reviewed scientific papers in Nature should be retracted. How can one convince the editors and reviewers that their proposed theory works for every possible case? One cannot. One chooses to apply the theory to typical examples and demonstrate that in (hopefully) all scenarios considered the theory works to a degree, and that should warrant a publication, until a counterexample is found. I could imagine that the author has a skeptical mind which is critical to scientific thinking, but that would be put into better use if he can write a real peer-reviewed paper that discusses the odds of Ye doping on a highly advanced non-detectable drug that the Chinese has come up within the last 4 years (they obviously did not have it in Beijing, otherwise why not to use it and woo the audience at home?), based on data and rational derivation. This paper, however, can be interpreted as saying that all athletes are doping, and the authorities are just not good enough to catch them. That may be true, logically, but definitely will not make the case if there is ever a hearing by FINA to determine if Ye has doped. To ask the question that if it is possible to false negative in a drug test looks like a rigged question to me. Of course it is, other than the drug that the test is not designed to detect, anyone who has taken Quantum 101 will tell you that everything is probabilistic in nature, and there is a probability for the drug in an athlete's system to tunnel out right at the moment of the test. A slight change as it may be, should we disregard all test results because of it? Let?￠a??a?￠s be practical and reasonable. And accept WADA is competent at its job. Her urine sample is stored for 8 years following the contest for future testing as technology advances. Innocent until proven guilty, shouldn't it be?
Sixth, and the last point I would like to make, is that the out-of-competition drug test is already in effect, which the author failed to mention. Per WADA president?￠a??a?￠s press release5, drug testing for olympians began at least 6 months prior to the opening of the London Olympic. Furthermore there are 107 athletes who are banned from this Olympic for doping. That maybe the reason that ?￠a???“everyone will pass at the Olympic games. Hardly anyone fails in competition testing?￠a????? Because those who did dope are already sanctioned? The author is free to suggest that a player could have doped beforehand and fool the test at the game, but this possibility certainly is ruled out for Ye.
Over all, even though the author did not falsify any data, he did (intentionally or not) cherry pick data that is far too suggestive to be fair and unbiased, in my view. If you want to cover a story of a suspected doping from a scientific point of view, be impartial and provide all the facts for the reader to judge. You are entitled to your interpretation of the facts, and the expression thereof in your piece, explicitly or otherwise, but only showing evidences which favor your argument is hardly good science or journalism. Such an article in a journal like Nature is not an appropriate example of how scientific research or report should be done.
1http://www.fina.org/H2O/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=1241
2
3http://www.london2012.com/swimming/event/men-400m-individual-medley/phase=swm054100/index.html
4http://www.london2012.com/swimming/event/women-400m-individual-medley/phase=sww054100/index.html
5http://playtrue.wada-ama.org/news/wada-presidents-addresses-london-2012-press-conference/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wada-presidents-addresses-london-2012-press-conference
[此贴子已经被作者于2012/8/2 11:09:56编辑过]
强大啊！
Lai Jiang said:
It is a shame to see Nature, which nearly all scientists, including myself, regard as the one of the most prestigious and influential physical science magazines to publish a thinly-veiled biased article like this. Granted, this is not a peer-reviewed scientific article and did not go through the scrutiny of picking referees. But to serve as a channel for the general populous to be in touch with and appreciate sciences, the authors and editors should at least present the readers with facts within proper context, which they failed to do blatantly.
First, to compare a player's performance increase, the author used Ye's 400m IM time and her performance at the World championship 2011, which are 4:28.43 and 4:35.15 respectively, and reached the conclusion that she has got an "anomalous" increase by ~7 sec (6.72 sec). In fact she's previous personal best was 4:33.79 at Asian Games 20101. This leads to a 5.38 sec increase. In a sport event that 0.1 sec can be the difference between the gold and silver medal, I see no reason that 5.38 sec can be treated as 7 sec.
Second, as previously pointed out, Ye is only 16 years old and her body is still developing. Bettering oneself by 5 sec over two years may seem impossible for an adult swimmer, but certainly happens among youngsters. Ian Thorpe's interview revealed that his 400m freestyle time increased 5 sec between the age of 15 and 162. For regular people including the author it may be hard to imagine what an elite swimmer can achieve as he or she matures, combined with scientific and persistent training. But jumping to a conclusion that it is "anomalous" based on "Oh that's so tough I can not imagine it is real" is hardly sound.
Third, to compare Ryan Lochte's last 50m to Ye's is a textbook example of what we call to cherry pick your data. Yes, Lochte is slower than Ye in the last 50m, but (as pointed out by Zhenxi) Lochte has a huge lead in the first 300m so that he chose to not push himself too hard to conserve energy for latter events (whether this conforms to the Olympic spirit and the "use one's best efforts to win a match" requirement that the BWF has recently invoked to disqualify four badminton pairs is another topic worth discussing, probably not in Nature, though). On the contrary, Ye is trailing behind after the first 300m and relies on freestyle, which she has an edge, to win the game. Failing to mention this strategic difference, as well as the fact that Lochte is 23.25 sec faster (4:05.18) over all than Ye creates the illusion that a woman swam faster than the best man in the same sport, which sounds impossible. Put aside the gender argument, I believe this is still a leading question that implies the reader that something fishy is going on.
Fourth, another example of cherry picking. In the same event there are four male swimmers that swam faster than both Lochter (29.10 sec)3 and Ye (28.93 sec)4: Hagino (28.52 sec), Phelps (28.44 sec), Horihata (27.87 sec) and Fraser-Holmes (28.35 sec). As it turns out if we are just talking about the last 50m in a 400m IM, Lochter would not have been the example to use if I were the author. What kind of scientific rigorousness that author is trying to demonstrate here? Is it logical that if Lochter is the champion, we should assume he leads in every split? That would be a terrible way to teach the public how science works.
Fifth, which is the one I oppose the most. The author quotes Tucks and implies that a drug test can not rule out the possibility of doping. Is this kind of agnosticism what Nature really wants to educate its readers? By that standard I estimate that at least half of the peer-reviewed scientific papers in Nature should be retracted. How can one convince the editors and reviewers that their proposed theory works for every possible case? One cannot. One chooses to apply the theory to typical examples and demonstrate that in (hopefully) all scenarios considered the theory works to a degree, and that should warrant a publication, until a counterexample is found. I could imagine that the author has a skeptical mind which is critical to scientific thinking, but that would be put into better use if he can write a real peer-reviewed paper that discusses the odds of Ye doping on a highly advanced non-detectable drug that the Chinese has come up within the last 4 years (they obviously did not have it in Beijing, otherwise why not to use it and woo the audience at home?), based on data and rational derivation. This paper, however, can be interpreted as saying that all athletes are doping, and the authorities are just not good enough to catch them. That may be true, logically, but definitely will not make the case if there is ever a hearing by FINA to determine if Ye has doped. To ask the question that if it is possible to false negative in a drug test looks like a rigged question to me. Of course it is, other than the drug that the test is not designed to detect, anyone who has taken Quantum 101 will tell you that everything is probabilistic in nature, and there is a probability for the drug in an athlete's system to tunnel out right at the moment of the test. A slight change as it may be, should we disregard all test results because of it? Let?￠a??a?￠s be practical and reasonable. And accept WADA is competent at its job. Her urine sample is stored for 8 years following the contest for future testing as technology advances. Innocent until proven guilty, shouldn't it be?
Sixth, and the last point I would like to make, is that the out-of-competition drug test is already in effect, which the author failed to mention. Per WADA president?￠a??a?￠s press release5, drug testing for olympians began at least 6 months prior to the opening of the London Olympic. Furthermore there are 107 athletes who are banned from this Olympic for doping. That maybe the reason that ?￠a???“everyone will pass at the Olympic games. Hardly anyone fails in competition testing?￠a????? Because those who did dope are already sanctioned? The author is free to suggest that a player could have doped beforehand and fool the test at the game, but this possibility certainly is ruled out for Ye.
Over all, even though the author did not falsify any data, he did (intentionally or not) cherry pick data that is far too suggestive to be fair and unbiased, in my view. If you want to cover a story of a suspected doping from a scientific point of view, be impartial and provide all the facts for the reader to judge. You are entitled to your interpretation of the facts, and the expression thereof in your piece, explicitly or otherwise, but only showing evidences which favor your argument is hardly good science or journalism. Such an article in a journal like Nature is not an appropriate example of how scientific research or report should be done.
1http://www.fina.org/H2O/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=1241
2http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ETPUKlOwV4
3http://www.london2012.com/swimming/event/men-400m-individual-medley/phase=swm054100/index.html
4http://www.london2012.com/swimming/event/women-400m-individual-medley/phase=sww054100/index.html
5http://playtrue.wada-ama.org/news/wada-presidents-addresses-london-2012-press-conference/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wada-presidents-addresses-london-2012-press-conference
我不喜欢这个回复，希望大家不要动不动就把所有西方人都包括进去，这样容易让人反感
好多人回复的太牛了，看署名是中国人，还带参考文献的
尼玛nature越来越垃圾了！！！！哗众取宠啊！坚决抵制！！！！
这个才是说对了~~~西方人惯常的虚伪~~~
歧视只不过是一个工具，需要的时候拿过来用，歧视还是不歧视，depends on自己的利益在哪一方~~~
Si Xu said:
I couldn't help but jokingly categorize you as a 2B Wenyi young man, in reasons that:
You are so 2B to come up with such an article; and
You are so Wenyi to have managed to publish it on Nature online.
进行反驳。YAHOO，CNN什么的都是美国老农在看，一面倒的质疑中国。英文好的同
学应该上个个媒体去留言才好。
这个人的GRE Argue 6分满分的话我要给100分
Lai Jiang said:
e.wada-ama.org/news/wada-presidents-addresses-london-2012-press-conference/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wada-presidents-addresses-london-2012-press-conference" target="new">http://playtrue.wada-ama.org/news/wada-presidents-addresses-london-2012-press-conference/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wada-presidents-addresses-london-2012-press-conference
人家当年gre作文分就不低。
进行反驳。YAHOO，CNN什么的都是美国老农在看，一面倒的质疑中国。英文好的同
学应该上个个媒体去留言才好。
这么通篇的说，虽然没证据说你杀了人，但是因为也没有证据表示你没杀人，所以祝贺你现在被释放了。
..............他们是脱了裤子放屁么？写这个文章的目的，科学研究的目的就是摆上台说废话？
不理解为什么会觉得他们不是别有用心。
Nature凑这个热闹干嘛，简直就是贱。。。
以下是引用无情de大奶在8/2/2012 10:03:00 AM的发言：
刚从fb上逛了一圈回来，看到不少老外朋友还是相信小叶子清白的，可还是看到一个越南女银说她绝对不相信，而且还强调她是asian
尼玛，人家就是因为你是asian才怀疑你 ，脑残到不行
我一个中国的同事，她老公第一反应也是吃药了~靠~这些人已经被美帝洗脑了！
越南人最见不得中国人好！
看Nature这个态度，平时审文章什么的估计也没少欺负中国人吧
这个人的GRE Argue 6分满分的话我要给100分
Lai Jiang said:
此人要红
以下是引用蘅芷阶通萝薜门在8/2/2012 3:57:00 PM的发言：
这个人的GRE Argue 6分满分的话我要给100分
Lai Jiang said:
It is a shame to see Nature, which nearly all scientists, including myself, regard as the one of the most prestigious and influential physical science magazines to publish a thinly-veiled biased article like this. Granted, this is not a peer-reviewed scientific article and did not go through the scrutiny of picking referees. But to serve as a channel for the general populous to be in touch with and appreciate sciences, the authors and editors should at least present the readers with facts within proper context, which they failed to do blatantly.
First, to compare a player's performance increase, the author used Ye's 400m IM time and her performance at the World championship 2011, which are 4:28.43 and 4:35.15 respectively, and reached the conclusion that she has got an "anomalous" increase by ~7 sec (6.72 sec). In fact she's previous personal best was 4:33.79 at Asian Games 20101. This leads to a 5.38 sec increase. In a sport event that 0.1 sec can be the difference between the gold and silver medal, I see no reason that 5.38 sec can be treated as 7 sec.
Second, as previously pointed out, Ye is only 16 years old and her body is still developing. Bettering oneself by 5 sec over two years may seem impossible for an adult swimmer, but certainly happens among youngsters. Ian Thorpe's interview revealed that his 400m freestyle time increased 5 sec between the age of 15 and 162. For regular people including the author it may be hard to imagine what an elite swimmer can achieve as he or she matures, combined with scientific and persistent training. But jumping to a conclusion that it is "anomalous" based on "Oh that's so tough I can not imagine it is real" is hardly sound.
Third, to compare Ryan Lochte's last 50m to Ye's is a textbook example of what we call to cherry pick your data. Yes, Lochte is slower than Ye in the last 50m, but (as pointed out by Zhenxi) Lochte has a huge lead in the first 300m so that he chose to not push himself too hard to conserve energy for latter events (whether this conforms to the Olympic spirit and the "use one's best efforts to win a match" requirement that the BWF has recently invoked to disqualify four badminton pairs is another topic worth discussing, probably not in Nature, though). On the contrary, Ye is trailing behind after the first 300m and relies on freestyle, which she has an edge, to win the game. Failing to mention this strategic difference, as well as the fact that Lochte is 23.25 sec faster (4:05.18) over all than Ye creates the illusion that a woman swam faster than the best man in the same sport, which sounds impossible. Put aside the gender argument, I believe this is still a leading question that implies the reader that something fishy is going on.
Fourth, another example of cherry picking. In the same event there are four male swimmers that swam faster than both Lochter (29.10 sec)3 and Ye (28.93 sec)4: Hagino (28.52 sec), Phelps (28.44 sec), Horihata (27.87 sec) and Fraser-Holmes (28.35 sec). As it turns out if we are just talking about the last 50m in a 400m IM, Lochter would not have been the example to use if I were the author. What kind of scientific rigorousness that author is trying to demonstrate here? Is it logical that if Lochter is the champion, we should assume he leads in every split? That would be a terrible way to teach the public how science works.
Fifth, which is the one I oppose the most. The author quotes Tucks and implies that a drug test can not rule out the possibility of doping. Is this kind of agnosticism what Nature really wants to educate its readers? By that standard I estimate that at least half of the peer-reviewed scientific papers in Nature should be retracted. How can one convince the editors and reviewers that their proposed theory works for every possible case? One cannot. One chooses to apply the theory to typical examples and demonstrate that in (hopefully) all scenarios considered the theory works to a degree, and that should warrant a publication, until a counterexample is found. I could imagine that the author has a skeptical mind which is critical to scientific thinking, but that would be put into better use if he can write a real peer-reviewed paper that discusses the odds of Ye doping on a highly advanced non-detectable drug that the Chinese has come up within the last 4 years (they obviously did not have it in Beijing, otherwise why not to use it and woo the audience at home?), based on data and rational derivation. This paper, however, can be interpreted as saying that all athletes are doping, and the authorities are just not good enough to catch them. That may be true, logically, but definitely will not make the case if there is ever a hearing by FINA to determine if Ye has doped. To ask the question that if it is possible to false negative in a drug test looks like a rigged question to me. Of course it is, other than the drug that the test is not designed to detect, anyone who has taken Quantum 101 will tell you that everything is probabilistic in nature, and there is a probability for the drug in an athlete's system to tunnel out right at the moment of the test. A slight change as it may be, should we disregard all test results because of it? Let?￠a??a?￠s be practical and reasonable. And accept WADA is competent at its job. Her urine sample is stored for 8 years following the contest for future testing as technology advances. Innocent until proven guilty, shouldn't it be?
Sixth, and the last point I would like to make, is that the out-of-competition drug test is already in effect, which the author failed to mention. Per WADA president?￠a??a?￠s press release5, drug testing for olympians began at least 6 months prior to the opening of the London Olympic. Furthermore there are 107 athletes who are banned from this Olympic for doping. That maybe the reason that ?￠a???“everyone will pass at the Olympic games. Hardly anyone fails in competition testing?￠a????? Because those who did dope are already sanctioned? The author is free to suggest that a player could have doped beforehand and fool the test at the game, but this possibility certainly is ruled out for Ye.
Over all, even though the author did not falsify any data, he did (intentionally or not) cherry pick data that is far too suggestive to be fair and unbiased, in my view. If you want to cover a story of a suspected doping from a scientific point of view, be impartial and provide all the facts for the reader to judge. You are entitled to your interpretation of the facts, and the expression thereof in your piece, explicitly or otherwise, but only showing evidences which favor your argument is hardly good science or journalism. Such an article in a journal like Nature is not an appropriate example of how scientific research or report should be done.
1http://www.fina.org/H2O/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=1241
2
3http://www.london2012.com/swimming/event/men-400m-individual-medley/phase=swm054100/index.html
4http://www.london2012.com/swimming/event/women-400m-individual-medley/phase=sww054100/index.html
5http://playtrue.wada-ama.org/news/wada-presidents-addresses-london-2012-press-conference/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wada-presidents-addresses-london-2012-press-conference
膜拜！
同膜拜!
那个帖子下面好多人反驳的都很好了
我只是对nature审稿人同意发这篇文章表示惊讶
他们对不起自己是scientist这个称号
披着science的外衣进行种族歧视
是的，普通记者犯那样的逻辑错误也就罢了，这些所谓scientist或phd也举出一样的论据，不知道学位怎么来的
http://www.mitbbs.com/article_t1/Olympics/31609891_0_1.html
英文这么好长得也不错嘛！哈哈哈。。真解气
这是什么破学校的。。
以下是引用zhecunbugu在8/2/2012 4:50:00 PM的发言：
越南人最见不得中国人好！
[此贴子已经被作者于2012/8/2 17:09:02编辑过]
以下是引用蘅芷阶通萝薜门在8/2/2012 3:57:00 PM的发言：
这个人的GRE Argue 6分满分的话我要给100分
Lai Jiang said:
It is a shame to see Nature, which nearly all scientists, including myself, regard as the one of the most prestigious and influential physical science magazines to publish a thinly-veiled biased article like this. Granted, this is not a peer-reviewed scientific article and did not go through the scrutiny of picking referees. But to serve as a channel for the general populous to be in touch with and appreciate sciences, the authors and editors should at least present the readers with facts within proper context, which they failed to do blatantly.
First, to compare a player's performance increase, the author used Ye's 400m IM time and her performance at the World championship 2011, which are 4:28.43 and 4:35.15 respectively, and reached the conclusion that she has got an "anomalous" increase by ~7 sec (6.72 sec). In fact she's previous personal best was 4:33.79 at Asian Games 20101. This leads to a 5.38 sec increase. In a sport event that 0.1 sec can be the difference between the gold and silver medal, I see no reason that 5.38 sec can be treated as 7 sec.
Second, as previously pointed out, Ye is only 16 years old and her body is still developing. Bettering oneself by 5 sec over two years may seem impossible for an adult swimmer, but certainly happens among youngsters. Ian Thorpe's interview revealed that his 400m freestyle time increased 5 sec between the age of 15 and 162. For regular people including the author it may be hard to imagine what an elite swimmer can achieve as he or she matures, combined with scientific and persistent training. But jumping to a conclusion that it is "anomalous" based on "Oh that's so tough I can not imagine it is real" is hardly sound.
Third, to compare Ryan Lochte's last 50m to Ye's is a textbook example of what we call to cherry pick your data. Yes, Lochte is slower than Ye in the last 50m, but (as pointed out by Zhenxi) Lochte has a huge lead in the first 300m so that he chose to not push himself too hard to conserve energy for latter events (whether this conforms to the Olympic spirit and the "use one's best efforts to win a match" requirement that the BWF has recently invoked to disqualify four badminton pairs is another topic worth discussing, probably not in Nature, though). On the contrary, Ye is trailing behind after the first 300m and relies on freestyle, which she has an edge, to win the game. Failing to mention this strategic difference, as well as the fact that Lochte is 23.25 sec faster (4:05.18) over all than Ye creates the illusion that a woman swam faster than the best man in the same sport, which sounds impossible. Put aside the gender argument, I believe this is still a leading question that implies the reader that something fishy is going on.
Fourth, another example of cherry picking. In the same event there are four male swimmers that swam faster than both Lochter (29.10 sec)3 and Ye (28.93 sec)4: Hagino (28.52 sec), Phelps (28.44 sec), Horihata (27.87 sec) and Fraser-Holmes (28.35 sec). As it turns out if we are just talking about the last 50m in a 400m IM, Lochter would not have been the example to use if I were the author. What kind of scientific rigorousness that author is trying to demonstrate here? Is it logical that if Lochter is the champion, we should assume he leads in every split? That would be a terrible way to teach the public how science works.
Fifth, which is the one I oppose the most. The author quotes Tucks and implies that a drug test can not rule out the possibility of doping. Is this kind of agnosticism what Nature really wants to educate its readers? By that standard I estimate that at least half of the peer-reviewed scientific papers in Nature should be retracted. How can one convince the editors and reviewers that their proposed theory works for every possible case? One cannot. One chooses to apply the theory to typical examples and demonstrate that in (hopefully) all scenarios considered the theory works to a degree, and that should warrant a publication, until a counterexample is found. I could imagine that the author has a skeptical mind which is critical to scientific thinking, but that would be put into better use if he can write a real peer-reviewed paper that discusses the odds of Ye doping on a highly advanced non-detectable drug that the Chinese has come up within the last 4 years (they obviously did not have it in Beijing, otherwise why not to use it and woo the audience at home?), based on data and rational derivation. This paper, however, can be interpreted as saying that all athletes are doping, and the authorities are just not good enough to catch them. That may be true, logically, but definitely will not make the case if there is ever a hearing by FINA to determine if Ye has doped. To ask the question that if it is possible to false negative in a drug test looks like a rigged question to me. Of course it is, other than the drug that the test is not designed to detect, anyone who has taken Quantum 101 will tell you that everything is probabilistic in nature, and there is a probability for the drug in an athlete's system to tunnel out right at the moment of the test. A slight change as it may be, should we disregard all test results because of it? Let?￠a??a?￠s be practical and reasonable. And accept WADA is competent at its job. Her urine sample is stored for 8 years following the contest for future testing as technology advances. Innocent until proven guilty, shouldn't it be?
Sixth, and the last point I would like to make, is that the out-of-competition drug test is already in effect, which the author failed to mention. Per WADA president?￠a??a?￠s press release5, drug testing for olympians began at least 6 months prior to the opening of the London Olympic. Furthermore there are 107 athletes who are banned from this Olympic for doping. That maybe the reason that ?￠a???“everyone will pass at the Olympic games. Hardly anyone fails in competition testing?￠a????? Because those who did dope are already sanctioned? The author is free to suggest that a player could have doped beforehand and fool the test at the game, but this possibility certainly is ruled out for Ye.
Over all, even though the author did not falsify any data, he did (intentionally or not) cherry pick data that is far too suggestive to be fair and unbiased, in my view. If you want to cover a story of a suspected doping from a scientific point of view, be impartial and provide all the facts for the reader to judge. You are entitled to your interpretation of the facts, and the expression thereof in your piece, explicitly or otherwise, but only showing evidences which favor your argument is hardly good science or journalism. Such an article in a journal like Nature is not an appropriate example of how scientific research or report should be done.
1http://www.fina.org/H2O/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=1241
2
3http://www.london2012.com/swimming/event/men-400m-individual-medley/phase=swm054100/index.html
4http://www.london2012.com/swimming/event/women-400m-individual-medley/phase=sww054100/index.html
5http://playtrue.wada-ama.org/news/wada-presidents-addresses-london-2012-press-conference/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wada-presidents-addresses-london-2012-press-conference
英文这么好长得也不错嘛！哈哈哈。。真解气
有照片?
文章的作者很恶毒，通篇看下来，一个字都没说叶真的吃药了，但是效果却达到了，通篇的强盗逻辑太他妈恶心了。作者还是microbiology硕士，肯定统计课没过。而且文章里啥数据都没有啊
跟一个日裔作家一样恶毒, 用英语写了一本书, 通篇没有一个字写否认南京大屠杀, 但是效果却是南京大屠杀不存在的.表面上看一点也不带主观感情, 表面上看很客观很冷静, 但是效果就是却是南京大屠杀是不可能存在的. 恶毒至极,专门给脑子不健全的外国人洗脑.
I am sending emails to the Editor-in-Chief and Executive Editor and all other editors I can find. Very soon Nature will be changed into a gossip tabloid. At the same time, I would seriously suggest that Mr. Callaway and Mr. Owens changing their career paths. Trust me, science is not for you guys. You should send our your resumes right now before bringing more humiliation to the scientific community. Rupert Murdoch may give you higher salaries.
Laura, Ph.D, even though I have no publication on Nature, I am a real scientist and I am proud of both facts
我有点小开心，突然嚼得我跟有些科学家们莫有了距离感
[此贴子已经被作者于2012/8/2 17:09:02编辑过]
恩，同感，nature的编辑也不过就是气人有，笑人无的水平，我坦然了！！！
刚从fb上逛了一圈回来，看到不少老外朋友还是相信小叶子清白的，可还是看到一个越南女银说她绝对不相信，而且还强调她是asian
尼玛，人家就是因为你是asian才怀疑你 ，脑残到不行
你这还是越南人也就算了。我fb上两老中昨天就批了一天，今天继续。
每个媒体网页上头都是这类的内容啊，也许NATURE的读者搞技术的比较注重严谨，会
进行反驳。YAHOO，CNN什么的都是美国老农在看，一面倒的质疑中国。英文好的同
学应该上个个媒体去留言才好。 据说发支持小叶同学评论的都被和谐或删账号了。。。
★ 发自Android 华人阅览器 5.0
以下是引用monicapharm在8/2/2012 1:53:00 PM的发言：
这个文章还算蛮客观
气愤 已经放到facebook了，待我有空看看能不能人肉这个作者
好像在twitter上笑话中国人来着。
nature上面一位叫Lai Jiang的同志回复得非常好，逻辑严密，义正词严，特此摘抄：
Lai Jiang said:
It is a shame to see Nature, which nearly all scientists, including myself, regard as the one of the most prestigious and influential physical science magazines to publish a thinly-veiled biased article like this. Granted, this is not a peer-reviewed scientific article and did not go through the scrutiny of picking referees. But to serve as a channel for the general populous to be in touch with and appreciate sciences, the authors and editors should at least present the readers with facts within proper context, which they failed to do blatantly.
First, to compare a player's performance increase, the author used Ye's 400m IM time and her performance at the World championship 2011, which are 4:28.43 and 4:35.15 respectively, and reached the conclusion that she has got an "anomalous" increase by ~7 sec (6.72 sec). In fact she's previous personal best was 4:33.79 at Asian Games 20101. This leads to a 5.38 sec increase. In a sport event that 0.1 sec can be the difference between the gold and silver medal, I see no reason that 5.38 sec can be treated as 7 sec.
Second, as previously pointed out, Ye is only 16 years old and her body is still developing. Bettering oneself by 5 sec over two years may seem impossible for an adult swimmer, but certainly happens among youngsters. Ian Thorpe's interview revealed that his 400m freestyle time increased 5 sec between the age of 15 and 162. For regular people including the author it may be hard to imagine what an elite swimmer can achieve as he or she matures, combined with scientific and persistent training. But jumping to a conclusion that it is "anomalous" based on "Oh that's so tough I can not imagine it is real" is hardly sound.
Third, to compare Ryan Lochte's last 50m to Ye's is a textbook example of what we call to cherry pick your data. Yes, Lochte is slower than Ye in the last 50m, but (as pointed out by Zhenxi) Lochte has a huge lead in the first 300m so that he chose to not push himself too hard to conserve energy for latter events (whether this conforms to the Olympic spirit and the "use one's best efforts to win a match" requirement that the BWF has recently invoked to disqualify four badminton pairs is another topic worth discussing, probably not in Nature, though). On the contrary, Ye is trailing behind after the first 300m and relies on freestyle, which she has an edge, to win the game. Failing to mention this strategic difference, as well as the fact that Lochte is 23.25 sec faster (4:05.18) over all than Ye creates the illusion that a woman swam faster than the best man in the same sport, which sounds impossible. Put aside the gender argument, I believe this is still a leading question that implies the reader that something fishy is going on.
Fourth, another example of cherry picking. In the same event there are four male swimmers that swam faster than both Lochter (29.10 sec)3 and Ye (28.93 sec)4: Hagino (28.52 sec), Phelps (28.44 sec), Horihata (27.87 sec) and Fraser-Holmes (28.35 sec). As it turns out if we are just talking about the last 50m in a 400m IM, Lochter would not have been the example to use if I were the author. What kind of scientific rigorousness that author is trying to demonstrate here? Is it logical that if Lochter is the champion, we should assume he leads in every split? That would be a terrible way to teach the public how science works.
Fifth, which is the one I oppose the most. The author quotes Tucks and implies that a drug test can not rule out the possibility of doping. Is this kind of agnosticism what Nature really wants to educate its readers? By that standard I estimate that at least half of the peer-reviewed scientific papers in Nature should be retracted. How can one convince the editors and reviewers that their proposed theory works for every possible case? One cannot. One chooses to apply the theory to typical examples and demonstrate that in (hopefully) all scenarios considered the theory works to a degree, and that should warrant a publication, until a counterexample is found. I could imagine that the author has a skeptical mind which is critical to scientific thinking, but that would be put into better use if he can write a real peer-reviewed paper that discusses the odds of Ye doping on a highly advanced non-detectable drug that the Chinese has come up within the last 4 years (they obviously did not have it in Beijing, otherwise why not to use it and woo the audience at home?), based on data and rational derivation. This paper, however, can be interpreted as saying that all athletes are doping, and the authorities are just not good enough to catch them. That may be true, logically, but definitely will not make the case if there is ever a hearing by FINA to determine if Ye has doped. To ask the question that if it is possible to false negative in a drug test looks like a rigged question to me. Of course it is, other than the drug that the test is not designed to detect, anyone who has taken Quantum 101 will tell you that everything is probabilistic in nature, and there is a probability for the drug in an athlete's system to tunnel out right at the moment of the test. A slight change as it may be, should we disregard all test results because of it? Let?￠a??a?￠s be practical and reasonable. And accept WADA is competent at its job. Her urine sample is stored for 8 years following the contest for future testing as technology advances. Innocent until proven guilty, shouldn't it be?
Sixth, and the last point I would like to make, is that the out-of-competition drug test is already in effect, which the author failed to mention. Per WADA president?￠a??a?￠s press release5, drug testing for olympians began at least 6 months prior to the opening of the London Olympic. Furthermore there are 107 athletes who are banned from this Olympic for doping. That maybe the reason that ?￠a???“everyone will pass at the Olympic games. Hardly anyone fails in competition testing?￠a????? Because those who did dope are already sanctioned? The author is free to suggest that a player could have doped beforehand and fool the test at the game, but this possibility certainly is ruled out for Ye.
Over all, even though the author did not falsify any data, he did (intentionally or not) cherry pick data that is far too suggestive to be fair and unbiased, in my view. If you want to cover a story of a suspected doping from a scientific point of view, be impartial and provide all the facts for the reader to judge. You are entitled to your interpretation of the facts, and the expression thereof in your piece, explicitly or otherwise, but only showing evidences which favor your argument is hardly good science or journalism. Such an article in a journal like Nature is not an appropriate example of how scientific research or report should be done.
1http://www.fina.org/H2O/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=1241
2
3http://www.london2012.com/swimming/event/men-400m-individual-medley/phase=swm054100/index.html
4http://www.london2012.com/swimming/event/women-400m-individual-medley/phase=sww054100/index.html
5http://playtrue.wada-ama.org/news/wada-presidents-addresses-london-2012-press-conference/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wada-presidents-addresses-london-2012-press-conference
[此贴子已经被作者于2012/8/2 11:09:56编辑过]
这人太牛了。当年gre多少啊？
To Brian Owens:
All the British are murders even we cannot prove it now. You know, there are always ahead of the law.
We appreciate that accusing British people as murders is a
sensitive one for some readers. However, I would like to point out that
this story was not intended to insinuate that British are guilty of
anything. As I point out in the first paragraph, many British has never
failed a criminal charge and so is they are innocent.
I wanted to use the controversy as a way to highlight what science
can and can't tell us with respect to a persona€?s criminal record. We
have done similar stories before, for example in the case of a
non-British nation.
这个回击很给力啊
万事皆有可能，叶诗文说不定还是火星人呢，现在查不出来而已。但是查不出来的话金牌就是我们的，随他们怎么说。
http://www.facebook.com/nature
今天看到这个都不知道说什么了？不就两块奥运会金牌吗？英国人至于吗？岛国都这么小肚鸡肠？
真的，我也是这个感觉，他们还没完没了了！是不是要把叶mm活检他们才甘心阿？
强盗的逻辑，看上去ms逻辑严密，建议看评论里面的，有些人回复得很好！
万事皆有可能，叶诗文说不定还是火星人呢，现在查不出来而已。但是查不出来的话金牌就是我们的，随他们怎么说。
嘿嘿，赞mm心态。是这么个理儿。
只不过现在是NATURE出来恶心大家了，写手还是个不入流的Master，打着科学的幌子搬弄是非，就让人看不下去了。
这个文章还算蛮客观
mm去看看下面回复里面真正客观的有数据支持的论点吧。
以下是引用血在8/2/2012 6:42:00 PM的发言：
今天看到这个都不知道说什么了？不就两块奥运会金牌吗？英国人至于吗？岛国都这么小肚鸡肠？
大家去facebook跟那个评论下面留言吧，，那些editor居然删贴，然后不痛不痒的回复，太气愤了
已经沦落的连个八卦论坛都不如了，关闭评论，还删帖，丢人不。
这个文章还算蛮客观 客观个头！
★ 发自Android 华人阅览器 5.5
去mit逛了一圈。 有人在组织写信给主编呢。 这个文章的编辑绝对应该fire 掉， 先不说racial discrimination.但从学术上讲， 这种质量的文章就不该通过发表， 这个编辑从业务水平上也是不合格的。 更不要说利用nature这种科学权威平台， 传播自己的政治和racial disc...... re！
★ 发自Android 华人阅览器 5.5
好多人回复的太牛了，看署名是中国人，还带参考文献的
Liang Lai 的那篇看不到了，难道是被删了？
This is so ridiculous!!!!!
Liang Lai 的那篇看不到了，难道是被删了？
没事，我给捅到facebook nature的主页上去了，让那边更多人看到他们编辑都在做些什么下作事，就不知道我的帖子什么时候会被删掉。anyway欢迎大家都去他们主页吐槽，他们有十万liker呢，不能任由他们装逼
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
发信人: jianglai (Veni, Vidi, Vici.), 信区: Military
标 题: Re: 连nature也来高端黑叶诗文。。。 (转载)
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Thu Aug 2 08:54:12 2012, 美东)
这editor脸皮快赶上墙皮厚了
We appreciate that the case of Ye Shiwen is a sensitive one for some readers
. However, I would like to point out that this story was not intended to
insinuate that Ye is guilty of anything. As we point out in the first
paragraph, she has never failed a drug test and so is the rightful Olympic
champion.
We wanted to use the controversy as a way to highlight what science can and
can't tell us with respect to athletes' performance. We have done similar
stories before, for example in the case of South African runner Caster
Semenya
Congratulations to Ye Shiwen on her incredible win!
Brian Owens
Online news editor
Lai Jiang said:
It is a shame to see Nature, which nearly all scientists, including
myself, regard as the one of the most prestigious and influential physical
science magazines to publish a thinly-veiled biased article like this.
Granted, this is not a peer-reviewed scientific article and did not go
through the scrutiny of picking referees. But to serve as a channel for the
general populous to be in touch with and appreciate sciences, the authors
and editors should at least present the readers with facts within proper
context, which they failed to do blatantly.
First, to compare a player's performance increase, the author used Ye's
400m IM time and her performance at the World championship 2011, which are 4
:28.43 and 4:35.15 respectively, and reached the conclusion that she has got
an "anomalous" increase by ~7 sec (6.72 sec). In fact she's previous
personal best was 4:33.79 at Asian Games 20101. This leads to a 5.38 sec
increase. In a sport event that 0.1 sec can be the difference between the
gold and silver medal, I see no reason that 5.38 sec can be treated as 7 sec.
Second, as previously pointed out, Ye is only 16 years old and her body
is still developing. Bettering oneself by 5 sec over two years may seem
impossible for an adult swimmer, but certainly happens among youngsters. Ian
Thorpe's interview revealed that his 400m freestyle time increased 5 sec
between the age of 15 and 162. For regular people including the author it
may be hard to imagine what an elite swimmer can achieve as he or she
matures, combined with scientific and persistent training. But jumping to a
conclusion that it is "anomalous" based on "Oh that's so tough I can not
imagine it is real" is hardly sound.
Third, to compare Ryan Lochte's last 50m to Ye's is a textbook example
of what we call to cherry pick your data. Yes, Lochte is slower than Ye in
the last 50m, but (as pointed out by Zhenxi) Lochte has a huge lead in the
first 300m so that he chose to not push himself too hard to conserve energy
for latter events (whether this conforms to the Olympic spirit and the "use
one's best efforts to win a match" requirement that the BWF has recently
invoked to disqualify four badminton pairs is another topic worth discussing
, probably not in Nature, though). On the contrary, Ye is trailing behind
after the first 300m and relies on freestyle, which she has an edge, to win
the game. Failing to mention this strategic difference, as well as the fact
that Lochte is 23.25 sec faster (4:05.18) over all than Ye creates the
illusion that a woman swam faster than the best man in the same sport, which
sounds impossible. Put aside the gender argument, I believe this is still a
leading question that implies the reader that something fishy is going on.
Fourth, another example of cherry picking. In the same event there are
four male swimmers that swam faster than both Lochter (29.10 sec)3 and Ye (
28.93 sec)4: Hagino (28.52 sec), Phelps (28.44 sec), Horihata (27.87 sec)
and Fraser-Holmes (28.35 sec). As it turns out if we are just talking about
the last 50m in a 400m IM, Lochter would not have been the example to use if
I were the author. What kind of scientific rigorousness that author is
trying to demonstrate here? Is it logical that if Lochter is the champion,
we should assume he leads in every split? That would be a terrible way to
teach the public how science works.
Fifth, which is the one I oppose the most. The author quotes Tucks and
implies that a drug test can not rule out the possibility of doping. Is this
kind of agnosticism what Nature really wants to educate its readers? By
that standard I estimate that at least half of the peer-reviewed scientific
papers in Nature should be retracted. How can one convince the editors and
reviewers that their proposed theory works for every possible case? One
cannot. One chooses to apply the theory to typical examples and demonstrate
that in (hopefully) all scenarios considered the theory works to a degree,
and that should warrant a publication, until a counterexample is found. I
could imagine that the author has a skeptical mind which is critical to
scientific thinking, but that would be put into better use if he can write a
real peer-reviewed paper that discusses the odds of Ye doping on a highly
advanced non-detectable drug that the Chinese has come up within the last 4
years (they obviously did not have it in Beijing, otherwise why not to use
it and woo the audience at home?), based on data and rational derivation.
This paper, however, can be interpreted as saying that all athletes are
doping, and the authorities are just not good enough to catch them. That may
be true, logically, but definitely will not make the case if there is ever
a hearing by FINA to determine if Ye has doped. To ask the question that if
it is possible to false negative in a drug test looks like a rigged question
to me. Of course it is, other than the drug that the test is not designed
to detect, anyone who has taken Quantum 101 will tell you that everything is
probabilistic in nature, and there is a probability for the drug in an
athlete's system to tunnel out right at the moment of the test. A slight
change as it may be, should we disregard all test results because of it? Let
?￠a??a?￠s be practical and reasonable. And accept WADA is competent at its
job. Her urine sample is stored for 8 years following the contest for
future testing as technology advances. Innocent until proven guilty, shouldn
't it be?
Sixth, and the last point I would like to make, is that the out-of-
competition drug test is already in effect, which the author failed to
mention. Per WADA president?￠a??a?￠s press release5, drug testing for
olympians began at least 6 months prior to the opening of the London Olympic
. Furthermore there are 107 athletes who are banned from this Olympic for
doping. That maybe the reason that ?￠a???“everyone will pass at the
Olympic games. Hardly anyone fails in competition testing?￠a????? Because
those who did dope are already sanctioned? The author is free to suggest
that a player could have doped beforehand and fool the test at the game, but
this possibility certainly is ruled out for Ye.
Over all, even though the author did not falsify any data, he did (
intentionally or not) cherry pick data that is far too suggestive to be fair
and unbiased, in my view. If you want to cover a story of a suspected
doping from a scientific point of view, be impartial and provide all the
facts for the reader to judge. You are entitled to your interpretation of
the facts, and the expression thereof in your piece, explicitly or otherwise
, but only showing evidences which favor your argument is hardly good
science or journalism. Such an article in a journal like Nature is not an
appropriate example of how scientific research or report should be done.
1http://www.fina.org/H2O/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=1241
2https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ETPUKlOwV4
3http://www.london2012.com/swimming/event/men-400m-individual-medley/phase=swm054100/index.html
4http://www.london2012.com/swimming/event/women-400m-individual-medley/phase=sww054100/index.html
5http://playtrue.wada-ama.org/news/wada-presidents-addresses-london-2012-press-conference/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wada-presidents-addresses-london-2012-press-conference
看看editor 给jianglai的回信：
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
发信人: jianglai (Veni, Vidi, Vici.), 信区: Military
标 题: Re: 连nature也来高端黑叶诗文。。。 (转载)
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Thu Aug 2 08:54:12 2012, 美东)
这editor脸皮快赶上墙皮厚了
We appreciate that the case of Ye Shiwen is a sensitive one for some readers
. However, I would like to point out that this story was not intended to
insinuate that Ye is guilty of anything. As we point out in the first
paragraph, she has never failed a drug test and so is the rightful Olympic
champion.
We wanted to use the controversy as a way to highlight what science can and
can't tell us with respect to athletes' performance. We have done similar
stories before, for example in the case of South African runner Caster
Semenya
Congratulations to Ye Shiwen on her incredible win!
Brian Owens
Online news editor
太狡辩了 我也给这editor回信了
I can only say I am even more disappointed after reading your response here. By ‘Ye Shiwen is a sensitive one for some readers’, you are cleverly implying the readers who replied here have biased opinions, and the outrage you sensed here is simply because reader are too ‘sensitive’. However, if you really want to take a closer look at the facts that some of us listed here, you can easily see that we are simply pointing out how lack of evidence and fact that the original article is. Ewen Callaway not only cited wrong and misleading facts, and cannot wait to rudely jump to a conclusion that ‘Ye’s performance is anomalous’, not mentioning the unbelievable original subtitle 'Performance profiling' could help to CATCH CHEATERS in sports’. This undoubtedly shows his lack of scientific professionalism. Nonetheless, if this is his facebook page or personal blog, he has every right to show his opinion (and of course, exposing his lack of scientific training by doing so). However, this is not his facebook page or blog; this is Nature.com, the website of the top-tier journals of the worldwide scientific community. Is it the editor’s job to screen the articles that can decently represent the level of Nature?
As a scientist who also published papers in Nature’s sister journals, and still want to regard Nature.com as a respectful and unbiased media instead of a misleading gossip tabloid, I urge you to withdraw this article, and issue an apology.
看看editor 给jianglai的回信：
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
发信人: jianglai (Veni, Vidi, Vici.), 信区: Military
标 题: Re: 连nature也来高端黑叶诗文。。。 (转载)
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Thu Aug 2 08:54:12 2012, 美东)
这editor脸皮快赶上墙皮厚了
We appreciate that the case of Ye Shiwen is a sensitive one for some readers
. However, I would like to point out that this story was not intended to
insinuate that Ye is guilty of anything. As we point out in the first
paragraph, she has never failed a drug test and so is the rightful Olympic
champion.
We wanted to use the controversy as a way to highlight what science can and
can't tell us with respect to athletes' performance. We have done similar
stories before, for example in the case of South African runner Caster
Semenya
Congratulations to Ye Shiwen on her incredible win!
Brian Owens
Online news editor
这个也是他们回复在主页上的，我已经跟着批了半天了，还把Lai Jiang被删掉的那一大段贴上去了，目前没动静。那里人还是太少了。
太狡辩了 我也给这editor回信了
I can only say I am even more disappointed after reading your response here. By ‘Ye Shiwen is a sensitive one for some readers’, you are cleverly implying the readers who replied here have biased opinions, and the outrage you sensed here is simply because reader are too ‘sensitive’. However, if you really want to take a closer look at the facts that some of us listed here, you can easily see that we are simply pointing out how lack of evidence and fact that the original article is. Ewen Callaway not only cited wrong and misleading facts, and cannot wait to rudely jump to a conclusion that ‘Ye’s performance is anomalous’, not mentioning the unbelievable original subtitle 'Performance profiling' could help to CATCH CHEATERS in sports’. This undoubtedly shows his lack of scientific professionalism. Nonetheless, if this is his facebook page or personal blog, he has every right to show his opinion (and of course, exposing his lack of scientific training by doing so). However, this is not his facebook page or blog; this is Nature.com, the website of the top-tier journals of the worldwide scientific community. Is it the editor’s job to screen the articles that can decently represent the level of Nature?
As a scientist who also published papers in Nature’s sister journals, and still want to regard Nature.com as a respectful and unbiased media instead of a misleading gossip tabloid, I urge you to withdraw this article, and issue an apology.
说的好！
不要脸+死不认错！！！
我不是博士，但是我知道板上很多mm曾经或者现在是博士。看了这个叫Noah的编辑在twitter上面的推，感觉挺看不起中国人的，估计他也不是Natura里面唯一一个这样的，那你们发文章是不是会受到这种偏见的影响，是不是比欧美国家的人要难啊？
忍不住了说一句，原文作者不是博士，且没有任何在运动医学，毒理，药理，或者是生理方面学历和training。可以说，it神马都不懂！！！
他的学位是微生物硕士。。。。也就是研究细菌病毒的。。。。 他怎么qualify写这篇文章的，简直匪夷所思。
铁定有猫腻啊！！！
为什么不把NATURE网站给黑了 然后贴个大字报 让他们给我们中国人道歉啊！！！！！！！！！！！！
这样脏水又泼到我们身上了，网络暴民，黑客，中国这方面本来就被jw
为什么不把NATURE网站给黑了 然后贴个大字报 让他们给我们中国人道歉啊！！！！！！！！！！！！
这么干不行，会留话柄。
这么干不行，会留话柄。
re，恨就恨中国没有权威的学术杂志，不然也可以恶心恶心他们了。
为什么不把NATURE网站给黑了 然后贴个大字报 让他们给我们中国人道歉啊！！！！！！！！！！！！
不行, 学聪明点 :)
I think all the points have been made previous to this comment, so I won't re-raise them. Suffice it to say, that the editors and "journalist" of this publication make serious errors in judgment and do not gain support, popularity, or editorial credit for this piece, and it shades this particular reader's future (happenstance) readings by this publication group towards the negative.
Snide, inciteful (not insightful), and generally ignorant are the adjectives that are now attached to the writer, Ewen Callaway, and Nature's editorial team. A tawdry and cheap attempt to gain readership. Your new readers walk away from reading your material with regret, anger, and impassioned verve to right the slight you inflict.
Bad move, "professionals".
nature 确实删了，包括一个叫zhenxin zhang 写的也很好的，也被删了。我的页面正好没关，刚才把他们的评论都截下来了。
Very good！放上来看看！
说的好！
Thanks. 对这帮人太失望了。
其实平时没少黑我们中国researcher 的文章。。。
Thanks. 对这帮人太失望了。
其实平时没少黑我们中国researcher 的文章。。。
这就更过分了
Pasted below...
***********************
John Rees said:
When I saw the article this morning, I was regretful. However, I was deeply offended when Nature editors would delete the best comments with solid, objective analysis. What are you doing, editors? Is this something a respectable journal like Nature would do?
For new readers' information, I copy the deleted comments below:
Lai Jiang said:
It is a shame to see Nature, which nearly all scientists, including myself, regard as the one of the most prestigious and influential physical science magazines to publish a thinly-veiled biased article like this. Granted, this is not a peer-reviewed scientific article and did not go through the scrutiny of picking referees. But to serve as a channel for the general populous to be in touch with and appreciate sciences, the authors and editors should at least present the readers with facts within proper context, which they failed to do blatantly.
First, to compare a player's performance increase, the author used Ye's 400m IM time and her performance at the World championship 2011, which are 4:28.43 and 4:35.15 respectively, and reached the conclusion that she has got an "anomalous" increase by ~7 sec (6.72 sec). In fact she's previous personal best was 4:33.79 at Asian Games 20101. This leads to a 5.38 sec increase. In a sport event that 0.1 sec can be the difference between the gold and silver medal, I see no reason that 5.38 sec can be treated as 7 sec.
Second, as previously pointed out, Ye is only 16 years old and her body is still developing. Bettering oneself by 5 sec over two years may seem impossible for an adult swimmer, but certainly happens among youngsters. Ian Thorpe's interview revealed that his 400m freestyle time increased 5 sec between the age of 15 and 162. For regular people including the author it may be hard to imagine what an elite swimmer can achieve as he or she matures, combined with scientific and persistent training. But jumping to a conclusion that it is "anomalous" based on "Oh that's so tough I can not imagine it is real" is hardly sound.
Third, to compare Ryan Lochte's last 50m to Ye's is a textbook example of what we call to cherry pick your data. Yes, Lochte is slower than Ye in the last 50m, but (as pointed out by Zhenxi) Lochte has a huge lead in the first 300m so that he chose to not push himself too hard to conserve energy for latter events (whether this conforms to the Olympic spirit and the "use one's best efforts to win a match" requirement that the BWF has recently invoked to disqualify four badminton pairs is another topic worth discussing, probably not in Nature, though). On the contrary, Ye is trailing behind after the first 300m and relies on freestyle, which she has an edge, to win the game. Failing to mention this strategic difference, as well as the fact that Lochte is 23.25 sec faster (4:05.18) over all than Ye creates the illusion that a woman swam faster than the best man in the same sport, which sounds impossible. Put aside the gender argument, I believe this is still a leading question that implies the reader that something fishy is going on.
Fourth, another example of cherry picking. In the same event there are four male swimmers that swam faster than both Lochter (29.10 sec)3 and Ye (28.93 sec)4: Hagino (28.52 sec), Phelps (28.44 sec), Horihata (27.87 sec) and Fraser-Holmes (28.35 sec). As it turns out if we are just talking about the last 50m in a 400m IM, Lochter would not have been the example to use if I were the author. What kind of scientific rigorousness that author is trying to demonstrate here? Is it logical that if Lochter is the champion, we should assume he leads in every split? That would be a terrible way to teach the public how science works.
Fifth, which is the one I oppose the most. The author quotes Tucks and implies that a drug test can not rule out the possibility of doping. Is this kind of agnosticism what Nature really wants to educate its readers? By that standard I estimate that at least half of the peer-reviewed scientific papers in Nature should be retracted. How can one convince the editors and reviewers that their proposed theory works for every possible case? One cannot. One chooses to apply the theory to typical examples and demonstrate that in (hopefully) all scenarios considered the theory works to a degree, and that should warrant a publication, until a counterexample is found. I could imagine that the author has a skeptical mind which is critical to scientific thinking, but that would be put into better use if he can write a real peer-reviewed paper that discusses the odds of Ye doping on a highly advanced non-detectable drug that the Chinese has come up within the last 4 years (they obviously did not have it in Beijing, otherwise why not to use it and woo the audience at home?), based on data and rational derivation. This paper, however, can be interpreted as saying that all athletes are doping, and the authorities are just not good enough to catch them. That may be true, logically, but definitely will not make the case if there is ever a hearing by FINA to determine if Ye has doped. To ask the question that if it is possible to false negative in a drug test looks like a rigged question to me. Of course it is, other than the drug that the test is not designed to detect, anyone who has taken Quantum 101 will tell you that everything is probabilistic in nature, and there is a probability for the drug in an athlete's system to tunnel out right at the moment of the test. A slight change as it may be, should we disregard all test results because of it? Let???￠?￠a€????￠a€??￠s be practical and reasonable. And accept WADA is competent at its job. Her urine sample is stored for 8 years following the contest for future testing as technology advances. Innocent until proven guilty, shouldn't it be?
Sixth, and the last point I would like to make, is that the out-of-competition drug test is already in effect, which the author failed to mention. Per WADA president???￠?￠a€????￠a€??￠s press release5, drug testing for olympians began at least 6 months prior to the opening of the London Olympic. Furthermore there are 107 athletes who are banned from this Olympic for doping. That maybe the reason that ???￠?￠a€????…a€?everyone will pass at the Olympic games. Hardly anyone fails in competition testing???￠?￠a€???????? Because those who did dope are already sanctioned? The author is free to suggest that a player could have doped beforehand and fool the test at the game, but this possibility certainly is ruled out for Ye.
Over all, even though the author did not falsify any data, he did (intentionally or not) cherry pick data that is far too suggestive to be fair and unbiased, in my view. If you want to cover a story of a suspected doping from a scientific point of view, be impartial and provide all the facts for the reader to judge. You are entitled to your interpretation of the facts, and the expression thereof in your piece, explicitly or otherwise, but only showing evidences which favor your argument is hardly good science or journalism. Such an article in a journal like Nature is not an appropriate example of how scientific research or report should be done.
1http://www.fina.org/H2O/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=1241
2https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ETPUKlOwV4
3http://www.london2012.com/swimming/event/men-400m-individual-medley/phase=swm054100/index.html
4http://www.london2012.com/swimming/event/women-400m-individual-medley/phase=sww054100/index.html
5http://playtrue.wada-ama.org/news/wada-presidents-addresses-london-2012-press-conference/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wada-presidents-addresses-london-2012-press-conference
Zhenxi Zhang said:
I just want to add this: Phelps improved 4+ seconds in his 200 fly between 14-15 years old. Ian Thorpe also had a similar performance improvement. Ye is now 16. She was 160 cm in height and now 170 cm. Human biology also play a role a€“ she gets stronger and bigger naturally. Yes she can make up 5 seconds (NOT 7 seconds in the article) in a 400 IM that has more room for improvement, with good training she got in Australia.
In both the 400 IM and 200 IM finals, Ye were behind until freestyle. Well I guess there is "drug" that just enhances freestyle, but not the backstroke, breast, and fly. Does that make sense? Also, it is not professional to only mention that 'her showing in the last 50 metres, which she swam faster than US swimmer Ryan Lochte did when he won gold in the men?￠a??a?￠s 400 IM'. The whole fact is that Ye is more than 23 second slower than Lochte in 400 IM. Plus, Freestyle isn't Lochte's best leg, but it is Shiwen's best leg. Lochte had a huge lead on the field, and almost coasted to the finish. He wasn't pressured by the field to go all out that last few meters.
And before we get into the fact there's no way a woman should be able to come close to man's time for a final leg of 50m. May I present the following: Kate Ziegler set a WR in the 1500m freestyle. In the last 50m of her race she had a split of 29.27, which is ONLY 0.17s slower than Lochte final 50m. This was after she swam for 1100m longer than Lochte!
I feel the author would probably not write such a piece if Ye is an American or British. Neither country is clean from athletes caught by doping (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_performance-enhancing_drugs_in_the_Olympic_Games). Let's try not to use double standards on the great performance from countries other than US and European countries.
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以下是引用enhesaepc在8/2/2012 8:57:00 PM的发言：
为什么不把NATURE网站给黑了 然后贴个大字报 让他们给我们中国人道歉啊！！！！！！！！！！！！
这么通篇的说，虽然没证据说你杀了人，但是因为也没有证据表示你没杀人，所以祝贺你现在被释放了。..............他们是脱了裤子放屁么？写这个文章的目的，科学研究的目的就........
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