Wednesday, May 26, 2010

More on how cyclists may be cheating

Last Saturday, I posted a short discussion that referenced an article by Edmund Burke on how cyclists can avoid detection while cheating the doping rules. Yesterday's NY Times reports that doctors have figured out how to administer microdoses of EPO to cyclists such as Floyd Landis or Lance Armstrong in a way that avoids detection by the current doping tests. Apparently, this method of administering microdoses works as long as the tests are not administered at night.

Ed Burke's premise that if there is enough monetary motivation, cyclists will find a way to get away with doping is hard to dispute. This is basically the same dilemma that financial statement auditors find themselves in. When management has a high motivation for fraud, perpetrators will work very hard to be a step ahead of the auditors.

The key in doping control as in financial statement auditing is for the drug testing agencies to be unpredictable and to be using strategic reasoning to find ways to surprise the dopers. As in financial statement auditing, that is challenging. With that said, it's not impossible!

No comments:

Post a Comment