In addition to the ample evidence of dodgy science in anti-doping, this quote from @wada_ama spokesman @JamesFitz501 is key: “the U.S. has been consistent in its strongly held position that WADA should keep cannabis on the List”
The US government took credit for getting marijuana on the (then) IOC prohibited list as a matter of national anti-drug policy despite greater concern of athletes and officials on actual performance-enhancing drugs
The use of (what would become) WADA by the Clinton Administration as an element of domestic drug policy is further documented in this Oct, 1999 Senate Hearing govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CH…
In Oct 2000, President Bill Clinton issued an Executive Order establishing a White House Task Force on Drug Use in Sports: presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/exec…
All of this history clearly indicates that the U.S. saw WADA as an instrument to pursue domestic drug policies, using athletes as "role models" and thus the US required that drugs at the focus of policy (performance enhancing or not) be regulated in sport ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digi…
WADA however requires a substance/method on its prohibited list meet 2/3 criteria:
performance enhancing
unsafe
violates "spirit of sport"
There is no category of "in support of US drug policies"
So evidence had to be created to support marijuana inclusion on prohibited list
It was co-authored by 2 WADA scientists and 1 scientist who the US government appointed to the committee that creates the WADA prohibited list!
This is "policy-based evidence"
and a major, major COI
Here (via @NYT) is an example of WADA/USG playing a bit loose with the evidence reported in that 2011 paper:
And another example
And despite there being more recent research (2020) conducted by independent researchers @wada_ama spokesperson @JamesFitz501:
"Mr. Fitzgerald said that the WADA authors “stand by” the 2011 scientific analysis, published in the journal Sports Medicine" ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
This is course not the first instance of a sports organization using dodgy science produced by in-house researchers/advisors to produce evidence for a preferred policy: link.springer.com/article/10.100…
But it does show the length to which @wada_ama has been (and apparently still is) willing to go to appease US gov't by apparently violating its own procedures supported by flawed science -- this just makes WADA look like a political tool
I'd guess that there is a lot of shake-my-damn-head going on within WADA now that the US gov't has apparently reversed course on the inclusion of marijuana on the prohibited list ft.com/content/57a868…
If WADA reconsiders cannabis on the prohibted list no one will look good -- the USG, WADA, USADA or the advisors who are apparently doing the bidding of the decision makers that they are ostensibly advising
Bottom line:
What a mess!
/END
A few more details, adding to this thread
2008 GW Bush WH ONDCP bragging to Congress about successful opposition to calls for removal of marijuana from WADA prohibited list: govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CR…
"There was no testing for marijuana at any Olympic Games before 1988." doi.org/10.1016/j.peh.…
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The idea it was perfect under Democrats, as @afreedma & other advocacy journos suggest, is simply wrong
The most recent NCA was totally capture by interest groups and companies that would benefit from the report - UCS, TNC, EDF, CAP, Stripe etc
Below just a few of its authors
@afreedma The head of the NCA5 stated publicly that she would never cite our work in the assessment, even though our work is by far the most cited research on economic losses in the US associated with floods, hurricanes, tornadoes
🧵Let's take a quick look at the implications of the regulations that have followed from the 2009 EPA endangerment finding
According to @C2ES_org the 2021 GHG standards for light vehicles would reduce projected CO2 emissions by a cumulative 3.1 billion tons to 2050 c2es.org/content/regula…
Over the next 25 years the world would emit 925 gigatons of CO2 assuming constant 2025 emissions and ~690Gt assuming emissions are cut in half by 2050
That means that the projected impact of the regulations would reduce global emissions by 0.0003% (constant) & 0.0004% (halved)
The idea that CO2 can be regulated out of the economy is flawed
If the purpose of CO2 regulation is to create a shadow carbon tax, then it is a horribly inefficent way to do that
Once again, all this leads us back to Congress and the need for smart energy & climate policy
🧵
The percentage of a percentage trick is increasingly common & leads to massive confusion
Here a undetectable difference of 0.01 events per year per decade is presented as the difference between a 31% and 66.4% increase (in the *likelihood* of the event, not the event itself)
The resulting confusion is perfectly predictable
Here is a reporter (NPR) explaining completely incorrectly:
"The phenomenon has grown up to 66% since the mid-20th century"
False
Also, the numbers in the text and figure do not appear to match up
I asked Swain about this over at BlooSkeye
A Frankenstein dataset results from splicing together two time series found online
Below is an example for US hurricane damage 1900-2017
Data for 1980-2017 was replaced with a different time series in the green box
Upwards trend results (red ---)
Claim: Due to climate change!
The errors here are so obvious and consequential that it is baffling that the community does not quickly correct course
The IPCC AR6 cited a paper misusing the Frankenstein hurricane loss dataset to suggest that NOAA's gold standard hurricane "best track" dataset may be flawed
JFC - Using flawed economic loss data to suggest that direct measurements of hurricanes are in error!
We’ve reached the point where an IPCC author is openly rejecting the conclusions of the IPCC out of concern over how their political opposition is correctly interpreting the AR6
The integrity of the IPCC on extreme events is now under attack
The IPCC explains that a trend in a particular variable is DETECTED if it is outside internal variability and judged with >90% likelihood
For most (not all) metrics of extreme weather detection has not been achieved
That’s not me saying that, but IPCC AR6
The IPCC also assesses that for most (but not all) metrics of extreme weather the signal of a change in climate will not emerge from internal variability with high confidence (ie, >90%) by 2050 or 2100, even assuming the most extreme changes under RCP8.5