原文（2012年8月4日1:57am发送）
Dear Phil,
You might have been bombarded with emails about Ewen Callaway’s
report on the Chinese Olympic gold medalist Ye Shiwen. Over the last 20
hours, I have received emails from a small fraction of those who had emailed
you.
If you wonder why a piece in a non-essential section of Nature have
brought you so much response, you should be happy to know that Chinese
readers place much more weight in Nature news reports than the rest of the
world does. If an event is related to science (even tangentially) and Nature
publishes a news report, many Chinese readers treat the Nature report more
seriously than New York Times. Chinese news media also use Nature news
pieces much more than the regular Western news media would.
The Callaway report was sloppy at the best and racially biased at the
worst: 1) the original subtitle implied cheating on Ye’s part, setting a
negative tone for the report; 2) Callaway presented two facts to establish
that Ye was strikingly anomalous, but both “facts” were wrong; 3) Callaway
did not check with experts whose opinions did not supported the doping
explanation, and thus did not provide a balance report that is the minimal
standard of fair reporting. Therefore, Callaway is at least irresponsible,
and could have jumped too quickly to imply that Chinese athletes were prone
to cheating. He has certainly not held onto the usual standard of news
reporting.
I am glad that, while I was drafting this letter, Nature may have
already noticed the bias in the original subtitle and corrected it by
changing it from “Performance profiling could help to catch cheaters in
sports” to “Performance profiling could help to dispel doubts”. A
presumption of cheating has changed to doubts.
The Callaway report presented two “facts” which made Ye Shiwen seem
more “anomalous” than she really was by stating: that she was 7 seconds
faster than herself in the same event in July 2012, and that, in the last 50
meters, she was faster than Ryan Lochte, the gold medalist of the same
event for men, with the second fastest record.
The first “fact” was wrong, while the second was misleading. 1) Ye
was only ~5 seconds faster than her own record in July, 2011, giving the 16
year old a full year rather than less than 4 weeks to improve her own record
. 2) Ye was faster than Lochte only in the freestyle, not for the entire 400
meters. Lochte’s time was the second fastest for the entire 400 meters,
for which Ye was not even close (she was more than 20 seconds slower than
Lochte in 400 meters). Ye was only at her best in freestyle and trailed
behind other women in the same event in the first 300 meters of the
individual medley. While Lochte was the fastest in 400 meters, he was slower
than 5 or 6 men in the last 50 meters of freestyle. Ye was slower than
those other men. Thus, Ye was only faster than Lochte in a style that was
her strength and his weakness. Had Callaway done a bit more home work, then
he would have had a hard time to use these “facts” to highlight the “
problem”. Had Callaway done double-checking, he would have found that other
swimmers had significantly improved their own records when they were in the
teens. Corrections of these facts would have changed the basis for the
Callaway report.
There are more facts that would have made the performance of Ye Shiwen more
understandable to the general readership, which I will not go into details
here. See Attachment 1 for an amazingly quick and well-balanced description
of Ye’s performance by Wikipedia. Signed reports in Nature should have been
better than Wikipedia. The contrast between the Callaway report and the
Wikipedia item shows that the reporter did not interview experts who had
publicly voiced different opinions.
You should have received an email from Dr.XXX, who obtained a PhD
from xxx after publishing first author papers in Nature and Nature
Neuroscience. He was awarded a prestigious fellowship for an independent
postdoc at xxx. In case his email has been buried among the hundreds
you have received, I am copying it here as Attachment 2. He had sent a copy
of his email to me and asked me to look at the issue.
There are many online posts below the Callaway report. Some students think
that a few very reasonable (and substantive) posts have been deleted. They
have sent these to me and I am including one authored by Lai Jiang as
Attachment 3 and another by Zhenxi Zhang as Attachment 4. You can see that
the anger of students and more established scientists who read Nature was
supported by facts neglected by Callaway.
One point the British often forget, but the modern Chinese do not, is that
many in the world wrongly think that the Opium Wars occurred because the
Chinese sold opium to the British. I had personally experienced this in June
(2012) when a long time friend of mine at MIT thought that way while she
and I were in Hong Kong attending a meeting.
The British have a good international image, partly because of your science
and your scientists: when every middle school student has to know Newton and
Darwin in textbooks, the entire Britain wins the respect of the world.
Nature should be proud of the tradition and prestige built by the great (and
objective) scientists, some of whom have published in Nature to make Nature
what it is today. Your prestige will be strengthened when you take steps to
repair the damage caused by your news reporters.
The British have never apologized to us about the Opium Wars and did not
show slight remorse when leaving Hong Kong in 1997 which the British forced
us to cede after the British won the Opium Wars. So the memory is rather
fresh, not just lingering from the 1840s. If Nature refuses to admit that
this report was not balanced, it will be difficult to “dispel doubts”
about British supremacy.
The Chinese suffer from a poor image. We also know that we have many
unsolved problems that we are ashamed of, including cheating. More and more
Chinese are receptive to legitimate and balanced criticism, as evidenced by
our public apology for our faults at the badminton games during the London
Olympic. But we are sensitive to ill-founded criticism with apparent biases.
Ye Shiwen is only a 16 year old and should have enjoyed her moment of
professional achievement. When she is known to have passed multiple tests
before and during the London Olympic and there is no evidence to accuse her,
it is certainly unjustified when the negative opinions were highly
publicized but the positive ones were not, especially in a journal like
Nature.
I hope that you will set record straight and publish opinions that balance
the Callaway report.
Yi
Yi Rao, Ph.D.
Professor of Neurobiology, Peking University School of Life Sciences
Beijing, China
Attachment 1 Wikipedia summary of the Ye Shiwen performance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_Shiwen
2012 Summer Olympics
At the 2012 Summer Olympics, in the third heat of the Women's 400m
Individual Medley she swam 4:31.73, an improvement of 2 seconds over her
2010 Asian Games time. In the final she won the gold medal and broke the
world record (held by Stephanie Rice since the 2008 Summer Olympics) with a
time of 4:28.43, an improvement of a further 3 seconds, swimming the last
50m in 28.93 seconds.[7][8]
Ye's time over the final 50m was compared to that of Ryan Lochte, the winner
of the corresponding men's event, who swam it just under a fifth of a
second slower in 29.10. However, commentators pointed out that these two
times were misleading outside of their proper contexts. Lochte's overall
time was 23.25 seconds faster, 4:05.18, than Ye's, as were the times of
three other competitors in the men's 400m IM. Equally, as Chinese team
officials also pointed out, Ye's race was a very different one to Lochte's.
Lochte, when he had hit the freestyle leg of the race, had a comfortable
lead over his opponents, whereas Ye was still a body length behind U.S.
swimmer Elizabeth Beisel at that point in her race.[6][9] Phil Lutton,
sports editor of the Brisbane Times, observed that Ye, in that position, "
had to hit the burners to motor past Beisel".[6] Freelance sports journalist
Jens Weinreich described it as Ye having "lit the Turbo" at that point in
the race.[8] Australia's Rice, a fellow competitor in the race, described Ye
's performance as "insanely fast", and commented on Ye's past racing form: "
I was next to her at worlds in the 200m IM last year and she came home over
the top of me in that freestyle leg and I'm not exactly a bad freestyler. So
she's a gun freestyler."[10][11][12]
Phil Lutton pointed out that Ye had grown from 160cm at the time of the 2010
Games to 172cm at the 2012 Olympics, and that "[t]hat sort of difference in
height, length of stroke and size of hand leads to warp-speed improvement".
[6] In support of the same point Ian Thorpe pointed out that he improved his
own personal best in the 400m freestyle by several seconds between the ages
of 15 and 16.[13] Adrian Moorhouse similarly observed that he made a
personal best improvement of four seconds at age 17 as the result of a
growth spurt.[13]
In the 200m IM, three days later, Ye again was behind, in third place, at
the start of the final leg of the race, having been in fourth place at the
end of the first leg.[14][15] But she again overtook her competitors in the
freestyle leg, finishing with the time 2:07.57.[14][15] In preliminary heats
she had swum 2:08.90, the same time that she achieved in the 2011 World
Championships and her tenth best time of all time, with splits of 28.16, 1:
00.54, and 1:38.17.[16]
Attachment 2 Email by Dr. Liming Wang, UC Berkeley
From: Liming Wang
Date: Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 11:26 AM
Subject: Protest to a Nature article "Why great Olympic feats raise
suspicions"
To: exec@nature.com
Philip Campbell, Ph.D. and Editor-in-Chief of Nature,
I am a neurobiologist in University of xxx, USA. I (as well
as many of my colleagues) found an article that appeared in Nature
yesterday, titled “Why great Olympic feats raise suspicions”, completely
groundless and extremely disturbing.
In that article, Mr. Callaway questioned China’s 16-year-old swimmer Ye
Shiwen, who won two gold medals in women’s 200-meter and 400-meter
individual medley (400 IM) in London Olympics, and said her record-breaking
performance “anomalous”. However, the evidence he used to support his
reckless statement is simply groundless.
As many have pointed out in the major media, it is not uncommon for an elite
and young swimmer to increase his/her performance in a relatively short
time window. An Australian swimmer and Olympics gold medalist, Ian Thorpe,
said that he improved his 400-meter performance by 5 seconds around same age
as Ye. UK’s Adrian Moorhouse, a Seoul Olympics gold medalist, also
testified openly that he “improved four seconds” at the age of 17. He
also called the suspicions around Ye’s performance “sour grape”.
The other point that Ewen Callaway used to support his accusation, that Ye
swam faster than US swimmer Ryan Lochte in the last 50 meters when he won
gold in the men’s 400 IM, is unfortunately also unprovoked. First of all,
Ryan Lochte did not perform the best in the final 50 meters. He only ranked
5th in the last 50 meters, at 29’’10, which was significantly slower than
Japan’s Yuya Horihata (27”87) and three other swimmers competing in the
same event. (Ye’s performance was 28”93). It could be that Lochte was away
ahead of his competitors in the first three splits so he did not have to
strike too hard in the final 50 meters, or that he had used up all his
strength. So one cannot only look at the final 50 meters of Ye and Lochte
and conclude that Ye swam faster than a men’s champion. In fact, Ye’s
record-breaking performance in women’s 400 IM (4’28”43) was significantly
slower than Lochte’s (4’5”18). Secondly, even if one only looks at the
performance of the final 50 meters, women can certainly surpass men and Ye’
s performance shouldn’t be accused as “anomalous”. For example, in last
year’s World Championships in Shanghai, UK’s swimmer Rebecca Adlington won
a gold medal in women’s 800-meter freestyle. In that event her performance
in her final 50 meters (28”91) was faster than both Ye and Lochte in
London.
It is worth pointing out that all the facts I listed above can be easily
tracked in major media and from the Internet. With just a little effort Ewen
Callaway could have avoided raising groundless and disturbing charges
against China’s young athlete in a professional scientific journal.
Even worse, Ewen Callaway further argued that Ye’s clean drug test in
Olympics ”doesn’t rule out the possibility of doping”, implying that Ye
might dope “during training” and escape the more rigorous tests during
Olympics. Such a statement is disrespectful to Ye and all professional
athletes. Following this logic, Mr. Callaway can easily accuse any athlete
“doping” without having any evidence; and ironically, according to him,
those being accused have no way to prove themselves innocent: even if they
pass all rigorous drug test, they can still be doping at a different time,
or even be dope some unidentified drugs! I cannot help wondering if
presumption of innocence (innocent until proven guilty) still has people’s
belief nowadays, or it is considered outdated in Nature, or in UK?
Last but not least, although Mr. Callaway claimed that he was attempting to
discuss science, instead of “racial and political undertones”. Readers can
easily smell the hidden (yet clearly implied) racism and discrimination.
Yes, we may all agree that better methodology for drug test (such as “
biological passport”) is needed for the anti-doping effort. But why the
stunning performance from this 16-year-old gifted swimmer can lead to such a
proposal? Was Mr. Callaway suggesting that Ye was found drug-clean simply
because the drug detection method was not advanced enough? At the end of the
article, Mr. Callaway even quoted “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.” So athletes from China, despite their talent and training
, are supposed to perform bad and never break world records, otherwise they
deserve to be questioned, suspected, and accused? Backed up by technological
progress and better training/supporting systems, athletes worldwide are
maximizing their potentials. World records are being refreshed every year.
USA’s Michael Phelps just won a record 19th medals in Olympics and he has
broken numerous swimming world records. Shall we also “ask a question or
two” about his “anomalous” performance?
Nature is considered one of the most prestigious scientific journals in the
world; many scientists, including myself, chose Nature to publish their best
work (I myself have co-authored three papers published in Nature and Nature
sister journals). However, Mr. Callaway’s article, which is not only
misleading, but also full of racial and political bias, has tainted Nature’
s reputation in the scientific community, and among the general audience.
Unless Nature takes further actions (e.g. publicly retract this article and
apologize to Ye and all athletes), I hereby decide not to send my work to
Nature any more-and believe me I will not be the last one to protest.
xxx, PhD
xxx
Attachment 3 Post by Lai Jiang following the Callaway report
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.
1. 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.ph ... per&Itemid=1241
2http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ETPUKlOwV4
3http://www.london2012.com/swimmi ... wm054100/index.html
4http://www.london2012.com/swimmi ... ww054100/index.html
5http://playtrue.wada-ama.org/new ... 12-press-conference
Attachment 4 Post by Zhenxi Zhang following the Callaway report
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
The comments below are a sample of the outrage with which this news story was greeted. We are sorry that it has offended so many readers, but we stand by the piece. We strongly reject suggestions that it was motivated by bias or racism; our intention was to investigate the science behind a controversy arising from the current Olympic Games. The first paragraph states that Ye has never had a positive drug test and notes that much of the discussion of her win “has been tinged with racial and political undertones”.
The article is a fair-minded look at a controversy that we did not initiate. It asks whether new developments in performance monitoring could dispel the unfortunate suspicions that the most extraordinary athletic performance raises these days, whatever the nationality of the athlete.
We are no longer accepting comments on this news story, and because of the volume of comments, some early posts have disappeared. We intentionally deleted only those posts that violated our Community Guidelines.
问题是这篇文章已经不是真正意义上的新闻报道，完全没有站在中立的立场上看待问题，除了开头点了一句“racial and political undertones”，行的还是那些种族及政治偏见的龌龊文。竞技运动本来就受技巧和体能两方面制约，16岁的小叶子正处在体能和技术双方面趋于成熟的黄金年龄，成绩在一年内取得突破有什么了不起。还有什么药检不能完全杜绝禁药，莫须有已经到了令人发指的地步了。又扯什么几把跟踪监测高水平运动员，不要告诉我mlgb这帮货一年前就知道小叶子今年能爆发。为什么同样的严厉标准和放大镜不会施与其他欧美天才什么费尔普斯，罗切特，甚至非人博尔特那样的超凡表现也没有这么多货跳出来评论的
EDITORS’ NOTE (updated 6 August 2012)
This article has drawn an extraordinary level of outraged response. The volume of comments has been so great that our online commenting system is unable to cope: it deletes earlier posts as new ones arrive. We much regret this ongoing problem. The disappearance of some cogent responses to the story has fuelled suspicions that Nature is deliberately censoring the strongest criticisms. This is absolutely not the case: Nature welcomes critically minded discussion of our content. (We intentionally removed only a few comments that violated our Community Guidelines by being abusive or defamatory, including several that offensively stereotyped the many Chinese readers who commented on the story.)
Many of the commenters have questioned why we changed the original subtitle of the story from “‘Performance profiling’ could help catch sports cheats” to “‘Performance profiling’ could help dispel doubts”. The original version of the title was unfair to the swimmer Ye Shiwen and did not reflect the substance of the story. We regret that the original appeared in the first place. We also regret that the original story included an error about the improvement in Ye’s time for the 400-metre individual medley: she improved by 7 seconds since July 2011, not July 2012. We have corrected the error.
We apologize to our readers for these errors, and for the unintended removal of comments because of technical issues with our commenting system. Below we reproduce one of the most thorough and thoughtful of the hundreds of responses we received. Beneath it, we continue with our response.
The news story was triggered by a debate that was already active, concerning the scale of Ye Shiwen’s victory. Such debates have arisen over many outstanding feats in the past, by athletes from many countries, and it is wrong to suggest, as many of the critics do, that we singled her out because of her nationality.
The story’s intention as an Explainer was to examine how science can help resolve debates over extraordinary performances, not to examine those performance statistics in detail. Several analyses done by others convinced us that it was fair to characterize Ye’s performance as ‘anomalous’ — in the sense that it was statistically unusual. But we acknowledge that the combination of errors discussed above and the absence of a more detailed discussion of the statistics (which with hindsight we regret) gave the impression that we were supporting accusations against her, even though this was emphatically not our intention. For that, we apologize to our readers and to Ye Shiwen. Tim Appenzeller Chief Magazine Editor, Nature Philip Campbell Editor-in-Chief, Nature
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