A matter of mind-set in the interpretation of forensic application

Doping prevalence in competitive sport: Evidence synthesis with “best practice” recommendations and reporting guidelines from the WADA Working Group on Doping Prevalence

“…The same applies to response-time based implicit measures (e.g., Autobiographical Implicit Association Test [137], which are pursued as a measure free of socially desirable responding. Overwhelming evidence indicates that implicit estimates are poor indicators of actual behavior by members of the group [9]. Given the difference between what doping prevalence attempts measure and what indirect proxy methods actually measure, the term doping prevalence would inaccurately represent data gathered through indirect estimates.…”

“…Assuming that respondents do not have the accurate information, their responses to this question is a guess that is heavily influenced by an egocentric bias. Projected prevalence of a behavior is on one hand influenced by the respondents' environment and beliefs; and on the other hand, by the behavior in question [9]. Undesirable behavior that shared with others tends to be overestimated in a phenomenon known as the "false consensus effect" [138], whereas shared proportion of desirable behavior is typically underestimated, in a phenomenon known as "uniqueness bias" [139].…”

‘Clean athlete status’ cannot be certified: Calling for caution, evidence and transparency in ‘alternative’ anti-doping systems

“…Nevertheless, the promise that clean status can be 'achieved' through compliance with at least seven of the nine levels of the proposed "multi-tiered verification of clean sports authentication"comprising behavioural, psychological and physiological indicators of dopinghas no scientific evidence base. Criticisms of doping-related psychometric tests as diagnostic tools in an earlier iteration of the Clean Protocol TM (Petróczi et al, 2015a(Petróczi et al, , 2015b) holding, we raise further concerns with the revised protocol here.…”

“…Furthermore, it is unclear how the proposed cut-off values for scores derived using these measures are to indicate 'clean' status, or how these were established. This element was challenged five years ago (Petróczi et al, 2015a;2015b). Similarly, social desirability tests (e.g., Crowne & Marlowe, 1960;Paulus, 1989;Stoebel, 1999) are designed to assess propensity for impression management and/or socially desirable responses, and should be co-administered with other psychometric scales (Leite & Nazari, 2017;Holden & Flekken, 2017;Paulhus, 2017;Perinelli & Gremigni, 2016).…”

‘Clean athlete status’ cannot be certified: Calling for caution, evidence and transparency in ‘alternative’ anti-doping systems

“…Furthermore, it is unclear how the proposed cut-off values for scores derived using these measures are to indicate 'clean' status, or how these were established. This element was challenged five years ago (Petróczi et al, 2015a;2015b). Similarly, social desirability tests (e.g., Crowne & Marlowe, 1960;Paulus, 1989;Stoebel, 1999) are designed to assess propensity for impression management and/or socially desirable responses, and should be co-administered with other psychometric scales (Leite & Nazari, 2017;Holden & Flekken, 2017;Paulhus, 2017;Perinelli & Gremigni, 2016).…”