【转贴公社】 饶毅致《自然》杂志总编的信：有关叶诗文的新闻报道

http://blog.sciencenet.cn/home.php?mod=space&uid=2237&do=blog&id=598917

英文原信附后，大意如下：
斐尔,
你可能因Ewen Callaway对叶诗文的报道而被email狂炸，过去二十小时，给你email的人里面小部分也给我来信。
如果你奇怪《自然》非本质部分一篇报道为何带来这么大的反应，你应该高兴中文读者比世界其他读者更看重你们的新闻报道，与科学相关的（即使关系很小）也可能重于《纽约时报》，中文媒体报道用你们的新闻也远多于一般西方媒体用你们的新闻。
Callaway报道说的好听是草率、说的难听是种族偏见：1)最初的副标题暗示叶可能舞弊;
2)Callaway用了两件事实说明叶惊人地异常，而两件都错了;
3)Callaway没咨询意见不同的专家，导致报道不平衡，低于公平报道的最低标准。所以，Callaway至少不负责任，可能太快就暗示中国运动员容易舞弊。他肯定没有达到新闻报道的通常标准。
我很高兴看到在我草拟此信的过程中，《自然》可能意识到原副标题的偏见，将之由"成绩追踪记录有助于抓体育舞弊者"更正为"成绩追踪记录有助于驱散疑问"。舞弊的前设改为疑问。
Callaway报道用的两个"事实"让叶诗文看起来比真实的要更"异常"：说她比自己在2012年7月的记录要快7秒，说她在最后五十米比男子冠军Ryan
Lochte还要快，而后者是男子第二快的世界纪录。
第一个"事实"错了，第二个误导。1)叶比自己只快5秒，而此前她的记录创于2011年、不是2012年，这位16岁运动员用了一年而不是少于4周刷新自己。2)叶只在混合泳400米中最后自由泳一段比Lochte快，而非整个400米。Lochte在400米是世界第二快的记录，叶在400米丝毫不能接近他（慢了二十多秒)。叶只是自由泳最强，而在前300米落后于好些女选手。虽然Lochte在400米很快，他在最后50米的自由泳慢于五、六位男选手。叶最后五十米自由泳也慢于那些男子。所以，叶只在她自己的强项而他的弱项快于Lochte。如果Callaway多做的功课，他就难以用这些"事实"来使"问题"醒目。如果Callaway多查询，他就能发现其他游泳运动员也曾在十几岁发育阶段显著提高记录。这些事实更正后，Callaway的报道就没基础。
还有好些事实，可以让一般读者更理解叶诗文的成绩，我不在此赘述。可以参见《附件1》，wikipedia对叶的成绩有一个相当快而公平的描述。署名的《自然》报道应该优于Wikipedia。Callaway报道与Wikipedia条目的差别也显示该记者未采访已经公开提出不同意见的专家。
你应该收到了王立铭博士的一封email。他在发表多篇《自然》和《自然神经科学》的第一作者论文后，获加州理工学院的博士，并因此得到有声誉的奖学金到伯克利加州大学做独立的博士后。万一他给你的email埋在你收到的成百上千邮件中，我将其拷贝为《附件2》。他email给了我、要我看看此事。
Callaway在线报道下面有很多跟帖讨论。有些学生以为有些很有道理（且有实质内容）的讨论被删了，他们寄给了我。我选Lai
Jiang的一份为《附件3》，Zhenxi
Zhang的为《附件4》。你们可以看到学生和一些更有经历的《自然》读者不高兴是有依据的，而这些为Callaway忽略。
英国人常忘记、而现代华人不易忘记，世界上很多人以为鸦片战争是中国人卖鸦片给英国人。我自己6月份（这确是2012年）又经历一次，我和一位老朋友（麻省理工学院教授）在香港开会时，发现她竟然也是这么认为。
英国人的国际形象好，部分原因是你们的科学和科学家：当全世界中学生都要从教科书学牛顿和达尔文时，英国赢得了世界的尊重。《自然》应该以这些伟大（且客观）的科学家建立的传统和声誉为自豪。他们其中有些曾在《自然》发表过论文，才有《自然》的今天。你们如果采取措施修复你们的新闻记者造成的损害，可以加强你们的声誉。
英国人从来没因鸦片战争对我们道歉，即使在1997年离开香港时也未显示丝毫悔意。而香港是英国在鸦片战争后强迫我们割让的土地。所以，记忆是犹新的，而不仅是1840年代的残余。如果《自然》拒绝承认此报道不公平，可能很难"驱散"英国至上的"疑问"（借用《自然》对叶报道的词汇）。
中国人受形象不佳的牵累。我们也知道我们还有很多感到羞耻的未解决的问题，包括舞弊。越来越多的中国人能接受合理与平衡的批评，我们在伦敦奥运会为我们羽毛球的问题公开道歉就是证据。但我们对缺依据、有偏见的批评还很敏感。叶诗文不过是个16岁的年轻人，本该为自己职业生涯的成就而满心欢喜。当已知她通过了奥运会赛前、赛中多次测试，而毫无证据指责她的时候，还有很多媒体，特别是《自然》这样的刊物，渲染负面舆论多于正面，当然令人深感不平。
我希望你们能澄清记录，发表平衡Callaway报道的意见。

毅
北京大学生命科学学院 神经生物学教授 饶毅

附件1 Wikipedia对叶诗文的总结
附件2 伯克利加州大学王立明的email
附件3 Lai Jiang在Callaway报道后的意见
附件 4 Zhenxi Zhang在Callaway报道后的意见



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
has 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 support 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. Liming Wang, who obtained a
PhD from Caltech after publishing first author papers in Nature and
Nature Neuroscience. He was awarded a prestigious fellowship for an
independent postdoc at Berkeley. 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 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 California, Berkeley, 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.

Liming Wang, PhD
Bowes Research Fellow
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology
University of California, Berkeley
CA 94720 USA

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.
<!--[if !supportLists]-->1. <!--[endif]-->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? LetÃ￠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 presidentÃ￠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
Ã￠a‚¬Å"everyone will pass at the Olympic games. Hardly anyone fails in
competition testingÃ￠a‚¬Â ? 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


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 " 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 menÃ￠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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