Floyd Landis, Lessons for Reporters

I found a fascinating article on how Floyd Landis is defending himself against charges that he was doping himself. Finding it hard to get past the media headlines screaming "Doping Scandal", Floyd went to an unique route to get the message out that he was innocent.

... unprecedented Internet strategy known as the “Wiki Defense” that is forcing journalists to question the global antidoping operation that they too often treated as foolproof.
The change is largely the result of his Wiki Defense, in which he posted 370 pages of his test documents online in the hope of unearthing experts and explanations for the suspicious result. “Wiki” refers to the open editing systems best embodied by Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that relies on a wisdom-of-crowds approach to verifying the accuracy of its entries. Landis is the first athlete to use the Internet in this way,

His paper dump brought in experts who showed that the laboratory processes specimens in such a way as to compromise and invalid the test.

... seemed very basic procedural errors that could cast doubt on the ability of the lab that did the tests. For instance, the lab appears to have covered up changes to entries in its documents–a contravention of basic scientific protocol where mistakes are crossed out but left visible for record-keeping purposes.

What Floyd managed to do is to show reporters they can't just assume a laboratory's report is always accurate. They also need to understand the tests and the science behind the tests.

It is part of the job of journalists to be skeptical, but in this case the risk appears to be that we applied our skepticism unevenly, giving the science (about which we know little) a pass and dismissing the protestations of innocence from a source backed into the proverbial corner (something reporters deal with all the time).

Floyd provides a good lesson to reporters. It's time they stop pursuing the sensational headline and get to the real facts of a story.