科学界权威的《自然》网站在8月1日发表该刊记者Ewen Callaway文章，题目是Why great Olympic feats raise suspicions（为什么奥运会上的优异成绩会引起怀疑）。

科学网对《自然》杂志发表的这篇文章做了介绍。《自然》杂志发表的这篇文章说，叶诗文打破该项目的世界纪录夺冠引来外界质疑，但大多是从种族和政治的角度，几乎没有从科学角度进行分析。该文认为从科学的角度来分析，伦敦奥运会中国运动员叶诗文在女子400米混合泳中的表现是不寻常的。文章分析了叶诗文的以往表现记录，指出她的奥运会成绩比2011年7月份（原文8月1日最初的版本提到2012年7月份，随后在8月3日修改为2011年7月份）同类比赛快7秒；更令人惊讶的是，在400米混合泳的最后50米，她竟比美国男运动员Ryan Lochte还要快。文章还指出，兴奋剂检测呈阴性也不能排除运动员服用禁药的可能性。运动员在训练时更有可能服用禁药，因为那时的药物检测不严格。文章最后建议建立数据库，记录运动员的比赛成绩随年龄和经验增长的变化情况，从而分析他们在比赛中取得更好成绩的可能性。此文发表后，在《自然》读者中引起强烈反响。大多数《自然》网友表示，此文荒唐并带有偏见，“如果这篇文章是以事实为基础，那么除非事实本身就是错误的”。

面对读者的激烈反应，《自然》杂志删除了部分言论，也保留了部分评论，关闭了评论功能，发表“编辑说明”，一方面对这篇文章冒犯了一部分读者感到歉意，另一方面坚持此文质疑叶诗文的基本观点——

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.

http://www.nature.com/news/why-great-olympic-feats-raise-suspicions-1.11109