a new article in ProPublica on Friday recent reports surrounding Alberto Salazar and the Nike Oregon Project is that Galen Rupp was administered a banned substance—testosterone—when he was 16 years old. It’s an accusation based on a 2002 document stating that Rupp was “presently on prednisone and testosterone medication.”

Rupp and Salazar have issued statements denying any wrongdoing, but at first glance, it looks like a clear-cut doping violation, revealed in the reports released last week by the BBC and ProPublica. However, the phrasing is odd, said two physicians consulted by Runner's World Newswire, neither of whom have a connection to the controversy. They believe that if Rupp was taking banned testosterone, the word “medication” probably would not have been used.

“Whoever wrote the notation specified prednisone rather than saying, ‘steroids,’” said Brad Aiken, M.D., a specialist in physical medicine and rehabilitation, in an email. “Obviously we can’t be sure, but I would think that if an athlete told their physician they were taking testosterone, that doctor would have documented  ‘testosterone’ in their records, and if an athlete stated using a supplement to boost their testosterone, the physician may well have written ‘testosterone medication.’”

Email messages to Salazar and Rupp’s agent, Ricky Simms, seeking comment for this story were not returned.

It’s a subtle difference in language, but some experts agree that noting “testosterone medication” could mean that Rupp was taking medication related to his testosterone, such as a supplement, which would not be considered a doping violation. Prednisone is a corticosteroid that decreases inflammation in the body, used to treat conditions such as allergies and breathing disorders. It is a drug banned in competition without a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) but athletes can legally take it out of competition.

Raghav Wusirika, M.D., a kidney specialist at Oregon Health & Science University, has read a lot of medical charts in his career and said it’s difficult to decipher the document without more context.

“It’s pretty vague,” he said, in a text message. “It’s odd how it’s written and I’m not 100 percent sure it was written by a doctor, because [on a chart] I’d always list doses. That doesn’t make it true or not true, but it’s written in more of a layman way than most medical documents.”

Indeed, according to the ProPublica report, the document came from the Nike laboratory and was obtained by Steve Magness in 2011, when he was assistant coach at the Oregon Project (he left the Project in 2012 and is now a coach at the University of Houston and a Running Times columnist, which is owned by Rodale, the parent company of Runner’s World). The chart, which Magness photographed, was part of a collection of documents detailing athletes’ blood testing records, used to find out how they responded to altitude training.

When Magness questioned Salazar about the notation on Rupp’s chart, he said Salazar called it an error and blamed the mistake on Loren Myhre, Ph.D., the Nike lab physiologist who died in 2012 after battling ALS.

When asked by ProPublica to comment on the document, Salazar and Rupp said the notation was incorrect and referred to a nutritional supplement called Testoboost that Rupp was taking to counter unspecified negative effects of prednisone. Testoboost is a dietary supplement marketed to men who want to increase their testosterone levels, lean muscle mass, and sex drive.

“In claiming it’s a mistake, you’re claiming that the top exercise scientist at Nike made a grade-school-like error,” Magness said in an email to Newswire. “As a current PhD student in the same field, who’s been grilled about keeping a detailed and accurate lab notebook, it blows my mind that someone as experienced as Dr. Myhre would mistake a substance that he would know was banned—testosterone—for a simple dietary supplement.”

Magness went on to explain that “if it meant anything other than testosterone, a good scientist would have used the name of the supplement, or used the terminology ‘supplement’ to clearly distinguish the meaning; not the term ‘medication,’ which commonly refers to a drug of some sort, not a dietary supplement, which is what testosterone and prednisone both are: a prescription drug and medication.”

interprets the note to mean “Medications: prednisone and testosterone.&rdquo Newswire was administered a banned substance&mdash.

“One reason we pressed hard for a response on this was exactly because we felt it would not be right to publish it without a response,” he said in an email, “and then we printed the response. We also printed the different response that [Magness] says he received when he raised concern to Salazar at the time. We received no specific response to other questions about testosterone or the testing of testosterone in the lab to see how much would trigger a positive test.”

Two other doctors contacted by Newswire found lesser degrees of ambiguity in the notation.

William Roberts, M.D., medical director for the Twin Cities Marathon and past president of the American College of Sports Medicine, said the failure to list doses is unusual, adding that it would also be traditional to list routes of administration. “This is a very cryptic note,” Roberts said in a phone interview.

Editor’s Note: Pro Runners Ask: Is My Agent Worth the Fee, a senior writer for Australian Sprinter, 16, Runs Record-Breaking 200m column for Runner’s World, interprets the note to mean “Medications: prednisone and testosterone.”

“I couldn’t say with 100 percent certainty that’s what it means,” he said. “But that’s what it means to me.”

Jack Taunton, M.D., a sports medicine professor at the University of British Columbia, met Mhyre before he died and called him “an excellent altitude physiologist and very meticulous.”

“The notation [was] made by an exercise physiologist who [knew] the difference between an herb and testosterone,” he said in an email, “and my interpretation is that this is referring to testosterone.”

Supporters of the Oregon Project have called for patience as the facts come forward. Bob Williams, an Oregon Project assistant coach in 2004 and 2005, has urged people not to rush to judgment. “Al will come forward, explain his side of these allegations, and will clear his name and Galen’s [and] answer all the questions,” Williams said in an interview with Newswire. “It’s time to completely clear up these allegations, which I feel confident he will do.”

Epstein published a new article in ProPublica on Friday quoting three more anonymous former Oregon Project athletes who said that Salazar encouraged them to take unneeded prescription medications, bringing the total to 17 people formerly affiliated with the group who have reported similar experiences to the BBC and ProPublica. One runner described having four thyroid tests in a period of months, despite a lack of symptoms, and receiving a prescription for Cytomel after a test result was sub-optimal, but with the normal range.

As for Magness, he said that reflecting on the evidence presented in the BBC program, nobody should ignore the anonymous source “Mike,” identified as a former Oregon Project athlete. Mike said that Myhre suggested that he use testosterone after complaining of fatigue, “demonstrating that Myhre clearly knew the difference between a supplement and testosterone,” Magness said.

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Editor’s Note: Pro Runners Ask: Is My Agent Worth the Fee, a senior writer for Running Times, All About 75 Hard: Alberto Salazar’s Guide to Running and Alberto Salazar’s Guide to Road Racing.