This month, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) dropped a bombshell on the athletics world. In a scathing 335-page report issued on 9 November, the independent international agency alleged the existence of a far-reaching doping programme in Russian track and field that implicated government officials, sporting federations, coaches, athletes, scientists and doctors. As a result of Russia’s widespread and institutionalized doping programme, the 2012 Olympic Games in London were effectively “sabotaged”, WADA concluded.

Russian athletes and coaches have subsequently been suspended from international track-and-field competitions by the International Association of Athletics Federations, whose laissez-faire policies over the years contributed to the scandal, according to WADA. There is a real possibility that Russian athletes will be banned from the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Science, some argue, can lead the way in achieving clean, or at least cleaner, sport. In the face of improved tests to detect doping, it will become harder for athletes to ingest performance-enhancing drugs without getting caught. Many say that the answer might lie with the biological passport, which looks for changes in blood chemistry from an individual’s ‘baseline’ profile that may be indicative of doping. Suspect blood profiles have been used to nab cheats in professional cycling and endurance sports such as biathlons. And there have been claims from scientists at cycling’s international federation, the UCI — itself subject to allegations of misconduct — that rampant blood doping became less common in the pro peloton (the elite professional cycling circuit) after biological passports were introduced.

There is no doubt that science can play a major part in anti-doping efforts. But this can only happen once a governance system is in place that has a genuine interest in clean sport. A series of doping scandals has shown that science is useless at catching cheats in a culture that doesn’t really want to catch them — and in many cases is being used to help them.

Sports that haven’t been roiled by doping scandals may not be looking hard enough.

Sophisticated biological passports are futile in a culture that encourages a leading anti-doping scientist to destroy blood and urine samples by the hundreds, while extorting money from athletes to do so. This is what WADA’s report alleges of Grigory Rodchenkov, the former head of Russia’s leading anti-doping lab. And the UCI looked the other way as Lance Armstrong doped his way to seven successive (and now rescinded) Tour de France victories, according to a report issued this year by an independent commission appointed by the UCI.

Sports that haven’t been roiled by doping scandals may not be looking hard enough. Financial incentives such as corporate sponsorships, broadcasting rights and merchandizing have the potential to discourage strong and independent anti-doping programmes. Just look at professional cycling, which has been forced to confront its massive doping problems. The sport’s popularity has suffered, and spectacular performances such as those of Britain’s Chris Froome now raise just as many suspicions as celebrations. Just imagine if, during an inter­national tennis tournament, a 150-m.p.h. serve raised eyebrows rather than awe.

There will be calls for more and better anti-doping tests in the run-up to next year’s summer Olympics in Rio and in other high-profile competitions. These are genuinely needed, because dopers tend to be a step ahead. Officials will hail their cutting-edge laboratories full of gleaming mass spectrometers and haemocytometers, and brag about how many urine and blood tests these can process each day — never mind that savvy athletes tend to dope out of competition and in tiny doses that are nearly impossible to detect.

If past attitudes are anything to go by, we can expect officials to hide behind science, while doing little to root out the fundamental problems that allow systemic sports doping to thrive. As Russia’s doping scandal shows us, it is much easier to change a test tube than it is to change a culture.