Did I miss it?
It sounds to me like hte actual claim in ht ebody of the article is that there are no clinical studies.
That is a far cry from a study that has failed to show that EPO is effective.
And going from the other side I don't think the folks who actually understand doping claim that EPO or anything else is a magic bullet, somethign that turns a smuck into a champion. Instead the claim is that as part of a training rutine it can increase performance by 1-5%. Of course when a 22 day race is won by 5 minutes or less 1% can be pretty huge.