Malibu, Calif. ? The witness wagged his finger, wouldn’t let anyone get a word in edgewise and warned everyone not to stake lives and careers on the basis of shaky scientific data.

Floyd Landis?

No, Dr. Wolfram Meier-Augenstein, a spike-haired, jeans-wearing expert with a pinky ring and German accent who proved Monday that, indeed, not all dense scientific testimony has to be boring.

Flown to California in a private jet at Landis’ expense, then whisked away just as quickly so he could make his return flight home to Ireland, Meier-Augenstein dominated most of the 81â2 hours of testimony.

That delayed Landis’ return to the witness stand for his cross-examination, now scheduled for today, the eighth day of a nine-day arbitration hearing. On Saturday, Landis told his story during friendly questioning, saying “it wouldn’t serve any purpose for me to cheat and win the Tour, because I wouldn’t be proud of it.”

A three-man arbitration panel will decide whether to uphold the Tour de France champion’s positive doping test, which would make him the first person in the 104-year history of the race to have his title stripped because of a doping offense.

On Monday, it was Landis’ witnesses who spelled out the case that the positive test after his Stage 17 comeback ride last year was based on faulty scientific data.

“I’m terribly sorry, but if someone’s life depends on it, his career depends on it, you don’t go on assumptions,” said Meier-Augenstein, an expert in the kind of testing that produced Landis’ positive result.

He said the process of trying to analyze what he said was sloppy data was akin to “shooting fish in a barrel.”