Australia has thrown away the chance to be a world leader in fighting drugs in sport, angry researchers and former sports administrators said.

They blamed perversity and stupidity for the federal government's decision four years ago to cut back Australian efforts to curtail drug cheating.

"It was a silly decision. It was the result, I believe, of bureaucratic perversity and ministerial stupidity," former Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) executive director Jim Ferguson told ABC Television's Four Corners program.

AIS researchers were leading the world in developing a test for the performance-enhancing drug EPO, a synthetic haemoglobin widely used by cheats in endurance sports, until they were ordered to stop their work in 2001 by then federal sport minister Jackie Kelly.

They were in the process of setting up a consortium with pharmaceutical companies, and the World Anti-Doping Agency was virtually pleading with them to have a test ready in time for the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Games, former AIS sports scientist Robin Parisotto said.

"It was late on a Friday afternoon via email that a directive had been forwarded from the minister's office, telling us that we were banned from performing any further anti-doping research," Parisotto said.

"That was the response. I was absolutely floored, absolutely. I couldn't ... it was astonishing."

Another former AIS scientist, Michael Ashenden, was in London for meetings about the consortium when he was formally reprimanded by new AIS head Michael Scott for acting beyond his role as a public servant.

"I was absolutely furious, I was livid," Ashenden said.

"We'd set up these meetings for weeks beforehand and I wasn't even allowed to contact them and let them know why I hadn't kept the appointment that I'd made. As far as they were concerned, we'd just fallen off the face of the earth."

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