If research finds no significant differences for sport for male & female, where will that lead?

I think that PhD students receive a "stipend" grant of £14K to £25K

If you're getting anything even remotely close to £25K it's funded by a company and the student is basically an employee. Research council stipends outside London are £14777 at the moment: I'd be surprised if many people are getting more than that. University studentships are usually paid at the same level.

You can get a few bob by doing some tutoring, demonstrating and other hourly paid work, but you're usually limited to a couple of hundred hours a year at most and it pays about fifteen quid an hour, so you might make another three grand. Riches, it isn't.

Source: did funded PhD recently.

See this thread on twitter on this topic:

twitter.com/HairyLeggdHarpy/status/1072970613172682752

The problem seems to be that sports organisations are afraid of the Equality Act 2010 which has replaced the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975. Back in 2004, the FA recognised that letting biological men compete against women would be unfair and dangerous. They are now afraid to say this.

This makes me so, so angry and sad. Changes in equalities legislation actively working against women.

If "research" finds this, it's not research but fantasy.

@LaundryLaundryLaundry

I think that PhD students receive a "stipend" grant of £14K to £25K.
Your comment about persuasive powers is bang on the money. If you study psychology or philosophy, then you can pretty much make anything up, as the group in the US churning out spoof thesis have proved, because there is no "hard" science involved.
Imagine if you were doing an Astrophysics PhD, and your thesis was based around the theory that the earth was flat, the sun revolved around the earth and the moon really was made of green cheese, then that thesis would be laughed at and rightly dismissed.
If on the other hand you study philosophy, then you could base a thesis on something quite bizarre, such as "The human male has no physical advantages when competing in sports", and some people would take it seriously.
I have tried contacting the sporting bodies about this, and nobody wants to talk about it.
I find the whole situation very disturbing, and ultimately it could destroy women's sport.

Imagine being employed to research shit. Their days will be busier than the police still searching for Maddy McCann.

Five PhD students? Jeez. And they'll be doing what, exactly? How much money would we be talking for this? I know that Prof came across badly on the radio, but what she lacks in academic rigour and ability she makes up for in persuasive powers.

To answer the op, perhaps where it will lead is to questions about the validity of academia. This kind of research is what gives Universities a bad name.

This is a project where the outcome has been determined before the study has taken place. It's methodologically ridiculous.

Social "science", innit?

This is a project where the outcome has been determined before the study has taken place. It's methodologically ridiculous.

I often wondered how scientists of the past could have believed ideologically-driven nonsense that seems completely absurd today. These so-called scientific findings were used to prop up societal structures - the idea that higher education damaged a woman's fertility, for instance. But if that was what they wanted to conclude, that is what they found.

The mistake was mine for thinking that these misuses of science were confined to the past.

The advert can't even distinguish between gender and sex FFS - using sex-segregated sporting events to talk about a 'gender binary'. There is no reason to divide sports based on whether someone prefers the pink or blue set of gender stereotypes. None at all. You divide by biological sex, or you make the case for no division at all - which I of course disagree with because it would mean the end of women's sporting achievement, but it at least has internal consistency as a standpoint.

It is bizarre that Loughborough - know as the university for top student athletes - is supporting this work taking place.

It's particularly bizarre that the Sports and Exercise people are involved, because one would have thought the mental gymnastics involved in doing this sort of "research" would either make them personally angry or would at least make them worry about reputational risk.

It is bizarre that Loughborough - know as the university for top student athletes - is supporting this work taking place. They have years of data from their coaching staff that surely proves this is garbage. I can’t work out if they are allowing it to happen as they are so confident that the results will prove that there is a difference, or if they are going to just ignore all previous knowledge because it isn’t ideologically correct. Very like Lysenko as mentioned by a pp. That resulted in mass starvation, this will just kill women’s sport.

Dave Moorcroft went to Loughborough - as did Paula Radcliffe

And Sebastian Coe, who has some heft in these sorts of things.

Surely if TW take drugs that potentially reduce performance but give them womanly features so they can compete with women, it's reverse doping

(This one might require you have university credentials):

Going in Through the Back Door: Challenging Straight Male Homohysteria, Transhysteria, and Transphobia Through Receptive Penetrative Sex Toy Use

It's the best of Grievance Studies Affair's spoof papers. This is the sort of shit you can get published once you enter the world of Social "Science": spoof nonsense which the august journals and their reviewers can't spot as spoof. The abstract gives you the general tone:

To date, very little research literature exists concerning receptive penetrative anal eroticism in straight men. Of particular interest are its impacts upon other factors relevant to masculinities, sex roles, and the study of sexualities. Several co-constituted features of masculinity are likely to be relevant to straight-male anal sexuality, including masturbatory play with penetrative sex toys. Specifically, this study seeks to explore, “Do men who report greater comfort with receptive penetrative anal eroticism also report less transphobia, less obedience to masculine gender norms, greater partner sensitivity, and greater awareness about rape?” This study uses semi-structured interviews with thirteen men to explore this question, analyzed with a naturalist and constructivist grounded theory approach in the context of sexualities research and introduces transhysteria as a parallel concept to Anderson’s homohysteria. This analysis recognizes potential socially remedial value for encouraging male anal eroticism with sex toys.

Dave Moorcroft went to Loughborough - as did Paula Radcliffe and about a gazillion other elite and sub-elite athletes. It’s pretty shocking that the university appears keen to associate itself with such nonsense.

Why on earth Loughborough needs to waste time and money employing 5 PhD students to research the blindingly obvious

This is the sort of stuff which brings the social "sciences" into disrepute. They aren't interested in facts and numbers and shit. Those baskets won't weave themselves, you know. You can get published in that territory with nonsense like this:

Just as liberal feminists are frequently content with a minimal agenda of legal and social equality for women and "pro-choice", so liberal (and even some socialist) mathematicians are often content to work within the hegemonic Zermelo–Fraenkel framework (which, reflecting its nineteenth-century liberal origins, already incorporates the axiom of equality) supplemented only by the axiom of choice. (Sokal 1996).

Sokal, Alan D. (1996). "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity". Social Text. 46–47: 217–252.

I think the right thing to do is to petition and argue for a category in the paralympics for people with endocrine disorders (including intersex and trans).

They would still be beaten hollow by club-standard natal men with an unprincipled eye on the main chance.

In 1993 at the age of 40, long after he had retired from top class athletics, David Moorcroft ran a 1 mile race in 4m 02s, which is still 10 seconds faster than the current fastest time by any women.
Why on earth Loughborough needs to waste time and money employing 5 PhD students to research the blindingly obvious is beyond my understanding and a complete insult to women.

www.lboro.ac.uk/news-events/news/2017/july/is-male-female-gender-outdated/

Openly stating the aim is to produce a draft bill. I’m quite surprised at that. Still looking for funding on the sport stuff. If anyone would like to politely email the institution the funding should be a matter of public record.

I think the right thing to do is to petition and argue for a category in the paralympics for people with endocrine disorders (including intersex and trans). Then these people can study how to level the playing field within that group. This also shuts down the argument that trans people are being prevented from taking part.

that is an interesting idea. i've been exasperatedly thinking that maybe the condition of being born with a female sexed body needs to be considered a paralympic category.

Right: the sport stuff was

www.findaphd.com/phds/project/the-critical-issue-of-gender-and-sport-in-a-changing-world-examining-how-the-participation-of-transgender-people-is-represented-in-the-media-and-the-public-discourse/?p97224

Here. The work is being done at the national centre for sport and excercise medicine Loughborough branch. The centres (there are three) were established with a 30mil grant from the department of health. However, that amount would be unlikely to provide running costs for long so it’s possible thatvthese studentships are funded by a research council or similar body. I think someone found the source funding on another thread but I’m not 100% sure.

here’s one (not the sport one) looking at how to replace sex with gender. www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3274586-Big-research-project-to-decide-if-we-still-need-sex-as-a-legal-category

That’s ESRC funded.

The precursor to that was this: kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/files/86823522/If_the_State_Decertified_Gender_COOPER_Published1December2016_GREEN_AAM.pdf

The whole thing is an agenda driven piece of work, designed to produce a specific outcome that can be used in support of changing the law. It flies in the face of research ethics and it’s deeply worrying that research is being abused in this way.

If only women had realised we just needed to try a bit harder.

Exactly - what is this magical power of "trying a bit harder" in the face of the documented differences that we can see when athletes dope?

Sharron Davies is still calling for the medal tables to be revised but it doesn't look like it will ever happen:

She took the silver medal in the 400 m individual medley behind East German Petra Schneider, who later admitted that the victory was drug enhanced.[5]
...
Davies has been very vocal in the calls for a reallocation of medals and titles at the various games where East German athletes won using illegal, drug-supported development techniques. Sports bodies have recognised the superior achievement of athletes like Sharron who shunned the use of performance-enhancing substances but have fallen short of rewriting the medal tables.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharron_Davies#Swimming

Beamur

There is a thread on it.

Proves no more than Billie Jean King beating that bloke years ago.

What about it Beamur?

reflectant I think its ESRC money ? So yes, public.

There was a thread a while back...