New BMJ Article on Trans-Athletes

The systematic review gets some scrutiny in today's episode of More or Less on BBC Sounds

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct6w0c?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

What is this McDonalds?

Here are a couple of articles you may wish to look at, regarding the disadvantages which women face in running sports due to the Q angle and the fat distribution differences between males and females. Testosterone, means that males have higher muscle mass and less body fat than females.

https://drjasonkarp.com/2019/03/06/qangleandrunning/

https://bmjopensem.bmj.com/content/9/3/e001672

I see... then I would like to see research on fat distribution vs. Q angle on female competitiveness to debunk its value.

I suspect the reporting on fat distribution is to support the notion of men convincingly looking like women because they've developed hips and a bum and therefore it's cruel to make them compete against other men. It's a very superficial argument.

Yep. It's been written by activists

I have posted on the other thread

i cannot get hold of the full article but from the abstract I think the authors are being set up a little.

I have some basic knowledge of sports and exercise science and the following would need to be addressed before I will begin to entertain the idea that TW have no advantage over females

1. The strength testing will fall within the well documented equivalent range for females of age and height. An easy test is grip strength, as a predictor for overall upper body strength
2. Functional testing.. and easy one is distance of throwing a tennis ball/or jumping from a static spot.
3. Cardiovascular fitness should start with V02 and be compared to already measured norms.
4. I want to hear about the advantages in sport regarding the lack of the Q angle and the Carrying angle. It’s never addressed. Also bone health because I suspect that the TW will be at risk when playing sport by having stronger muscles than females but less strong bones.

Note all of these should Be tested in isolation away from females and discussion should be in the literature about how the TW don’t know the norms (which is why the grip strength test is so consistent because they can’t see the measure)

Finally, I don’t care about fat distribution it has much less to do with athletic ability so it’s suspicious they report on it.

I haven't listened yet, but the systematic review is covered in this week's episode of the Real Science of Sport

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7GPj34IV4s0Hl17DzahjNS?si=GxKADvVZTO20oY7UO3jjGw%0A

Prof Ross Tucker is always good to listen to on this topic

VoidIfRemoved is great, I recommend his substack.

I came across an article relevant to this thread:

https://www.voidifremoved.co.uk/p/beef-trifle

“To illustrate the problems with this paper, its conclusions, and the way these are being represented in popular media, I will simply address the single most implausible supposed finding: that there is no difference in upper body strength between female athletes and males after cross-sex hormones and testosterone reduction….

…What has happened here is:

• A team of researchers at São Paulo University conducted research at the request of men with a vested interest in being included in female sports, which compared below-average men with low grip strength to national-level female athletes in the top 1% of female performance.
• Another team of researchers at São Paulo University included this in a systematic review and - instead of dropping it because of the clear methodological issues and confounding factors - combined it with multiple other studies that can’t be directly compared, and produced a result so incoherent as to be meaningless.
• Then, they declared in their conclusion that because they had a meaningless result they had found an “absence of strength disparities”, while arguing their research was evidence against “blanket bans”.
• This was then published by the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

The systematic review’s conclusion that there is a lack of strength disparities and that this has implications for sports policy is based on statistically untenable foundations. While I tend to give short shrift to those on the sidelines who cry foul about science that is inconvenient to their political aims, it really does seem that the chain of trust in science has been seriously damaged by activism and groupthink in the area of sex and gender. From paediatric gender medicine to sports science, badly designed studies and papers with obvious issues are being waved through by compliant journals, and shoddy, meaningless results spun as triumphs by political partisans. These generate exactly the expected headlines, which translate into pressure on institutions and political leaders. We need to be able to rely on the scientific method to provide us with a dispassionate and neutral assessment of the evidence which rises above such blatant policy advocacy.”

She doesn't mess around.

She really needs to stop being so ambivalent and speak her mind more clearly…

But if you do what this study did - which in your example would be equivalent to discounting every time they won a medal and only presenting on ‘relative wins’, then they didn’t win…..

I hadn’t heard of that, but I meant in this study - they compared women to trans identified men after adjusting the men’s measurements to take account of things which impact performance like height. Hence ‘relative lean muscle’ not just ‘lean muscle’. In other words if you adjust the measurements to rule out male advantage you will find no male advantage….

Strange that, because at no time in Khelif's fights did I see him with his hand tied behing his back. At no time when Caster Semenya was competing, did I see the women runners have a 100m start.

You mean like that ludicrous tennis match in Dubai at the end of last year between a man and a woman, Aryna Sabalenka and Nick Kyrgios?

Where the woman's side of the court was reduced by 9% and both players were restricted to a single serve per point to neutralize the man's powerful, high-speed serve.

Which Kyrgios won 6-3, 6-3 despite Sabalenka being the world number 1 female player and the fact that Kyrgios at the time was recovering from injury and is number 1283 in the men's world ranking.

You mean that kind of thing?

Not quite - they adjust for them.

So, they are basically ignoring all the physiological advantages males have over females when going through puberty.

The Results section from the abstract:
52 studies (n=6485) were included. Transgender women had similar relative fat mass (standardised mean difference (SMD) −0.33, 95% CI −0.72 to 0.05, Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE): very low), relative lean mass (SMD 0.19, 95% CI −0.14 to 0.53, GRADE: low), upper-body strength (SMD 0.54, 95% CI −0.95 to 2.02, GRADE: very low), lower-body strength (SMD 0.05, 95% CI −1.31 to 1.40, GRADE: very low) and maximal oxygen consumption (SMD −0.28, 95% CI −0.81 to 0.25, GRADE: very low) in comparison to cisgender women. Transgender men exhibited higher relative fat mass (SMD 0.96, 95% CI 0.28 to 1.64, GRADE: moderate), lower relative lean mass (SMD −6.42, 95% CI −12.26 to −0.58, GRADE: moderate) and lower upper-body strength (SMD −1.46, 95% CI −2.52 to −0.40, GRADE: moderate) than cisgender men. In transgender women, GAHT was associated with increased fat mass and reduced lean mass and upper-body strength over 1–3 years. Transgender men demonstrated reduced fat mass and increased lean mass and strength following GAHT.

All those "(GRADE): very low" bits they are putting after the results mean that even in their own opinion, the quality of the evidence they have is very low. It's absurd anyone would look at this paper as a convincing and given it is only looking at composition of lean body mass, etc. is very biased in its attempt to make the conclusion sound like there is no good scientific evidence for the inherent athletic ability of transwomen over women.

To be crystal clear, I was very much joking about your Latin declension being lowbrow. I too have very limited and specific knowledge of Latin and had to Google to get the joke!

I maintain that Tunnocks are the height of sophistication, however.

I wouldn't joke about that.

Thank you, that is an important insight and reframing of the real question.

A slight addition:

Is it acceptable to allow men who have modified their bodies through drugs and/or surgery to be less performant than male norms to be allowed to compete in women's sports?

It is a form of reverse doping.

Deliberately suppressing performance with drugs and surgery. However, the crux of the issue really is,

What is the difference between a male person who has lost their ability to produce testosterone through disease or injury (or both) and is taking estrogen for medical reasons, and any male person doing this by choice to suit their identity?

There is none.

Except 'belief' and 'belief' alone.

It has been a purely philosophical based decision in the first place. Leveraged on the back of male people with DSDs who activists decided were being dehumanised by having to be tested with all the rest of the female people seeking access to the female sport categories. That was the mechanism that was used.

I suspect, in seeing the same names of activist academics on papers, that it could be reasonably argued that there could have been a staged strategy all along. First get those with DSDs accepted, then quickly pivot to male people who wanted to be included for gender identity.

It is a form of doping, but instead of doping to excel in the correct sex category it is doping to excel in the incorrect sex category.

In the context of this study being trans is something of a red herring. I'm fairly certain the reason why this group of transwomen's athletic performance is in any way more comparable to women, is because they have taken cross sex hormones and possibly surgeries. That is the important variable. Being trans is not relevant because any man can declare themselves trans and it will not change their body.

The real question being raised, is whether it is acceptable to allow men who have modified their bodies through drugs and/or surgery to be allowed to compete in women's sports. Which gets us into some unpleasant ethical dilemmas.