Any other scientists feel like you are in an alternate reality?

[RockPaperScience]

I mean, seriously.

I’ve sequenced and karyotyped more X and Y chromosomes (and autosomes, I’m not picky) than I can count. How did we get to this sorry, ugly, baffling state of affairs of science and biology denial. I know we kind of know how, but I’ve had a glass of wine and WTAF is going on?

[foxgoosefinch]

It’s amazing evidence to have Mishy pop on the thread to demonstrate really nicely just what we were talking about. Thanks, Mishy!

[RockPaperScience]

I hope no one is holding their breath for a reference to a peer reviewed study/paper in a decent journal backing up the above assertions.

Igneococcus, don’t sacrifice your sleep waiting, is my advice.

[Igneococcus]

You're probably right RockPaperScience I could save it as a lovely surprise for tomorrow morning to read over my morning cup of tea [ever the optimist].

[334bu]

It's essentially because many people got stuck believing science was simply X and Y, without acknowledging Darwinism and spectrum. They are being left behind. As what has happened in the past with flat earthers.

Oh dear Mishy really?

[merrymouse]

@Mrsfrumble

Help me please as I only have a lowly A-level in Biology, but I don’t get the “most of us don’t know if we’ve got a full set of male or female characteristics” bit from that tweet. Surely anyone who has managed to successfully reproduce knows? Would I have been able to get pregnant, gestate a baby and give birth without the characteristics they list?

I think about 4 in 5 women have children, and of the 1 in 5 who don't most of them will have had some kind of health concern (infertility/cancer/endometriosis etc.) that will have made their sex very, very clear.

But presumably that kind of thing is just too boring and basic for people with advanced sex spectrum knowledge.

[merrymouse]

Maybe we just aren't evolved enough to be completely detached from our bodies?

[AngelicInnocent]

I think merrymouse had it on page 1 though. We expect to control so much of our world these days that some people behave as though science doesn't exist instead of acknowledging that science I what allows us to do that.

Also, accepting that science hasn't allowed us to completely beat nature is too scary for some. There are still limits on what we can do.

[EmbarrassingHadrosaurus]

I do not think these words mean what you think they mean

Hear me out on this. Have we taken an awfully long time to recognise that a Turing Test experimental bot is posting among us?

[LobsterNapkin]

Yes, I think alienation from nature is a big part of it too.

But another thing in terms of the larger problem people are having with science, in terms of things like vaccination, climate change, etc is that some of the science boosters haven't been doing it any favours in other ways. You don't have to look far to see political types, including public health people, presenting "scientific" information in a very simplified and reductive way, or to see medical scandals (vaginal mush, anyone,) or to read about journals caving to political pressure or conversely, publishing made up articles.

[JohnnyMcGrathSaysFuckOff]

Tbh, I am an academic and it is the scientists at my institution who believe in this. The humanities scholars are used to thinking critically about gender as a cultural construct (and often a pernicious one). I recently had a senior medic tell me that LGB Alliance was a hate group e.g.

Scientists definitely are not immune (sadly).

[foxgoosefinch]

@JohnnyMcGrathSaysFuckOff

Tbh, I am an academic and it is the scientists at my institution who believe in this. The humanities scholars are used to thinking critically about gender as a cultural construct (and often a pernicious one). I recently had a senior medic tell me that LGB Alliance was a hate group e.g.

Scientists definitely are not immune (sadly).

Yes, definitely here (though there are plenty of humanities people who go along with it because it suits their purposes in some other way). I think it’s true that many scientists are detail people and not big picture people. Academia needs both, but probably the big picture people tend to be found more at the moment in humanities and social science/history (though not always).

Hear me out on this. Have we taken an awfully long time to recognise that a Turing Test experimental bot is posting among us?

It would make sense if Mishy is a bot. No actual human would be so daft as to post on a thread about the total misunderstanding of scientific concepts with….a post full of misunderstood scientific concepts. No?

[DecayedStrumpet]

You have to admire mishyJDI's confidence at least, striding in to a thread addressed to scientists, and regurgitating some unconnected buzzwords with no actual logical point to make.

That may work in the humanities department, but it's not going to cut it over here

Oddly, I've only ever observed that level of misplaced confidence residing in the sort of bodies that come equipped with a penis 🤔

[merrymouse]

I think it’s true that many scientists are detail people and not big picture people.

This article seems to reflect that:

www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/sex-of-fetus-affects-immune-response-to-covid-19-during-pregnancy-69329?utm_content=184276015&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&hss_channel=tw-18198832

It’s been shared on Twitter because it is about the effect of fetus sex on the mother’s immune response to Covid, but the text, as opposed to some quotes, refuses to acknowledge that pregnant people are female.

However I think this paragraph particularly demonstrates why a narrow focus is a problem:

“The data is of interest, but I think it doesn’t at this time have practical implications in terms of vaccine rollout other than what we already know—which is that 97% of pregnant people who have been hospitalized with Covid in this country are unvaccinated.”

If only there were some way of narrowing down which people might become pregnant and encouraging vaccination before they start worrying about whether it is safe in pregnancy

[PickAChew]

@MishyJDI

It's essentially because many people got stuck believing science was simply X and Y, without acknowledging Darwinism and spectrum. They are being left behind. As what has happened in the past with flat earthers.

Aye
Right
🙄

[foxgoosefinch]

That’s hilarious @merrymouse. So the foetus has a sex but we can’t say its mother does?

You have to admire the capacity to contain that much doublethink all at once.

[foxgoosefinch]

Male placentas produce more proinflammatory molecules than female placentas, while people carrying male fetuses produce fewer antibodies in response to infection, a study finds.



I wonder what sex those “people” might be…? Perhaps some of the male foetuses might grow up to host some foetuses of their own.

[foxgoosefinch]

Still, I guess it makes it absolutely plain that the aim is eliminating “women”, and nothing else.

Still, how terribly transphobic of them to assign those foetuses a gender/sex even before birth!

[NCBlossom]

It’s very strange. There is a lot of autism and trans cross over, and I’ve found it bewildering that…

• biological sex apparently doesn’t really exist and is on a spectrum. It can be self identified.
  
• but autism which doesn’t have a biology is definitely binary, and not on a spectrum. You either are or not. This can be self identified.
  

Apparently. None of the above are based on any realities, it’s just agreement through social media rabbit holes.

[NiceGerbil]

YY

Studied physics.

The inconsistency in the way the same words can be used to mean different things depending on context.

The way the arguments just shift when the current ones become too obviously untrue/ unconvincing.

The total inability to essentially put forward a rational argument and discuss.

The fact that most new phrases for us are-
A. Biologically incoherent
B. Rely on the reader translating to women in their head.

They are just euphemisms.

No one reads menstruators or people with a cervix and stops there. They translate to women/ girls in their head. IF they understand the words and know they are female things.

Drives me mental.

It's incoherent illogical unscientific nonsense. Based in political views and personal beliefs. Full of holes. Just. Drivel.

Arrgh!

[NiceGerbil]

Oh lol that tweet!

Apparently these characteristics are collected in infants:

'chromosomes, hormones, external genitalia, internal reproductive anatomy, and gonads.'

WTF?

[DefineHappy]

Neuroscience and biomedical science background here - and I just can’t comprehend why, when all this started, all the grownups in the room didn’t just say “No, you are wrong - here are the facts of scientific reality”.

I don’t understand how so many people have been suckered into believing lies and obvious bs.

[AnyOldPrion]

It’s one of the most amazing coincidences of our time that the biology of sex, which was straightforward enough to be taught to school children for many years, suddenly became too complicated to understand, right at the same time as men began to demand access to women’s spaces.

On a wider basis though, I do sometimes wonder if we are moving past the age of enlightenment and onto darker times. Religion often went hand in hand with science in the early days, and I wonder whether people are incapable of living without some kind of magical thinking, so that ironically, the “debunking of the existence of God” has left that segment of human nature wide open to other neo/pseudo-religious movements.

[JustcameoutGC]

Ahhh, i missed biology 101 with mishy.

Question for ya. How does mendelian genetics work if there are more than 2 sexes and sex can change? Or are you saying that mendelian genetics erroneous?

[rabbitwoman]

I am sorry I have no specific scientific credentials - although I do occasionally teach science to secondary school kids and also PSHE about sex, contraception etc.....

But I think the cleverest TRAs are making a really big push to change the language and the meaning of words, which then contorts the science enough to baffle people into believing their nonsense....

So, in deed there is a spectrum of secondary sex characteristics which we are all on but the TRAs have managed to convince us that this denotes the actual sex of an individual. When someone tells me about this spectrum, I ask who produces the spegg? Someone else will confidently tell me some kids are born with a penis AND a vagina - I will confidently reply that no one has ever been born with testicles AND ovaries....

And, what does it matter anyway? Having a VSD does not make you trans, otherwise you could do a simple DNA test and then allocated hormones, surgery and rights accordingly.....

[CatsOperatingInGangs]

Thanks for this thread OP. I’ve been consistently disappointed/angered by some scientists with skin in the game especially when it comes to male inclusion in women’s sport. I remember reading the World Rigby submissions and being agog that there were actual scientists trying to argue why male advantage wasn’t an issue.

Why do they do this? For woke cookies? Because their salary depends on it? I remember Ross Tucker taking about this in the Science of Sport podcast. He too was incredulous at the “people who should know better”.

Madeline Pape, retired Australian 800m runner and now academic, recently spoke at a online conference with Veronica Ivy and put science in scare quotes! As if it wasn’t a real thing.
This women ran against Caster Semenya yet is discounting/ignoring a whole load of science about male advantage in sport.