New research regarding transgender athletes

[WatchingBoat]

Was interested to see this on the LEAPsports website.

https://leapsports.org/news/webinar-research

It’s publicising an online briefing based on recently published research about ‘the strength, power and aerobic capacity of transgender athletes’. It’s been published in the BMJ and was carried out by Dr Blair Hamilton. Its findings suggest that some transgender athletes perform worse than their non-transgender counterparts in certain cardiovascular tests, have lower bone density (which affects muscle strength) and reduced lung capacity.

I haven’t gone through the report in detail but believe the participants were similarly matched in terms of their athletic fitness - so it wasn’t a case of comparing a male couch potato with a female competitive athlete.

I know there will be people on this board with the knowledge and experience to dig down into the data/research. A link to the actual report is contained within the press release.

Apologies if this has already been discussed but I thought it was useful to know about the webinar briefing too.

Does any of this research take into account the likelihood of athletes deliberately reducing their effort in order to provide results supporting their desire to compete in the incorrect sex category?

Is the “non-trans counterpart” the same biological sex as the trans person?

Wasn't this the study where they compared elite female athletes with unfit men (I.e men that weren't even exercising regularly).

This is new research, so presumably not. The study may have other weaknesses. Or it may be part of getting a clearer picture of the effects that hormones (etc) have on people. I hope it's presented nice and clearly so it's easy to figure out which sex they're comparing with, I quickly get confused.

Weirdly "cis" language often doesn't help to clarify. I think it's because whenever people who use "cis" say just "women" and "men" with neither "cis" nor "trans" as a prefix I have no idea what they mean.

transgender athletes perform worse than their non-transgender counterparts

The counterpart of a male transgender athlete is another male athlete, one assumes?

Is Blair Hamilton the trans person selected as goal keeper for the Women’s Universities Football team?

Has Dr Hamilton's university profile page been hacked by a prankster?

Here's a sample paragraph:

Scholarly biography

Let's dive into Blair's incredible journey! Their background is a fusion of health, fitness, and sports development. Picture this: back in 2008, they nailed their national qualifications in health and fitness, and by 2010, they rocked a Higher National Diploma in sports coaching and development. But that's just the start!

I believe so. That is the only 'recent' research that Hamilton has published so I daresay this is what it refers to.

It was basically pointed out by numerous sports scientists, sports ethics professionals and biologists that the recruitment made this study intrinsically flawed from the start.

This is the University of Brighton, mind.

Which, BTW, has a Centre for Transforming Sexuality and Gender
https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/organisations/centre-for-transforming-sexuality-and-gender

yes

How disappointing. If unsurprising.

Oh my goodness. Reads like an intro to a stage act, perhaps they're a stand-up comedian and it's all a big joke.

Having a look at the full paper - not an expert, just an interested lay person. The gender nonsense makes it really hard to parse the meaning. I think my main criticism would be that training level is by self report so there's no way of measuring that that's the same. As the paper says:

BMI was also significantly different between the groups in this Study (F (3–66)=3.6, p=0.02). Transgender women athletes demonstrated higher BMI than cisgender women (t(66)=2.9, p=0.03, table 1), with no further differences observed.

I suspect this might be another paper where unfit transgender women are compared with fit women.

Also - in the no shit Sherlock category - Significant differences were found in height with CM being taller than transgender men Transgender women were also taller than transgender men cisgender women

Yeah I had a quick look at the paper summary - it struck me that the transwomen could be in full woman-LARPing mode and do their "best girly jump". In a study like this, the participants ought not to know it's about comparing TiMs to females, otherwise they could easily sway the results. For a proper comparison, TiMs need to put in a genuine effort to (for example) jump as far as they can.

I noticed that they didn't put the TiF - male results in the summary... TiFs would presumably be trying their absolute best to be as good as the men, so I'd assume that the results would be accurate there at least.

Emily Bridges, the cyclist who is desperate to compete with elite women, is currently part of a study to see if ++ loses h++ male advantage.

I don’t see how any study measuring reduction in sports performance could ever be taken seriously for this very reason.

British Journal of Sports Medicine: https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/58/11/586

One reviewer and I can't see the review (I've a feeling this isn't an open review journal in the BMJ family).

Interesting recruitment criteria for which I can't find additional breakdown re: whether the participants are competitive athletes or "undergo physical training at least three times per week". There's something later about nobody competing at national or international level (unhelpful).

diverse cohort of athletes, with endurance sports representing 36% of the athlete cohort, team sports representing 26% and power sports representing 38%.

I haven't read it carefully but, given the small number of participants (understandable) there's an interesting number of exclusions by failure to have an endocrine profile, transgressing T levels, failing to meet required respiratory exchange ratio.

19 cisgender men (CM) (mean±SD, age: 37±9 years), 12 transgender men (TM) (age: 34±7 years), 23 transgender women (TW) (age: 34±10 years) and 21 cisgender women (CW) (age: 30±9 years)

I don't know what the normal 'failure' rates are for experienced users of metabolic carts and tests but this feels quite high.

Blood measures
There was a significant gender effect on testosterone concentration (F(3–66)=80.6, p<0.001). CM (20.5±5.8 nmol/L) exhibited significantly higher total testosterone concentration than transgender women (0.7±0.5 nmol/L, t(66)= 11.1, p<0.001, figure 1A). Transgender men (24.8±12.3 nmol/L) had elevated total testosterone concentration compared with transgender women (t(66)=11.3) and cisgender women (0.9±0.4 nmol/L, t(66)=10.9, both p<0.001, figure 1A). There was also a significant gender effect on oestradiol concentration (F (3−66)=7.6, p<0.001), with transgender women (742.4±801.9 pmol/L) showing higher oestradiol concentration than CM (104.3±24.8 pmol/L, t(66)=4.4 p<0.001), cisgender women (336.0±266.3 pmol/L, t(66)=2.7, p=0.045) and transgender men (150.2±59.4 pmol/L, t(66)=3.4, p=0.01, figure 1B).
Transgender women’s total testosterone concentration (0.7±0.5 nmol/L) falls within the recommendations for GAHT of ≤1.8 nmol/L,5 and oestradiol concentrations (742.4±801.9 pmol/L) exceed the target of 400–600 pmol/L5 for GAHT. Transgender men’s testosterone concentration (24.8±12.3 nmol/L) exceeds the NHS target of 15–20 nmol/L6 for GAHT, although not the Endocrine Society target of 11–34.7 nmol/L.7

A missing callout comparison in the above is relative testosterone for TW and women. (Authors provide what they term: CM vs TW; TM vs TW and CW.) Then there is an oestradiol set of comparisons.

The general lung function tests are in line with what I'd expect (Table 2) although I could do with more information about the participants (who were the endurance/power performers) and whether they're accustomed to a VO2 max test). And, as for why they've highlighted the countermovement jump in the lower body anaerobic power section…

ETA: several people posted in the time it took me to do the above, apologies for x-overs.

😶 Gosh!

(I'm trying to limit my swearing)

That's erm... Interesting! Please tell me they didn't actually willingly put that twaddle online!

According to the website Blair is a PhD student so not yet Dr Hamilton. Assume they have nearly finished if they're publishing from it.

The "athletes" were all recruited via social media:

"Our investigation encompassed a diverse cohort of athletes, with endurance sports representing 36% of the athlete cohort, team sports representing 26% and power sports representing 38%. No cisgender or transgender athletes were competing at the national or international level".

"Athletes from various sporting disciplines and performance levels were included, and the athlete training intensity was self-reported"

" The athletes participating in the present study represented a variety of different sports, and this would have undoubtedly impacted the results of the study as different sports stress different training and sports modalities. Exercise type, intensity and duration all have an impact on physiological responses and overall laboratory performance metrics"

I'm not sure that you can really compare a pole-vaulter with a sprinter or long distance runner.

Also a top 30 runner is going to be at a completely different level of fitness to somebody ranked 2,000.

It's a start, I suppose.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5048565-d-telegraph-report-on-transgender-womens-disadvantage-in-sport

This one?

Which basically concluded with ‘testosterone suppression makes men less able to compete with other men (it doesn’t make them the same as women, but shhh! bury that bit under the leader!)’

Fairly sure they now have PhD and a post in Manchester Metropolitan Uni.

ETA: I'm probably wrong about the post but can't think where I saw something about this.

The whole thing is absurd. What kind of competitive athlete deliberately enfeebles themselves in order to be able to compete in an elite category. It’s so insulting to the women who would do anything and everything to hone their athletic abilities.

This is why I think that Hamilton has a post as an RA with MMU's Institute of Sport.

I note Hamilton is an associate editor for a sister BMJ journal.

Yes. According to their LinkedIn they've been a research associate at MMU since May 2024 - these are usually temporary posts assisting on someone else's funded project - and they have their PhD. The MMU website hasn't caught up yet but if they've only just started that's hardly surprising

The expert witness for Caster Semenya in the CAS legal case is based at MMU:

https://www.mmu.ac.uk/research/our-impact/case-studies/genetics-sport