Emma Hilton Profile picture
May 31, 2021 5 tweets 2 min read Read on X
Laurel Hubbard debuted in the female category in 2017, and posted a new world record in the W35/super heavyweight category at the IWF Masters that same year. Image
For this performance, she was named the best lifter in the entire female competition (all ages and weight categories). Image
Her lift total of 280 kg absolutely smashed her category competitors.

It wouldn’t have been out of place in the corresponding male category. Image
In fact, Hubbard’s 2017 lift was entirely routine over ten years of the male competition, and a huge outlier in the female competition over the same ten years. Image
For those asking, this first (incomplete) part of the story shows how, controlled for age, Hubbard is lifting well outside female range.

The second part is, of course, that Hubbard has earned an Olympic spot, despite her advanced age.

There will be more charts...

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Emma Hilton

Emma Hilton Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @FondOfBeetles

May 13
On hantavirus #ANDV #hantavirus

I think the Andes hantavirus data is being misread right now.

Claims are circulating that the evidence doesn’t seem to support.

I want to walk through them carefully.
The 40% fatality figure: an artefact of who gets counted.

The 40% case fatality rate (CFR) figure comes specifically from hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS), an outcome in a subset of hanta infections.

This is the severe cardiopulmonary presentation. It excludes subclinical infections that resolved without anyone noticing more than “a touch of flu”.

In Jujuy Province, Argentina, the seroprevalence (rate at which people have antibodies due to hanta infection) is 6.5%. Hospitalised HPS cases had a CFR of 13.3%, but most patients were described as having a mild clinical course.

Disclaimer: although an Argentine outbreak, this has not been confirmed as ANDV.

The 40% is the fatality rate among people sick enough to be diagnosed and hospitalised.

It is not the infection fatality rate.

These are not the same thing, and conflating them is causing significant confusion.
The true attack rate: barely any data.

The Boat had approximately 180 exposed individuals, and around ten cases have been detected. Three - soon to be four, I predict - have died.

Without antibody analysis of the full cohort, we don’t know how many mild or subclinical infections were missed entirely.
Read 21 tweets
May 7
On Hantavirus: a (non-technical) thread.

Disclaimer: I am a biology PhD, but not virology/epidemiology. Husbandman is a virology PhD. But I’m told I’m good at communicating science, so here’s my take.

#Hantavirus
Humans get hantavirus from rodents who carry it.

Some people went to Argentina birdwatching in a landfill, and were exposed to hantavirus because rodents like landfills.

Looks like one - if not two - people brought the virus onto their cruise boat.
So now we have an isolated boat with an index case: someone who is infected.

That’s not good for the index case. Hantavirus has a high fatality rate, and that’s scary.
Read 20 tweets
Apr 8
A cell layer that has developed to protect your body from the outside doesn’t work like a cell layer that has developed to protect your body from the inside.

The cells lining my vagina are not the same cells, and they don’t have the same function, as the ones wrapping your penis.

There’s a name for what happens when you subject dry-adapted “outside skin” to wet-adapted “inside conditions”.

Further reading: trench foot.
My vagina - “inside skin” - hothouses a healthy microbiome that promotes health and healing, and imparts immune function onto small humans that happen to come out of it.

Yours? Less so.
My vagina is a muscular organ, adapted to my healthy female function of receipt of peen, expelling menstrual products and pushing out small humans.

An inside out penis? Less so.
Read 8 tweets
Apr 3
Let’s move the discussion from available techniques for sex screening and to matters of process.

Ross @Scienceofsport has described the need for detailed technical documents that inform sports federations in robust implementation of a sex screening policy. I’ll link to his video next.

But here, I’m going to take a wander through running an assay, highlighting standards and procedures.
First, this is Ross’ video of the overall process, highlighting the need for coherent implementation practices. He - correctly - evokes the reams of technical documents used by WADA in their anti-doping programmes.

Even the simplest of lab assays can have pages of instructions associated with it.
So, the assay for sex screening will be detection of the SRY gene. This is the ‘make male’ gene that is the master switch for testes-not-ovaries.

The assays out there are very sensitive and specific. That means they can detect SRY when it’s present, and they don’t give a signal when it’s absent. They aren’t 100% on either metric, but near as dammit.

This itself may be a problem…
Read 18 tweets
Mar 26
In 2025, Jon Pike and I argued that exclusion of athletes with androgenising XY DSDs from female athletics is justified, because these athletes are male, not female.

@runthinkwrite

tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…Image
@runthinkwrite This followed a 2024 paper where we, along with Ross Tucker, Tommy Lundberg, Cathy Devine and many others, argued for a return to sex screening to secure eligibility for female sport.

@Scienceofsport @TLexercise @cathydevine56

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.11…Image
@runthinkwrite @Scienceofsport @TLexercise @cathydevine56 This followed another 2024 paper where we critiqued the (now former) IOC policy on inclusion of trans-identifying males in female sports.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.11…Image
Read 5 tweets
Feb 6
I am starting to pull out details of this "meta" review that says trans-identifying males don't have advantage over women in sports.

I need a sanity check, because I'm only at Figure 1 and already there's an issue.

bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/…
So this is Figure 1A: fat mass (kg).

Alvares 2025, n=7, fat mass is higher in females as both absolute and relative values. This is logged as "favours cisgender", which is kinda odd because high fat mass isn't usually considered favourable for sports, but whatever.

TIMS: 16.2 kg (24%). F: 19.5 kg (26%).Image
But Ceolin 2024 is also logged as "favours cisgender" when their values are:

TIM: 18.2 kg (24%). F: 15 kg (25%). Their n = 47.
Read 7 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(