At some point in the future, I'll share a presentation that goes through male vs female physiological differences and the biological reality of sport, to explain what some have (wilfully) misunderstood. But for now, here's a pen review of this absurdity promoted by @BJSM_BMJ Number 1 (summary conclusions only, mind)

The IOC appear unsure of why sport would test the sex of athletes. In a bonus (short 16min) podcast, I explain the reasons, how categories only work when excluding some people and why screening is not arbitrary but essential to fairness & safety for women: open.spotify.com/episode/0nhX9D… It strikes me that the IOC response to the controversy is to ignore the test results, instead choosing to criticize the reason for testing. This enables them to deflect the implication of the test results. The reasons for testing, more generally, is what I cover in the podcast 1/

I have some thoughts on this, if I may. First, the cheek swab for those not in the know is a simple and non-invasive test that allows them to distinguish between people who are XX and XY, by scraping cells off the inside of the cheek, and checking under microscope. However...

https://twitter.com/JudyMurray/status/1819010524656312794

...the problem for sport is that when it's applied this test in the past, it has produced some controversies. Here's an account from one athlete on their failed test, having previously passed it: What this, and other cases (Ewa Klobukowska) remind us is...thelancet.com/journals/lance…

Basically, IOC paid tens of thousands to show that a small slice of the female population overlaps in performance with a small slice of the male population, and now try to spin it as proof of no advantage. Could’ve watched Boston yesterday to see overlap. It is totally irrelevant

https://twitter.com/BrowngaGreg/status/1779977383879274500

If that slice of the female population happens to come from further towards the “high” end of athleticism, and the male slice is further to the “low” end, of course you’ll find similar performances. Look at the VO2, BMI, Fat %, and you know exactly how this “similarity” was made

@NakulMPande The "unbeatable advantage" bit you have taken from these tweets is you manipulating an argument. Because of normal overlap between the populations, some women outperform many men, everyone knows this. But it's irrelevant, as you surely know, no? Or do you need this explained too? @NakulMPande I'm guessing you might, so let's put it this way - many women, who are exceptional athletes, outperform most* men. But no women outperform all men. The reverse, however, IS true. Some men outperform all women. Their advantage is insurmountable.

* depending on task/sport type

The South African commentators and studio pundits still don’t understand the four elements of the head contact process. Quite disappointing how superficially they explain it. I know it’s imperfect, but it involves more than our SA viewers are told @fmessack …assessment (eg low danger if tackler is passive, with “passive of feet planted, not going forward, passive tackler rather than dynamic. Mitigation if suddenly change in direction etc). So it’s systematic, with outcomes determined by the (guided) answer to each question.

With the UCI decision today, even if imperfect, it means rugby, swimming, track and field and cycling have all recognized the biological implications of sex, and respected women’s rights to fair and safe sport. The IOC, meanwhile, still believe in “no presumption of advantage”, …whereas others have recognized that women’s sport has meaning precisely BECAUSE male biology is known to have performance implications. It’s not presumption so much as reality. That’s the start point for scientific evidence. Thereafter, it follows that unless the male biology

@CAMOKAT6 @SVPhillimore Yes, largely, it's the same argument that we've heard for the last few years, once it became clear that there are advantages. It involves a lot of evasive wordplay - overwhelming adv vs meaningful, conflating advantage types, using under-representation to dismiss advantage. @CAMOKAT6 @SVPhillimore Just to take one - left-handers in fencing. The scale of this advantage is so small compared to male vs female, and you only have to ask one question to reveal this: How many left handed females are competitive against right-handed males? Zero. The gap created by LH vs RH is tiny

Good to see from British Cycling. Yes, it follows the evidence, and yes, it respects women’s rights to fairness, and their voice. But it still takes a degree of conviction to go against the international governing body (however misguided that policy may be).

https://twitter.com/britishcycling/status/1662036051659980800

The path that leads to this “departure” is interesting. Scientific evidence for retained advantage (and refuting its removal) was there all along, for all parties to recognize. What @BritishCycling had was vocal women who refused to be ignored. Plus a case that demonstrated the

This has been deleted, but I'd like to thank @peterjrainford for opening this door to some important points in this debate. First of all, this athlete was *RIGHTLY* disqualified because of the advantage gained by a car. Nobody who argues for fairness in sport would disagree...1/ Second, this athlete finished third, they didn't win. But we know that they still gained an advantage and were correctly disqualified. This should be noted by those who frequently suggest that the (perceived) scarcity of TW who win is evidence that the lack advantages.

Correct final outcome is reached, but it is a convoluted, unnecessary process based on a misunderstanding of performance advantage & fairness. No matter how tall, strong or powerful, the advantage exists because the person is crossing a category boundary: australia.basketball/statement-on-l… What they are doing is akin to assessing a heavyweight boxer who wants to fight middleweights, and saying "OK, let's see how strong and powerful you are, then we can make an exemption". That 'exemption', if applied, would permit relatively inferior athletes to fight superior ones

I think this is great. How it should be. If you emphasize results, you drive selection based on current performance. And selection means omission. Both based on poor and misleading criteria. So the health & quality of the eventual late teen and adult sport system is compromised

https://twitter.com/dannycare/status/1631710289052803098

What sports have to do is a find a balance between creating a pathway that filters out players so that resources can be maximized, and keeping as many players “viable” for as long as possible. At 8, rewarding performance is almost pointless because it’s almost entirely confounded

Let's talk about foul play, red cards and head injuries in #Rugby Here's a thread on head injury risks and the 'levers of control' to try to reduce it, with some background and some data... 1/ Back in 2017, when we first analysed risk factors for head injury, it was clear that higher tackles increased risk. This is pretty obvious - the only way a ball carrier can be injured is from a high tackle, and we also found head-to-head contact was most dangerous for TACKLERS

This thread typifies two broad approaches to this issue. On one side are people whose paradigm is "There's no evidence (according to them), so there's no reason to prevent males from entering women's rugby". On the other is a group who say "Male physiology is very different from

https://twitter.com/YorkRILadies/status/1552652247124758528

...female physiology because of androgens and male development, so we need to prevent males in women's rugby until the evidence strongly suggests it is fair and safe". The latter group is not without evidence, mind. We know the initial typical M vs F differences, and we know the

Another example is cars vs motorbikes, which is more dangerous? If you only count road accidents/deaths, you'd conclude that cars are more dangerous. And you'd be wrong, because you've failed to account for 'exposure'. Now let's think rugby.... If you watch rugby, you will see many more head-hip proximity tackles than you see head-head proximity tackles. Hips are "selfies or cars", & heads are "sharks or motorbikes". We can quantify this, and it's 2.6 head-hip tackles (18%) for every 1 head-head tackle (7% of tackles).

Rugby and HIA risk (thread):
Ahead of a big rugby weekend, thought I'd offer a little insight into when the risk of head injuries is highest, and how World Rugby has tried to nudge behaviour towards safety (the Red and Yellow cards you see, that is). So here's a little tutorial! First, and sorry for the wordy slide, but we need to understand how risk reduction works in the global sense. To simplify, you're either eliminating, substituting, or modifying what is risky. To do this, you have to first understand a spectrum of risk. That is, "what is risky?"

Upon further reading, the following strikes me. Based on the science (without quotation marks), in sport, where SEX DOES matter, there *IS* a choice to be made, the reality that fairness & safety for women can’t co-exist when male advantage is retained...
theguardian.com/sport/blog/202… Is that choice easy? No. So the headline is immediately misleading. The choices create consequences. But they’re consequences in a colliding rights issue, so if you only ever consider them from one POV, you can’t do justice to the difficulty of those choices. That’s THE problem

Jon’s thread below is good, and I agree. My first impression of this article was a bit simpler. I thought the quotation marks around “fairness” and “the science” were doing a comically large amount of work, but also quite revealing of the line of reasoning about to follow!

https://twitter.com/runthinkwrite/status/1541758293756067846

Then comes the second part, where I assume based on a lack of quotation marks, that we are now talking about real science. This is the sociological equivalent of “but Michael Phelps’ arms”, with a seasoning of blackmail. I’d answer the Qs at the end with: “please do & irrelevant”

Rugby’s Return to Play protocols after concussion - yesterday, @WorldRugby announced some changes to the management of players after concussion. You can read it here: world.rugby/news/726094/wo… And here’s a thread on some of the process & science behind it, which I was involved in @WorldRugby To begin with, let’s look at what happened in the past. First, there used to be a mandatory stand-down period - a concussion meant that player couldn’t play again for an agreed, pre-determined period (it was still open for case by case exceptions, though). Then that was replaced

Let’s think this through (hint, reader - we have thought this through, a lot. It’s been 3 years of grappling with the issue). First problem - physiology. What do you test, and how, in order to approve a TW as not having an advantage? Do you measure performance as the outcome? (1/

https://twitter.com/catherineordway/status/1539096464756178944

If you do it by performance, how do you control for deliberate under-performance? Also, performance is the point of sport, so you’d be using the outcome as the input, so that you’d have a chance at an outcome? That is, well, perfectly circular and defeats the point of sport (2/

I’m rarely a glass half-full person! But in a weird way, the weakly argued & deeply discriminatory article linked to below represents a kind of positive shift in this debate. It used to be argued that there was no unfairness, that we could include AND be fair at the same time 1/

https://twitter.com/fem_mb/status/1524536649115385857

But now, even the most obvious attempt to include TW at the expense of fairness (& safety - same source physiology) for women has had to abandon this “fairness deception”, and must now begin by accepting the retention of advnantage. It may not feel it, but that IS progress.