In addition to The Meateater Podcast, my regular rotation includes The DarkHorse Podcast. This is a husband (Bret Weinstein) and wife (Heather Heying) team, both evolutionary biologists, who, in addition to a regular podcast interview/discussion format show from Bret, do a weekly 1-3 hour discussion about some handful of topics in biology, science, policy, viewed through biological evolutionary lens (I think that’s their tagline).
In a recent episode, they looked a recent paper titled “Strength, power and aerobic capacity of transgender athletes: a cross sectional study” As you may be able to figure out from that title, this paper examines the relative performance of transgender ‘athletes’ (reason for scare quotes will become apparent) via ‘standard laboratory performance tests, including… VO2 max, cardiopulmonary exercise testing,.., testosterone and estradiol [serum] levels’. This study purports to show little to no difference between transgender women and biological women and calls into question the rational for excluding biological men from women’s sports events (“these results should caution against precautionary bans and sport eligibility exclusion”) .
The segment on DarkHorse was dedicated to examining how the study managed to find this result; they spend some time digging into the methodology to demonstrate how poorly the study was conducted and reported. Briefly, they identify the selection criteria as a major flaw, one that makes the study results completely unreliable. The researchers recruited the study subjects (19 men, 12 transgender men, 21 women, and 23 transgender women) via social media polls – i.e. the sample was self-selected (hence, ‘athletes’). Perhaps not surprisingly, this resulted in a heavy selection bias in that the transgender women appeared to be a significantly less fit cohort. Exercise regime was self-report. They excluded 2 transgender women (e.g. men) because their testosterone levels were too high, e.g. they likely biased their transgender female cohort to lower performance. I thought initially that they were going to mix the transgender men and transgender women cohort comparisons to dilute the results; while there may have been some of this – the data and analysis are some what obfuscated – that doesn’t appear to be the major issue. In any case, I’d urge that you listen to the podcast if interested – to me the details of what shenanigans the researchers pulled to get this result is less interesting than the ramifications of this sort of research behavior.
That’s right, without reading the details of the paper and digging through (deliberately?) obfuscated analysis, I dismissed the result out of hand. But wait, you protest, that’s not how science is done! It can be counterintuitive and you, being fallible, can very easily make a mistake, or you may not understand the underlying system, or you may not be fully aware of your own biases and limitations. You have to let the data speak for itself. In principle, and really in practice assuming good faith – or even without that presumption – this is 100% true. You should not dismiss counterintuitive results out of hand. However, I would submit that, while true in the general scientific endeavor of examining and understanding complex human and physical systems, this question does not fall into a sufficiently complex area of scientific inquiry to justify complete deference to that principle. This isn’t quarks, or black holes, or general relativity, or dark energy – it’s something that every single human being has a lifetime of experience with, as well as an intuitive and manifestly practical understanding of.
Top left, clockwise: That’s man on the blocks. That’s a man on the podium. That’s a man standing with some women. That’s a man stiff (hah) arming a woman. Also a man. If you need me to tell you that’s a man, check your testosterone and/or estradiol levels, you may be ill.
If you can look at the above montage and marshal your lifetime of experience and still think you need an expert or The Science to tell you the nature of the reality, you are not thinking very carefully. You should not question reality because someone somewhere published a “The Science” study that is clearly absurd, nor should you need a detailed dive into the shortcomings, biases, and errors, of the study.
Now don’t get me wrong – such a breakdown is useful and can help you think about how data can be manipulated – or, assuming good faith, misinterpreted – or an analysis impacted by the researchers preconceived desired outcome. I found Bret and Heather’s discussion interesting. However, to me the much more interesting question is what happens when the scientific endeavor becomes The Science, to be handed down from on high by a set of “Experts” with the proper credentials and world view, and it tells you obvious untruths.
It’s not that people will start believing the indefensible, especially if it contradicts deeply experienced reality – well some might, probably directly correlated with credentials and what interest they have in staying within the good graces of the system that puts forth the indefensible – but rather will start distrusting the scientific method. Skin-suiting the scientific method and converting it into The Science, revealed truth from experts, will yield short term gain. But in the long run, you turn science – a method of understanding the world – into just another ideology and people will begin to dismiss it. They will not only dismiss science in the realm where it has no power or has been compromised for an ulterior agenda, but also in realms where it is useful and beneficial. People who would use the imprimatur of science to force the acceptance of their ideology are making the classic inversion of cause and effect. The power of scientific methods and approaches does not create truth out of absurdity, but rather finding out true things using science makes the scientific approach valuable and powerful. The fact that the scientific approach produces tangible, useful results and iterates truth in the physical world is what causes people to respect and defer to science. If you take that earned respect and deference and put into the service to the absurd to accomplish your short-term goals, you do not create truth out of the absurd, but rather, in the long run, will destroy that respect and deference, potentially to the detriment of our long term well- being.
Where is Diana Moon Glampers when you need her?
Briefly, they identify the selection criteria as a major flaw, one that makes the study results completely unreliable.
[insert expostulation of astonished disbelief]
However, to me the much more interesting question is what happens when the scientific endeavor becomes The Science, to be handed down from on high by a set of “Experts” with the proper credentials and world view, and it tells you obvious untruths.
You will shut up and believe what the priests tell you to believe. Or you’ll go to hell and the righteous will shun you.
It’s getting so ridiculous out there that I hesitate to check out attractive men anymore because who the hell knows what I’m actually looking at.
Thinking there would be an amusing STEVE SMITH joke in there somewhere, I searched ‘Sasquatch penis’ to see what I would get.
…
I have regrets.
Asshole.
That’s like when I told my10 yo son when he was about to meet a relative “No matter what you do, dont stare at Terry’s unibrow. He is sensitive about it.”
Now I have regrets
I have regrets.
Iron something something predictable results something not unintended
“Skin-suiting the scientific method and converting it into The Science, revealed truth from experts, will yield short term gain.”
It’s been paying off for decades with Global Warming/Climate Change/Eat zee bugs. Of course they keep trying.
IMO, true. However, I don’t think Climate Change(tm) falls into exactly the same space. It’s similar, but much more subtle. There are plausible arguments that can be made and sound eminently reasonable on the surface. Can be very convincing to most people. However, the transgender athlete thing is just too absurd. Every human being understands that it’s bullshit at a very gut/intuitive level – You’re not really fooling anybody. They know your full of shit. And that is very directly toxic to the scientific method/approach.
Of course, do that sort of thing enough and people might start to question a bit more carefully things like “Climate Change” and dig beyond the level plausibility – or if not that, if they don’t like the policy implications, just dismiss it out of hand – “See how much those scientist types just flat out lie?!?”. Dismissing scientific results would be a good thing for ClimateSCIENCE, but maybe not so good as a general principle.
Shoulda been “Is that a penis in your bikini?”
Good article!
I had the same thought.
“I just met a girl, smart and beautiful!”
“Thats a dude, Mac…”
Awww, look how young they look.
That was the pilot!? And that’s Morena Baccarin!
She can be my Orici.
It’s been paying off for decades with Global Warming/Climate Change
They now have a carefully crafted template which can be transferred to any target. It worked splendidly when applied to the sniffle-pocalypse.
Like the study that purported to show masks on kids work in NC.
The corporate media was highlighting it as “proof” we should all wear masks.
Problem with the study? There was no control group without masks to compare.
“Follow the science!”
That would be unsafe, because masks keep you from getting sick. Duh.
Arrive at a political/social conclusion and design the study including subject selection and statistical analysis and interpretation in a fashion that will support the conclusion: Unethical as hell but becoming par for the course. See also: Psychological study findings’ lack of reproducibility which is nothing new I’m afraid.
The concept of a “narrative” is destroying society before our eyes.
All societies are built on narratives. This is just a self-destructive one that is worming it’s way through the foundation of ours.
Politics are a helluva drug. Money and politics will soon find each other.
“I know the answer, I just don’t know the question”
/Geezer
Masks dont work. There is no climate crisis. Transgenderism is mental illness. Electric cars and environmentalism in general is dumb as fuck.
I am going to try to come up with a new tag for leftists. I have to somehow work the word ‘horseshit’ in.
Masks dont work. – they do for bank robbers
There is no climate crisis – there might be at some point, not necessarily human made though
When the sun goes red giant, we’re definitely screwed.
You’re not going to get a lick of NIH grant money talking like that.
Just did a report on a woman who thinks she’s a boy. Doc didn’t want to dx her with gender dysphoria, and encouraged her to go to counseling and make sure her other mental illnesses (borderline personality disorder, anxiety, depression) (none of which she wanted treated pharmacologically) were treated first.
Stunning how much damage just one sentence: “I represent science” did.
Our society having lost faith in the old priesthood, looked for a new one. And wouldn’t you know a self-serving priestly caste was more than willing to rob authority from any source in order to serve.
Let me amplify.
Trump fundamentally failed as a leader and passed the spotlight over to his expert (a priestly guise). Said expert really didn’t know anymore than Trump but had to project confident knowledge, because uncertainty would terrify the masses, who crave certainty from their leadership. Openly uncertain leadership will be replaced by leaders who assert certainty – doesn’t matter how wrong they actually are. At least in the short term. Being wrong has long term consequences, but being uncertain has nearly immediate consequences.
“Heying opposed COVID-19 vaccines and promoted the unproven belief that the drug ivermectin is effective in treating the disease.” – you should not listen to misinformation
Much like one can always replace “may” with “may not”, “effective” can be replaced with “not effective”
Ivermectin is another potential example of, as Stinky illustrates above, manipulating study design to arrive at a pre-defined conclusion.
look are you a licensed horse medicine professional? Heying has a phd in the ecology and sexual selection of a Madagascan poison frog not horses.
calls into question the rational for excluding biological men from women’s sports events – at most calls into question having men and women categories, all should compete in the same
Women should have their own category because they can’t compete with men and everyone knows it. The men’s category should be open to anyone who can actually make it on merit. There’d be the occasional female or trans person playing with the men but they’d be few and far between.
That would be treating the sexes differently – can’t have that, who knows how many laws and/or EOs you’d be violating.
Maybe compete by weight class or skill level? Sled hockey is completely mixed everywhere except the Paralympic level. Our tournaments are all set up by skill level. Seems to work just fine.
It seems there would still be some disparity in sled hockey just due to significantly different upper body strengths. But I guess there are other equalizers that make men and women closer in level and less likely to injure. How many women participate in the sport? Is it a couple of percent? 50? I might imagine men are more likely to be in a position of having lost limb function from injury.
bbal, football etc cannot compete by weight and skill lecel is automatic some make the big league some don’t
do fights happen in sled hockey?
USPSA has a composite competition system.
Minor matches – bragging only
Major Matches – Trophies are awarded by skill class. Prizes are awarded by absolute performance.
PM – We do have two women on our team of about 20. Some teams have more. A few women will skate in the top tier but it’s rare. There is definitely a difference in size an strength between men and women. But a smaller woman would choose to play at a lower level where she wouldn’t get hit as hard.
Pie – My (now) son in law recently asked me about fights in sled hockey. I know of just a few (one was two of my teammates during practice). We all wear helmets with cages or full face shields so you aren’t going to drop the gloves and fight like NHL players. But people do push and hit each other when they get angry. As in normal hockey, the refs seem to see the retaliation more than the offense.
If you take that earned respect and deference and put into the service to the absurd to accomplish your short-term goals, you do not create truth out of the absurd, but rather, in the long run, will destroy that respect and deference, potentially to the detriment of our long term well- being.
“Our”? C’mon man, speak for yourself. It helps the long-term well-being of the folks that get rich off of THE SCIENCE!
New Beetlejuice trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLDLuH9bkxk
Dammit! It still has Beetlejuice in it!
I hope they don’t fuck this up.
And for god’s sake, preserve Wednesday’s integrity.
Good grief… why?
New Beverly Hills Cop movie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoxhkE_U3Ww
That’s going to suck diddly uck.
Ditto for Beetlejuice. For the love of god Hollywood, please come up with something original.
this looks worse and lamer than the juice
Is Eddie Murphy going to play five different cops in fat suits?
I’m surprised at how many of the originals are still alive.
The problem with any analysis where the participants know what is being tested is that the suspect demographic will sandbag their performance. It is the Trans-bio-men (men who feel they are transitioning) that are being questioned and it is easy for them to take it easy, and show, they are no threat.
You would need to take a study that uses a neutral test that the entrants don’t expect to be rated on “athletic results” like a CAD stress test. You would then show that the distributions of the 4 different groups clearly don’t overlap and that the mean and standard deviation of the trans-men group is one or two sigmas over the standard Female group. You would then need to correlate the stress test performance with athletic ability, but that shouldn’t not be hard.
Trans-bio-men are referred to as trans-women. I find it easier to keep score if I just substitute “fake” for “trans”.
I find it easier to keep score if I just substitute “fake” for “trans”.
Ah, I could never keep it straight (and never cared to dive into it) but that helps a lot.
I prefer trans-men.. They are men who think they are transitioning. we can argue how valid any transition is. but at the core they are still men (XY) . They do not assume “trans is fake”.. if they were called trans-men then of course they would not be in women’s sports, bathrooms or changing areas. Giving them their first bit of leeway and conceding trans-woman you are now arguing from a weaker position, as has been the case.
Just did a report on a woman who thinks she’s a boy. Doc didn’t want to dx her with gender dysphoria, and encouraged her to go to counseling and make sure her other mental illnesses (borderline personality disorder, anxiety, depression) (none of which she wanted treated pharmacologically) were treated first.
That sounds reasonable. I assume the pediatricians will be going after his license.
Mike Rowe has a movie coming out.
looks racist and sexist… too many white men
Random question/observation:
I have been looking at a bunch of floor plans. Why would you put the “master suite” on the front of the house?
where else?
That is where the view is? Airport behind the property?
From my past house hunting trips in Phoenix three decades ago . . . .
There are housing developments where the houses are shoulder to shoulder and the front of the house is basically a garage and an entrance. Many of these houses have an open floor plan where the living room, dining room, and kitchen basically spill out into the back patio for combined indoor/outdoor living. The only place left to put bedrooms is the front of the house.
It made sense in that climate and in those compressed neighborhoods. But I can’t say that I like those layouts.
As a person whose children were little once, why is the master on a different floor from the others?
Some houses aren’t intended for small children (like mine for example).
children were little once – are there children who were not little once? We dont have those in Romania.
So the little kids don’t hear you screw, obvs.
So you can get some sleep, would be my guess.
So you can get your sexy on without waking the kids.
That’s a good question; my parents’ old house had the master on the front — and it wasn’t where the view was. It was, however, on the complete opposite side of the house from the other bedrooms, family room, and living room.
Huh, apparently Nick Rekieta’s (YouTube lawyer who hit it huge covering the Rittenhouse and Depp trials) lost his freaking mind:
https://youtu.be/GuS1Fb5Qwow?si=26krNC8Bq1Gq2dCl
He has interesting takes when he’s sober but there are few things as corrosive as being an internet fame whore.
What exactly did he do? I’m not sitting through a half-hour video for the answer.
I only watched the summary but it looks like he got loaded, came back from the bathroom with blow or some similar on his nose, and tried to jack it onstream. It’s just stupid substance induced internet drama I guess.
Who hasn’t done that?
I have not been on glib zoom recently, does that happen often?
“Was that wrong? Should I not have done that?”
That entire cohort has problems with getting loaded and doing stupid shit online. Looking in your direction, Andrew Branca…
And again, for no good reason:
Anybody who believes in child gender categorization based on “presents as” should be lashed to a wagon wheel and flogged with a knotted rope.
Hopefully while the wagon is moving.
Keel hauling would be better.
so apparently Britain does not have a shortage of housing because some people have guest bedrooms that are empty most of the year and can be better allocated
“There are enough homes. If you think there aren’t, how many more homes/bedrooms/floorspace do you think are required to house the homeless without displacing anyone else?”
https://twitter.com/_StefanHorn/status/1793645240814805020
Alastair Fraser-Urquhart
@AFraserUrq
This gets worse, his working paper is literally entirely based upon people only being allowed a maximum amount of floorspace, which is a good idea because They Said So and Somebody’s Given Them All PhDs, so they’re also Important and you Must Listen For Your Own Good.
Stefan Horn
@_StefanHorn
Alastair, a core argument is that “housing need” cannot be determined by politicians/specialists. The bedroom standard is one starting point for discussion. Ultimately this has to be decided by the public, e.g. in a citizens assembly (like climate assemblies).
Yuan Yi Zhu
@yuanyi_z
A citizens’ assembly to decide how many bedrooms you should be allowed to have. God wept.
https://twitter.com/yuanyi_z/status/1793570181563965651
That ass hat can go first, load him up preferably with road workers who smell like sweat and tar 24/7.
Well, our two cats each had a bedroom (because they couldn’t get along with each other). We recently had to put down our older cat, but we will be looking for another cat, not a homeless person, to take its place. (Although we hope the new cat gets along with the remaining one.)
get a dog
Did you survive the storms OK?
Yes, nothing bad in Ames — though Nevada, the next town to the east, had an EF2 touch down.
It had mostly broken up by time it got to us in eastern Iowa.
Because having some random homeless meth-head move into your house doesn’t displace you at all.
You go first, Stefan. After a month, let us know if you want it be a permanent arrangement.
That’s just crazy-talk.
where else?
How about the back side, where there is less noise and and traffic?
well my house was built when there was not much traffic and the bedroom of my apartment is to the front, while the living room is to the back. It is noisy but what can I do? Back in the day it was built thus so the owners could look onto the street to see who is passing by and go to the balcony to talk to people. To be fair the larger balcony off the living room is to the back and has more privacy if you want to spent time there eating drinking etc. Also the kitchen an servants entrance is in the back.
Servents!? Somebody is getting uppity. (Maybe you meant orphans.)
A citizens’ assembly to decide how many bedrooms you should be allowed to have. God wept.
*uptwinkles*
Would read again
100 Amakola Court in Brevard, North Carolina — Connestee Falls Lakefront Home For Sale — Real Estate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv8tQealja8
I am a sucker for lakefront property, though that lake looks kinda small. but I do like it is wooded.
$1,450,000
the realtor seem weird, strange demeanor
Pondfront property just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
On topic:
https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-health-centers-at-seattle-public-schools-offer-gender-affirming-hormone-therapy-to-children
So should the staff be lampposted out of hand, or sent to re-education camp and lampposted only if that doesn’t stick?
The decision makers can go straight to the lamppost.
The people that went along due to fear of persecution can go be educated that there are worse things in life than losing a job.
R C, lampposting as a first resort is too harsh.
Maybe a three-stroke bastinado, now…
Sickening. And justified with a disgusting lie.
Oh, and Putrid, I agree with your thesis. There are some things (“men and women are different”) that no science is need to confirm, and no amount of “science” can disprove or contradict.