Hoo-boy…“unethical” doesn’t even begin to describe it.

FPFW:

There are a couple of studies being done in British universities in an attempt to prove that “transition” from male to female reduces the male performance advantage enough to make it fair for those post-pubertal adult males to play and compete in women’s sport. It’s known that testosterone suppression reduces oxygen-carrying capacity, which reduces athletic performance a bit, though it’s obvious that most of the effects of male puberty are irreversible. Nonetheless, Loughborough and Brighton Universities are both hosting PhD studies led by trans-identifying males who wish to prove their own eligibility for female sport.

I’ll just say that again. Loughborough and Brighton Universities are both hosting PhD studies led by trans-identifying males who wish to prove their own eligibility for female sport.

That’s not a study, that’s not academic work, that’s not research – that’s men using a veneer of pretend-research to enable their theft of women’s places in women’s sport.

At Loughborough, Joanna Harper is trying to back up the anecdotal evidence provided to the IOC in 2015, on which their testosterone suppression policy, since dropped, was based. We wrote about the problems of study design and the conflicts of interest for the study leader and for the participants. It is hopelessly compromised.

Now the leader of the Brighton study, Blair Hamilton, has confirmed this. In calling for trans athletes who feel their potential exclusion from female categories is unfair to participate in their study, Hamilton is actively recruiting participants who want to demonstrate their loss of performance. As we’ve written before, we can be certain they’ll succeed.

Not exactly the right way to recruit participants for a research study.