Men needed to be T-protected too: Prof Ross Tucker (ZA) thinks IAAF should set an upper limit for men (tweet)

For the latter question, he says he "wouldn't" group by testosterone, but force males to "self-identify" as women before allowing them to compete there.

But I wouldn't group by T - I'd still want people to self-identify first (sport has no place policing gender)

Methinks Tucker doesn't understand the gravamen of the CAS decision. He thinks his 99% rule applying also to men would work because:

Yeah, because it takes away discriminatory nature of the HA policy as it was before. Point 450 in CAS:

Umm, no the "discriminatory" nature of the HA regulations was that they excluded a certain group of females (high-T) from competing when they had a right (enshrined as an Olympic principle) to do so. Practicing a similar discrimination against some cohort of high-T males doesn't solve this, but just creates MORE discrimination.

That's what the HA policy had for women, but IAAF lost that case because it was discriminatory (didn't apply to men).

Again, Tucker completes misunderstands. The HA regs were not "discriminatory" against women as a group vis-a-vis men, but were "discriminatory" against a small group of females with large-T.

Another patented Ross Tucker non-solution

The self-identification is not that difficult to manage except for transgender athletes. Then it may take more,but for rest, easy

Everything is easy EXCEPT for the difficulties, eh?

That this guy actually has a large mainstream media following (many quotations in press) is getting more and more surprising.

pizza king wrote:

Methinks Tucker doesn't understand the gravamen of the CAS decision. He thinks his 99% rule applying also to men would work because:

Yeah, because it takes away discriminatory nature of the HA policy as it was before. Point 450 in CAS:

Umm, no the "discriminatory" nature of the HA regulations was that they excluded a certain group of females (high-T) from competing when they had a right (enshrined as an Olympic principle) to do so. Practicing a similar discrimination against some cohort of high-T males doesn't solve this, but just creates MORE discrimination.

That's what the HA policy had for women, but IAAF lost that case because it was discriminatory (didn't apply to men).

Again, Tucker completes misunderstands. The HA regs were not "discriminatory" against women as a group vis-a-vis men, but were "discriminatory" against a small group of females with large-T.

I agree, the CAS decision never discussed the T-level restriction in the HA regs as being "discriminatory" as such due to being only applied to women, so this is just a product of his imagination (or poor comprehension skills).

As a meagre defence, some of his Twitter antagonists seem to have been suggesting this, which just shows how dumb the whole social media junket really is.

Is this guy having some sort of mental breakdown?

Pseudosport Pseudoscientist wrote:

Another patented Ross Tucker non-solution

The self-identification is not that difficult to manage except for transgender athletes. Then it may take more,but for rest, easy

Everything is easy EXCEPT for the difficulties, eh?

That this guy actually has a large mainstream media following (many quotations in press) is getting more and more surprising.

He still is a way better scientist than those "bioethicists" and other social justice warriors.

He is the only one who has the balls to say that Caster shouldn't compete without lowering her testosterone levels.

Mr Realism wrote:

Is this guy having some sort of mental breakdown?

No, he's being ironic.

Pro cycling had a similar issue with EPO. They addressed it by setting an upper level just above the highest natural reading. IAAF did the same with T levels in women, which appeared to work, since Semenya slowed from... what?... 1:55-ish to 2:04?

CAS made a political ruling to strike down the max limit on T levels. A better solution would be to keep the level at 10 (or maybe even 4) and require anyone testing higher to prove that they don't have male body parts (testes). Women with male body parts could compete as women if they had their testes removed or they took T suppression drugs to drop below the max level for at least one year. This would still give an advantage to Semenya, who has benefitted from nearly a decade of male-level testosterone, but it would be fairer all around.

There's another logical flaw in RT's analysis.

He's says that T=0.7 (or something) is the observed average for "women" and T=15 or so is it for "men" (elite athletes), and that thse form the baseline for his 99% rules.

But if you allow everyone to self-identify as "man" or "woman", then these T-values in the above observed populations are vitiated, as they are no longer meaningless.

Once you have a bunch of T=10 self-identifying women in the group, that will drag the average up, and the 99% line would need to be recalculated.

Statistically, this is a malpractice.

Bartlet P. Mills wrote:

I agree, the CAS decision never discussed the T-level restriction in the HA regs as being "discriminatory" as such due to being only applied to women, so this is just a product of his imagination (or poor comprehension skills).

Yes it did. It said the parties agreed it was prima facie discriminatory because it only applied to women. that is the reason the burden shifted to the IAAF to prove that the regulation had merit rooted in evidence

I should say "a" reason rather than "the" reason ... it's unclear whether CAS was talking about that in paragraph 450, but clearly says that it wasn't in dispute that it was discriminatory to apply only to women

Ross Tucker jumped the shark long ago. Total fool.

The solution is to keep men out of women's events.

Not to regulate moderately men to extreme high levels of testosterone and put them in women's events.