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The Tricky Science of Olympic Gender Testing

Posted by samzenpus on from the if-it-walks-like-a-duck dept.

First time accepted submitter erdos-bacon sandwich writes "Gender tests may be the most controversial obstacle the athletes face. The London Games tries a new approach based on testosterone. Of all the obstacles athletes have had to overcome to compete in the Olympics, perhaps the most controversial has been the gender test. Originally designed to prevent men from competing in women's events, it is based on the premise that competitors can be sorted into two categories via established scientific rules. But the biological boundaries of gender aren't always clear."

57 of 559 comments (clear)

  1. Is that a man or a woman? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Answer: yes.

    1. Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Trouble is, sometimes the answer is no.

    2. Re:Is that a man or a woman? by drinkydoh · · Score: 3, Interesting

      That's true. Theravada Buddhism agrees that there are more than two genders. SEA is area with prominently open approach to ladyboys (transponders) and people who do not want to be the gender they were born with.

      However, you must also understand that some (most? I'm not that clear on the subject) don't believe to be women. They don't believe to be men either. They believe they're 'third' gender.

      And they should have the right to be.

    3. Re:Is that a man or a woman? by ArsenneLupin · · Score: 4, Informative

      Trouble is, sometimes the answer is no.

      ... and sometimes, the answer is "both"...

    4. Re:Is that a man or a woman? by drkim · · Score: 5, Funny

      SEA is area with prominently open approach to ladyboys (transponders)

      My ladyboy usually squawks 7000.

    5. Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Except categories in sports are defined by sex not gender so what they believe to be does not matter when it comes to decide in which category they can compete.

    6. Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Rei · · Score: 5, Interesting

      However, you must also understand that some (most? I'm not that clear on the subject) don't believe to be women. They don't believe to be men either. They believe they're 'third' gender.

      Those who don't consider themselves to be either would be lumped into a category like "genderqueer" rather than "transsexual". It's interesting how culture plays into gender identity and sexuality, too. Each society has different "bins", categories people can fall into, and you only get a sort of revolution, a breaking of the norms, when the limits of said categories are too confining for enough of the people in the society. The standard of course, at a minimum, is straight male and straight female. But many societies have had more. Two examples among thousands:

      1) Historic (and to a very tiny degree, modern) Albania had the "sworn virgins". These were people born as woman who would swear an oath to never sleep with a man. They then would live in men's clothing, could marry women, had men's property rights, and so forth; they were legally treated as men. There was no reverse situation. The concept was created to deal with families who only had female heirs, and the person would often swear at a young age, but some people would swear later in life, so there's some mix between "obligation" and "wanting" in the concept.

      2) The Samoan Fa'afafine is people who are anatomically male but live as women and are fully treated as women by society. It's so accepted that it's rare for parents to try to discourage an anatomically male child from living as a Fa'afafine. It is a much more informal concept.

      When you look at societies like that, you find that a lot of people living as the third gender identify specifically as the third gender. Some, however, do not, but said "third gender" is the closest that's accepted in their society to how they feel - for example, a person who is simply gay, or simply transsexual but not attracted to members of the same anatomic sex, is put in a bind. In some cases, being seen specifically as a member of the opposite anatomic sex, rather than a third gender, is very important to the person. And of course, rarely in societies do you see matching pairs of concepts - there may be an accepted third gender for anatomic males or anatomic females without an equivalent for the other.

      A really extreme example of people being forced into specific categories from modern society can be found in modern Iran. Transsexuality is accepted in Iran - not to a great degree (although to a surprising degree) among the populace, but fully accepted within law (actually, it's handled better in Iranian law than in most western nations). Homosexuality, however, is punishable by death. So there can be significant pressure for gay individuals to physically alter their sex.

      --
      The chloride owes the sodium money.
    7. Re:Is that a man or a woman? by metrix007 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Gender is generally considered a separate thing from sex. This article about determining an athletes sex, in which a ladyboy would be considered male, whether they like it or not.

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      If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
    8. Re:Is that a man or a woman? by JasterBobaMereel · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Try Lydia Fairchild she gave birth to three children that were hers biologically, but blood tests showed she was unrelated to ... she is a Human Chimera and has two sets of DNA and chromosomes

      It is therefore possible that the two sets could be different genders... and the answer could really be both ...

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    9. Re:Is that a man or a woman? by h4rr4r · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So define that? It will not be easy.

      Do you base it on sex organs? Genetic tests, which may not match sex organs? Levels of certain hormones in the blood?

      All of these methods have edge cases.

    10. Re:Is that a man or a woman? by billybob2001 · · Score: 4, Funny

      The London 2012 Olympics has already definitvely tested all of the athletes, during the opening ceremony.

      Near the end of Paul McCartney's performance of Let It Be, in the singalong "Na-na-na-nah" part, he made some subliminal audience participation requests:

      "Just the men", followed by "Now just the women" - and a host of cameras trained on the athletes recorded who sang along to which section.

      Foolproof!

    11. Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Bengie · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why bring science into this?

      The whole reason we have the distinction between male and female competition is because the male body gives an "unfair" advantage mostly by providing heightened levels of testosterone.

      If you want to make things simple, just have everyone compete together instead of splitting men and women. If you want to split up men and women, then we need a way to determine the difference between men and women and categorize people correctly.

    12. Re:Is that a man or a woman? by David+Chappell · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Except categories in sports are defined by sex not gender so what they believe to be does not matter when it comes to decide in which category they can compete.

      Not sure what distinction you are trying to draw between sex and gender. It can be confusing because "gender" now means what we used to call "sex". You have likely read books written before 1950 in which characters use expressions such as "a member of my sex", "the battle of the sexes". The statement "I want to talk about sex." would likely have been understood to mean "I want to talk about the social implications of being male and female."

      I have here a dictionary written in 1955 which under "sex" gives the meaning of maleness or femaleness and "the attraction of one sex to the other". It doesn't even meantion that it could mean the sex act. This meaning appears to have become popular in the 1960's. With sex now being a word that made small boys titter, those who wanted to talk about the social implications of sex (maleness or famaleness) borrowed the term from grammar. It would be too embarrasing to say that one was taking "Sex Studies" in college, so they called it "Gender Studies".

      Having thought about the above, you think you are saying that the problem is deciding who is female biologically as opposed to who can function as a female in society. The problem is that a small but significant part of the population displays testable physical characterisics of both sexes. For example, there are persons who are genetically male, but have female bodies. The IOC is thrashing around trying to find a definition of a female body.

      I think the reason they have dropped testing of all athelets who claim to be female is that once you select women with strong, athletic bodies, you increase the likelihood that some measure of their bodies will be closer to that of male bodies. If you then disqualify them as "technically male", you create a scandal and humiliate them. If, when her picture appears in news stories, the public perceives her as being a member of the female sex, you then look ridiculous as well.

      On the other hand, if you test no one, soon the women's division of sports requiring strength will be filled with men without beards and underdeveloped genitals.

    13. Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Ironhandx · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There really isn't a way to have men and women compete together in most sports.

      One of my pet peeves about feminists is that they want to claim that this is possible, but it simply isn't. Men are much more adapted to hunting, fighting, and running than women, women have evolved in a more sedentary role and as such are built for that role.

      Certain sports that involve much more raw intellect women could compete on, but if it significantly involves a physical challenge, forget about it.

      There are a lot of female soldiers in the US and Canadian military that have spoken out about this as well. Significantly in the Canadian military back when they were talking about lowering the physical requirements bar for more women to get in the women already in the military were among the loudest protesters. The fact of the matter is a 5'4"(Average height) 110lb(average fit weight) soaking wet woman has near-zero chance of being able to carry her 5'9" (average male height) 180lb(average fit male weight) off the battlefield or help him in a significant way beyond providing fire support and basic emergency triage.

      Beyond that because men get more out of adrenaline plus get a boatload more testosterone and muscle mass we shoot straighter, faster, and more often than female counterparts. You have to get into the top 20% of women to begin competing with the barely-average man, purely because of biological differences. Wanting it to be different doesn't make it different.

      None of this changed the decision for the Canadian military of course. Men have to pass a physical that is over twice as difficult just to get in now, and have to pass more stringent regulations in Boot Camp. A lot of the women who go through the program complain about this afterwards significantly. If they're not good enough, they shouldn't be there, period. Regardless of gender.

      I personally know a set of Native-Descent sisters who are currently both high-ranking officers purely because of minority quotas within the Canadian military. One of them can't even fucking pass the sight qualifications and the military paid for eye surgery for her to TRY to get her to pass it and she still failed then gave her a pass anyways.

    14. Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Rei · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'm guessing you haven't met many transsexuals if you think they tend to live to gender stereotypes any more than other members of the target sex. The standard joke about how to tell the difference between a MTF-crossdresser and a trans woman is that when the crossdresser gets home from work, he takes off his pants and put on a dress. When the transsexual gets home from work, she takes off her dress and puts on a pair of pants.

      It's easy to say that something is just a societal construct, but everyone in this world interacts with societal constructs and has elements of their identity impacted by them and has it change how they interact with others. Try going into a party and saying that you work as a pizza deliveryman when they ask what you do for a living, then go into a different party and say you're an investment banker, and judge the reactions in how you're treated. There's whole social constructs built even around concepts like "pizza deliveryman" and "investment banker", let alone something as fundamental as gender.

      Beyond that, there's very good evidence that transsexualism is not simply a "social construct", nor is gendered behavior in general. There are both structural and functional differences in male and female brains, and in some very specific regards, transsexual brains tend to more closely match those of the target sex (both in functional and structural exams) than the anatomic sex.

      --
      The chloride owes the sodium money.
    15. Re:Is that a man or a woman? by h4rr4r · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why not let the non XX or XY folks compete in one or the other category?
      Why exclude people at all?

      This is not PC bullshit this is basic biology. These people are already genetic freaks for being able to what they do, why exclude those that also have other genetic anomalies?

    16. Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Tuidjy · · Score: 3, Informative

      At the risk of feeding the troll, I'll try to explain and give you just one example where your approach is inadequate.

      Quite a few people get born with genitalia that are halfway in between. In such cases, in most Western countries, a surgeon works to push the newborn's genitalia into one of the two common configurations. Now a day the doctors have more tools that they used to - they can check the chromosomes and assign the children to the gender they most closely match.

      And they still make mistakes, or sometimes just have no good option. Note that in some case (XXY, XXYY) the kid is screwed anyway. It will look male, but will not be able to compete with XY males physically - weak muscles, useless fat accumulation, etc...

      And then you have kids which were assigned 'female' at birth, but because of one reason or another, are more or less male on the inside. Worst case scenario, the surgeon totally fucked up. So the genitalia is female, or a scary simulacra thereof, but everything else - muscles, hormones, etc... is male. Such a person will not only destroy his/her competitors, but do so by such a large margin that it's humiliating. And usually they do not look too female on the outside either. So the other women complain. And the issue gets raised, and a decision has to be taken.

      And not matter which way it goes, people get upset. As an enigineer, I can see that there are three solutions:

      1. Let all genders compete together. In too many sports, it will deny women any chance to even qualify.

      2. XXs compete with XXs, XYs with XYs, and anyone else is out, period. Harsh on a lot of athletes, and unnecessary, because of...

      3. XXs compete with XXs, everyone else competes with everyone else.

      I cannot even comprehend why anyone rational has a problem with #3. But most progressive foo-rights organizations are in arms against it, and there is no way for sports officials to impose it without committing political suicide.

      So we have #4 - Tests are conducted, and most of the people tested are EVENTUALLY allowed to compete with the women.

      The test results kept secret, and the competitors of the 'woman' are left unhappy.

      --
      No good deed goes unpunished...
  2. Re:Overcomplicating things? by Gwala · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well, intersexed persons make a bit of a mess of that. Since you can have both sets physical features in various strengths in some people. That's been where the biggest controversies have come up in recent history.

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    #!/bin/csh cat $0
  3. Re:How hard can it be? by oiron · · Score: 5, Informative

    RTFA!

    Consider the Spanish hurdler Maria Jose Martinez-Patiño. A gender test revealed that she had a Y chromosome, which normally makes a person male. She also had complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, or CAIS, which prevented her body from responding properly to testosterone and caused her to develop as a woman.

    It's not as simple as you'd think...

  4. Re:How hard can it be? by cstacy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    XX = Woman XY = Man

    Gender is not what they want to test for, it is a PROXY for what they want to test for.
    This is not a technology problem, and it's not even about genitalia.
    It's about a definition of fairness, and that's harder to elaborate.

  5. Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Getting out the swimming pool is much like getting out a bath. She's clean.

  6. Re:How hard can it be? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Some sports are all about genetic abnormalities. Bolt's genetic material must be quite unusual for him to go that fast.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
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  7. Re:How hard can it be? by Pseudonym · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is they key point. "Freaks of nature" are over-represented in the elite athlete community already. That's part of what makes them elite. Why should abnormalities related to sex chromosomes or hormones be any different?

    --
    sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
  8. Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by Eskarel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The reason is that, at least in theory, the Olympic games are about the effort and discipline it takes to get to the elite level than about genetics. Throwing out the hard work of women because they are biologically different(most specifically this relates to the structure of their hips, though other factors certainly play a part) doesn't fit that spirit.

    Now you can argue that the Olympics are won largely by genetic freaks, and there's no Olympics for the "normals", but that's really rather beside the point, because the genetics won't give you the whole puzzle. It's true that if you or I spent as many hours training as Bolt we likely still wouldn't even be able to qualify for the Olympics, but simultaneously if all Bolt did was sit on his couch and eat chips, he wouldn't either.

    More importantly the original revival of the Olympics was just part of the whole Eugenics craze of that era in history and you can't really breed a super race without super women as well as super men. The fact that an entire army of genetically superior super people could probably be defeated by a cripple with a brain and a chemistry lab doesn't fit into the world view of the kind of people who started this crap.

  9. Re:How hard can it be? by king+neckbeard · · Score: 3, Funny

    Don't forget YYZ

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  10. Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by king+neckbeard · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There is a lot of money to be made in people watching the Olympics. More people will watch the Olympics (and more money will be made) if you have women's volleyball. If it's merely fair competition, there will be no women in the Olympic volleyball competition.

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  11. Re:Confusing terminology by spazdor · · Score: 4, Informative

    There is absolutely no rule against a physically female athlete participating in a women's race if he phychologically identifies himself as male.

    ftfy: perhaps olympic races are sexed, but English pronouns are gendered. :)

    --
    DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
  12. Re:How hard can it be? by HungryHobo · · Score: 5, Informative

    Still no good.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRY

    You can have a Y chromosome which lacks a gene or 2 and be physically totally female.

    or you can have 2 X chromosomes and be physically totally male but with a part of a Y chromosome copied on to one or both of the X's

    or you can have a mix within your body with half your cells one way and half the other.

    consider the posibility that *you* simply lack understanding before declaring that someone else is overcomplicating things. some things really are more complex than the "childrens first science book" version.

  13. Re:How hard can it be? by quantaman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is they key point. "Freaks of nature" are over-represented in the elite athlete community already. That's part of what makes them elite. Why should abnormalities related to sex chromosomes or hormones be any different?

    Say you had separate a basketball event for people under 6 feet tall.

    Than anyone in that event who seemed to have excess height would need to be carefully tested.

    As it is we have separate events for men and women.

    So any woman who gets too close to the line defining male needs to be carefully tested.

    And make no mistake, you need to draw that line somewhere, and where ever you draw it there are going to be people who straddle it.

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    I stole this Sig
  14. Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by anarcobra · · Score: 3, Insightful

    More importantly the original revival of the Olympics was just part of the whole Eugenics craze of that era in history and you can't really breed a super race without super women as well as super men.

    That certainly explains all the sex in the Olympic village. Although, it doesn't explain why they hand out condoms.

  15. Obfix: get rid of gender categories by rve · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The only catch all, fool proof and totally fair fix for this is the simplest of all: get rid of men's and women's events, and let both compete in the same event. Maybe add performance based tiers instead, so the very best women will mostly compete with guys (and lose, because, you know, testosterone really does work) and the second tier guys will be mostly competing against the best women (and win, again the testosterone thing). Ok, in most sports, women wouldn't get to compete at the highest level any more, but it would be completely fair towards the non-standard gender community!

  16. Re:Overcomplicating things? by jamesh · · Score: 5, Informative

    Checking the chromosome might work until you find someone with a missing piece

    AIS throws that out the window... genetically a male but somewhat or completely (depending on the degree) insensitive to the androgen that would give them the male characteristics leaving them in the default female form.

  17. Re:How hard can it be? by Jesrad · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Oh yes, how hard can it be...

    Check one:
    [ XX ] Woman
    [ XY ] Man

    What if I'm XXY (Klinefelter Syndrome) ? What if I'm just X (Turner Syndrome) ? What if I'm XX but SR-Y positive due to gene translocation ? What if I'm XY but Completely Androgen Insensitive (CAIS) ?
    What if some of my cells are XY, but the others are X, or XX, or XXY (mosaicism and chimerism, sometimes combiend with the syndromes above, see the famous case of Lydia Fairchild for a primer) ? Do we decide sex on the cells' majority+1 ? Or should part of my body compete in the Mens' races, and the other part in Womens' ?

    --
    Maybe we deserve this world ?
  18. Re:How hard can it be? by rve · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Some sports are all about genetic abnormalities. Bolt's genetic material must be quite unusual for him to go that fast.

    This is a rather fatalistic misconception about talent. Bolt is as fast as he is, not because of some lucky draw in the gene pool, but because of proper training and starting at a young age. He wasn't born with his perfect technique, he got that through training. Of course you have to be healthy and have a bit of luck as well, and the right mix of fast and slow twitch muscles for your sport, but for every kind of mix of the two there's a sport to excel in.

  19. Re:The answer... by jamesh · · Score: 3, Insightful

    is to remove "men's" and "women's" and just have events.

    I can see your point. Training is one factor in an athlete's ability to perform, but so is genetics. You might have a gene that allows you to build muscle mass faster, or make more efficient use of oxygen, yet someone without those genes still have to compete at the same level as you. Yet if you don't have a Y chromosome you get to compete on a different level without having to compete with people with that particular genetic advantage.

    Obviously a Y chromosome isn't the only deciding factor though. I have one, but i wouldn't stand a chance against any decent athlete who doesn't have one, but at the top level you'll find that in most events involving strength the athletes with a Y chromosome outcompete those without.

    I vote we keep men's and women's events as is and like the rest of us who lucked out in the high performance genetic lottery, people with indeterminate sex will just have to miss out too (or put up with the category they are assigned to for competition).

  20. Another American has accused her of cheating by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    http://news.discovery.com/adventure/ye-shiwen-doping-scandal-olympic-swimming-120801.html

    Jonathan Dugas, adjunct professor of exercise physiology at Loyola University in Chicago, has openly doubt the Chinese girl's achievement being "natural"

    And this is what Mr. Dugas has said:

    "âoeThe differences in the athletes at that level are very small,â Dugas said. âoeTo suggest she was much slower and then sped up so much at the end, it goes against everything that we know about how athletes pace themselves at that level.â
     

    --
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    1. Re:Another American has accused her of cheating by The+Moof · · Score: 3, Informative

      Well that's a copyright issue. Specifically, the IOC being abusive with their copyrights.

      Originally, when the story came out, all of the articles linked to the race videos. They were all pulled by the time I got around to reading the story because of copyright claims by the IOC. So there's plenty of footage out there of the race, we're just not permitted to view it by the IOC.

  21. Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by samkass · · Score: 5, Informative

    Because Chinese athletes beating US ones must be due to China having access to advanced future technology, because there is no way they could beat americans otherwise? No, wait, what?

    That's not why people suspect it. She beat her own best time by five seconds, which is unheard of in swimming which is the only sport measured to the thousand-of-a-second. She also beat the previous world record by one second which was made with the now-banned super-swimsuit. She could have had a really, really good day, and good for her, but I can see why some other team's coaches might, in their frustration, suspect something else is going on.

    --
    E pluribus unum
  22. Re:How hard can it be? by narcc · · Score: 4, Funny

    Let's not forget XYZZY

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    Required reading for internet skeptics
  23. Re:How hard can it be? by Rei · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So if a person's body develops as a woman, they're still a man, even though by all objective standards beyond the chromosomes, they're a woman? That's a really strange conception.

    And hey, lets just blur your chromosome standard. What about a person who has a Y-chromosome but a broken SRY (the gene region that triggers the initial male-development cascade)? What if they have a Y with *no* SRY? What if they're XX but contain a migrated SRY and developed into a male as a consequence? What if they're a chimera and gained their male-developmental trigger from a minority of their body's cells? What if the cascade began without SRY due to another genetic defect? What if it failed despite SRY due to another genetic defect?

    And think about the practical aspects of your standard. Should a man who's XX but has fully male traits, from genitalia to musculature, get to compete in womens' events? Really? You're going to have a *lot* of ticked off women if you do that, let me tell you...

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  24. Re:Simple, surely by Rei · · Score: 5, Informative

    Just to pick one of the countless examples of where your test goes wrong: 5-alpha reductase deficiency (5-ARD). 5-alpha reductase is the chemical which converts testosterone into dihydrotestosterone (DHT), a much more potent form which in particular has effects on hair patterning and genitalia. A person with an extreme form of DHT is born as a pretty normal woman, and is thus typically raised as a girl. However, when they hit puberty, the surge of regular testosterone often proves enough to cause the descention of the gonads and the development of a small penis from the clitoris. It's even possible sometimes, with difficulty, to father children.

    So when they're young do they compete in girls' events and when they're older guys' events, and when they're in-between... both?

    --
    The chloride owes the sodium money.
  25. Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by silentcoder · · Score: 3, Funny

    >Women did not fight for equal treatment in a physical arena, they wanted to be treated (rightly so) as equals intellectually.

    Most of them.

    > That might be because (shock) they are smart enough to admit that there is a physical difference.

    Not always. Gloria Steinhem is on record as demanding that the New York fire department change their entrance exam to be less focussed on strength so that they can get 50% woman members. When it was pointed out that a fireman needs to be strong enough to carry an unconscious victim out of a burning building on his/her shoulders - she replied "the weaker woman can just drag victims by their ankles".

    You can't make this shit up...

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    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  26. Passing drug tests != competing clean by sjbe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Is it true that the Chinese girl has passed all the drug testing? Is it true that she is clean?

    You can pass all the drug tests and still have doped. Marion Jones is an admitted doper who never tested positive. Drug tests are rather specific in what they test for and what they can find. The dopers are typically a step ahead of the tests to catch them. Saying an athlete is clean and saying they passed all their drug tests are completely different statements. You cannot conclusively prove that an athlete is competing clean - that would be trying to prove a negative. You can say that an athlete has not failed specific drug tests but that tests only a limited number of possible doping methodologies.

  27. Re:Confusing terminology by metacell · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Gender is not just a linguistic term, it's also a sociological term. If society treats you as a (man|woman), then your gender is (male|female).

  28. Re:How hard can it be? by Overzeetop · · Score: 4, Insightful

    but for every kind of mix of the two there's a sport to excel in.

    No, actually there isn't. You need only to go to any adolescent training area to see that the very top athletes do not come from the ranks of those who have neither inherent strength, agility, and/or flexibility, and yet train with the masters. It would be like saying that anyone can become a nobel prize winning scientist if they simply studied more, or one of the top two or three musicians on an instrument/voice in the world by just practicing at an early age. It's not that easy or we would all be masters of our craft.

    Genetics plays a primary role in selection of the top 1e-8 fraction of athletes in the world. I'll agree that without proper training, that'll get you no more than a spot in your local rec league, but without the proper genetic mix you can probably forget about multiple olympic gold medals no matter how hard you train.

    --
    Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
  29. Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by AngryDeuce · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah, but believe me, if a spectator goes to do it everyone gets all bitchy about it. Where's the fairness in that?

  30. Strong circumstantial evidence by sjbe · · Score: 4, Informative

    Because Chinese athletes beating US ones must be due to China having access to advanced future technology, because there is no way they could beat americans otherwise? No, wait, what?

    No because the circumstantial facts indicate there is a very high probability of doping. It's demonstrably possible to evade doping tests. Marion Jones (an American) passed every drug test she took while winning multiple world and olympic medals and yet she is an admitted doper. You can be absolutely certain that there are numerous athletes from all over the world at the Olympics who are doping but will not be caught.

    Otherworldly improvements in performance at that level almost never happen. People do not beat their best times in a relatively short event by multiple seconds in relatively short swimming events just coincidentally when they happen to be at the Olympics. Women do not swim a faster last 50 meters than the men in the same event. World records do not fall by wide margins. Add in that the Chinese swimming program has a well recorded history of doping and being caught doing it.

  31. Re:How hard can it be? by f3rret · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think we should just create a "freak Olympics" where the rules regarding doping, genetic or mechanical manipulations and other stuff like that is just "go nuts, just don't kill anyone."

    --
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  32. Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by AngryDeuce · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No, but to ignore the fishy bullshit they've pulled in the past is retarded, too. If you believe they're on the up and up, that's fine, but forgive us for a little incredulity when they've demonstrated that they'll play games like this before.

  33. Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    She beat her own best time by five seconds, which is unheard of in swimming which is the only sport measured to the thousand-of-a-second.

    Actually a few top British swimmers made gains of a few seconds during their teenage years. There was another claim about her going faster than the fastest man in the last 50m of the race, but actually so did another British female swimmer in her event. The man in question was so far ahead he didn't need to go top speed to win, so presumably saved some energy for the next race.

    As training and technique developers this sort of thing does happen. Look at Bolt, the guy beat the 100m world record without even trying (he was slowing down at the end when we realized he had an unbeatable lead). He is also quite tall, which used to be considered a hindrance in the 100m, but it turned out our understanding of the sport was wrong.

    She won, she tested clean for all known doping agents, she has been tested at least four times over the previous year and several times at the Olympics. No need for sour grapes and innuendo.

    --
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  34. Re:How hard can it be? by Rei · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That's precisely the problem at hand. Unless you want to abolish gender segregation in sports (and thus effectively abolish women from most sports, an option which few would support), you have to draw the line. And there is no clear line to draw. Hence the reasons for complexity and debate.

    The problem isn't that "it's work to support a small minority". It's that this small minority has an advantage in womens' competitions. So you need to draw the line where to stop this "small minority" from having an unfair advantage in womens' competitions. You *have* to deal with the issue.

    Personally, I'm of the view that since most athletes are to some degree or another genetic freaks, that one should err on the side of inclusiveness. You just need to make sure that the line isn't weak enough that gender-straddling individuals are always winning female competitions, or otherwise the point of a female division is ruined.

    To reiterate in conclusion: there is no solid line between male and female, you need a line for competitions, you have to set it somewhere, this takes debate, and in the process one should err on the side of inclusiveness instead of exclusiveness.

    --
    The chloride owes the sodium money.
  35. Re:Wait a second there ... by Hatta · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is exactly right. Having seperate Olympic games for women is like having a separate Fields medal for women. No woman has ever been awarded the Fields medal for her work in mathematics. Does that mean we should create a woman's Field's medal?

    I don't understand why women don't consider the women's events condescending. In any other circumstance, if you tell a woman "you're good at X, for a woman", she'll be offended. But if you hand her a gold medal while saying the same thing, somehow it's OK.

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  36. Re:Intersex is not the same as gay or transgender by jc42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    the only difference from every other woman is that they could not have children since they had no ovaries

    That's Nature trying to tell you something. Weird edge cases like that should not exist.

    On the contrary, it's "Nature" that produced the described intermediate case, and Nature is never trying to tell us anything. Nature isn't an intelligent creature, and is incapable of having thoughts or purposes, much less communicating them.

    There are plenty of species that produce non-reproducing individuals as a normal part of the population. In bees and ants, the overwhelming majority are such sterile, non-reproducing "females". In such species, this is not just normal; it's the basis of their evolutionary success. And note that there's at least one species (the domestic honeybee) that's quite important to us humans. All those little worker bees busy pollinating our crops are non-reproducing somatic females. If you think they're a weird edge case that shouldn't exist, you're asking for a major agricultural disaster. ;-)

    Granted, in humans it really is an edge case. But it's really nothing more than a biochemical accident. There's no intelligence or "life force" or whatever trying to tell us anything.

    Telling "Nature" that something shouldn't exist is utterly futile. The universe produces what it produces, and doesn't care what you or I think. Punishing such "weird" individuals amounts to punishing innocent victims of random biochemical accidents. Do you really want a society in which such punishment is allowed or encouraged?

    --
    Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
  37. Re:Intersex is not the same as gay or transgender by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why did nature create them?

    Well it turns out in nature families with a gay relative are more successful in times of stress. The non-child bearing additional adult contributes to the success of the family without adding the weight of another child to feed. In colloquial terms, the gay uncle brings food to the family when they are starving, when he wouldn't do that if he had his own kids.

    There are studies on this, if you go looking for them.

  38. Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by poity · · Score: 3, Funny

    wow, if you can train yourself to pee in controlled pulses, that's a couple extra grams of propulsion per stroke. if lapt times are thousandths of a second apart, then that could mean the difference between gold and no medal at all.

    --
    your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
  39. Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by ceoyoyo · · Score: 3, Informative

    Ye's time was 4:28.43. The silver was Beisel, at 4:31.27. That's a bit less than a three second difference, or 1.06%.

    Usain Bolt ran a 9.69 in 2008. The silver was Richard Tompson, with a 9.89. That's a 2.06% difference.

    So Bolt won his race by a greater margin than did Ye.

  40. Re:Intersex is not the same as gay or transgender by jc42 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In the cases of Ants and Bees, the difference between a Breeding female (queen) and a worker female (drone) is not genetic, it is environmental.

    Nonsense. It's completely genetic. The suppression of the workers' reproductive system is triggered by pheromones produced by the queen, and the queen contains genes that control this production. The workers' reaction to the pheromones is controlled by their genes. Actually, the genes are shared by the queen and worker, whose caste is determined by the activation of other genes. The entire setup is determined by the colony's shared genes, not by anything in the environment.

    Treating the queen an workers as independent creatures and treating the reproductive pheromones as "environmental" shows a severe misunderstanding of the concept of "environment". Honeybees were one of the primary species that led biologists to develop the concept of a colonial "super-organism", treating bee and ant colonies as a single "individual" for many purposes. There are a lot of problems and open questions with such concepts, but it's clear that treating interactions between different members of a Hymenoptera colony as "external" is simply wrong. You can only make sense of such social creatures by treating the colony as a third "level" between the individual and the environment. The colony's properties are in many respects more similar to our bodies' internal properties than they are to the colony's environment.

    --
    Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.