{"id":3518,"date":"2019-02-13T19:17:10","date_gmt":"2019-02-13T19:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/?p=3518"},"modified":"2019-02-13T19:17:11","modified_gmt":"2019-02-13T19:17:11","slug":"testosterone-limits-for-female-athletes-based-on-flawed-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/2019\/02\/13\/testosterone-limits-for-female-athletes-based-on-flawed-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Testosterone Limits for Female Athletes Based on Flawed Science"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Elite South African runner Caster Semenya at the 2012 London Olympics. (Credit: La Sud Africaine)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Roger Pielke, Jr., CSTPR Founding Director and faculty affiliate, highlighted in CU Boulder Today<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Should high testosterone levels disqualify elite female athletes from competing among women?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That will be the question at hand in a Swiss court this month when South African sprinter Caster Semenya faces off against the world governing body for track and field over controversial new rules requiring women with high levels to medically lower them in order to compete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rules, established in 2018, hinge on a previous study concluding that elevated testosterone gives women a significant advantage in at least five events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But a new paper<\/a> led by CU Boulder suggests that research is \u201cfatally flawed.\u201d The authors, who will appear as expert witnesses in the case, are now calling for a retraction of the original research and asking the International Association of Athletics Federations to reconsider the rule change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn almost any other setting of science, errors of this magnitude would lead to a paper being retracted,\u201d said lead author Roger Pielke Jr., director of the Center for Sports Governance at CU Boulder. \u201cAnd it certainly would not be the basis for broad regulations that have a profound impact on people\u2019s lives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Testosterone and competitive advantage<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In April\u00a02018, the IAAF announced new regulations requiring certain female athletes with naturally high testosterone levels to take testosterone-lowering hormones if they want to continue to compete in the women\u2019s category for the 400m, the 400m hurdles, the 800m, the 1500m and the one mile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rule, which applies to IAAF-sanctioned international competitions, requires that they maintain serum testosterone levels below 5 nanomoles per liter (nmol\/L) for at least six months prior to competition.\u00a0 Most females have testosterone levels ranging from 1.12 to 1.79 nmol\/L while the normal adult male range is 7.7 \u2013 29.4 nmol\/L. About 7 in every 1,000 elite female athletes have high testosterone levels, according to IAAF.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The association had attempted to put forth similar regulations in 2011, but that rule was thrown out when the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) \u2013 the highest court for international sport \u2013 concluded in 2015 that there was a lack of evidence linking high testosterone to \u201ca real competitive advantage\u201d in women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhile a 10% difference in athletic performance certainly justifies having separate male and female categories, a 1% difference may not justify a separation between athletes in the female category, given the many other relevant variables that also legitimately affect athletic performance,\u201d the CAS panel concluded, calling for more research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2017, the IAAF came back with that research, publishing a paper in the British Journal of Sports Medicine<\/em> (BJSM) which claimed that elite women runners with the highest testosterone levels performed as much as 3 percent better than those with the lowest levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pielke and co-authors Erik Boye, a professor emeritus of molecular biology at the University of Oslo, and Ross Tucker, a University of Cape Town exercise physiologist, challenge those results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe found problematic data throughout the study and consequently, the conclusions can\u2019t be seen as reliable,\u201d Pielke said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fatal flaws in data collection<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the three tried to replicate the original findings using data from the study\u2019s authors and publicly available results from four of the races included, they uncovered \u201csignificant anomalies and errors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, they found performance times that were erroneously duplicated and \u201cphantom times\u201d that did not exist in official IAAF competition results. In addition, some athletes disqualified for doping were included in the study dataset \u2013 a fact that could confound the results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In all, from 17 to 32 percent of the data used in the study was found to be in error.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe IAAF should retract their paper containing faulty data, and the new rule based on this paper should be removed,\u201d said Boye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The researchers also note that IAAF researchers themselves conducted the BJSM <\/em>study and have declined to share the majority of their research data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe would not find it appropriate for cigarette companies to provide the scientific bases for the regulation of smoking, or oil companies to provide the scientific bases for regulation of fossil fuels. Sport regulation should be held to the same high standards,\u201d they write.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The IAAF researchers did correct what they characterized as \u201cdata capture errors\u201d and re-ran their analysis in a subsequent letter to the journal. But flaws remain, Pielke said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The IAAF \u201cremains very confident of the legal, scientific, and ethical bases for the regulations,\u201d according to a statement on its website.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scientific integrity at play<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The research will be at issue in February when Pielke and Tucker serve as expert witnesses at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, where Semenya and Athletics South Africa have brought a case against the IAAF.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under the new regulations, those who decline to medically reduce their testosterone levels must relinquish their right to compete as females.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Semenya, 28, a two-time Olympic champion in the 800 meters, has said the rules stigmatize women who do not conform to perceived notions of femininity and called them \u201cdiscriminatory, irrational and unjustifiable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Originally set to take effect in November, 2018 implementation of the rules has been postponed until after the outcome of the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFundamentally, the issues that we raise with our paper are about the integrity of science in regulation,\u201d said Pielke. \u201cAny agency, in sport or beyond, should be expected to produce science that can withstand scrutiny and which actually supports the justification for proposed regulations. That simply did not happen here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Roger Pielke, Jr., CSTPR Founding Director and faculty affiliate, highlighted in CU Boulder Today Should high testosterone levels disqualify elite female athletes from competing among women? That will be the question at hand in a Swiss court this month when … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-30 19:11:56","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3518"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3520,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3518\/revisions\/3520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}