Differences in Sex Development (aka "intersex")

[mumblethrax]

Originally Posted by Louden Wilde

If mammals could commonly do this, it would be about as subtle as if megalodon were still in the seas.

Who said it was common?

Quote:

Bigger picture: No, there are no mammalian species that have been shown to have a class of individuals that reproduce via both oocyte and sperm production - and certainly not humans. Again, the development and maintenance of the mammalian female and male reproductive systems are antagonistic to each other. Further, there are obvious reasons why being a hermaphrodite/auto-fertilization would be selected against.

Who said it was selected for?

Quote:

But here's where you are really getting DSDs wrong: Suppose mammals did have such a group (i.e. a class capable of successful reproduction with both gametes)- they would be both female and male and presumably a variant under some positive selection.

In contrast, people with DSDs have (often severely) reduced fertility or are completely infertile. On top of that, there are often other health issues. People with CAH (Again, the most common condition considered a DSD, but only in females) have varying degrees of issues with regulating physiological salt levels, which can be lethal.

Where did I make any claim about any of this?

I'm making the narrow claim that it isn't the case that every individual mammal on the planet is either male or female.

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by Rolfe

I had a short conversation on Twitter with a man who has Klinefelter's syndrome. He said that it's almost impossible to find a support group for people with DSDs that hasn't been infiltrated by, overwhelmed by, or was even set up in the first place by people with imaginary DSD conditions.

He spoke of people refusing to say what their diagnosis was, people getting offended by being asked what their diagnosis was (not considered an intrusive question in a support group for people with such conditions), and people claiming to have impossible chromosome complements.

He was banned from one group for daring to talk about his specific diagnosis and its problems.

I'm curious who. I follow @DaysGoByGoBy (detrans XX/XY mosaic), @XO83766320 (Turner Syndrome), and @CAISFiles (CAIS, obviously).

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by mumblethrax

Not just hypothetically possible, but has in fact happened.


No.


Yes.


Yes, but it's not like we go out into the world looking for animals with both fertile ova and testes.

In some species, it's probably relatively common. Chimerism (including germ line chimerism) is extremely common among marmosets, for example.

In any case, your all-caps claim isn't true. Some individual mammals are in fact genuinely sex ambiguous.

I'd like to reiterate the bit that you skipped:

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

Take a step back and think about this for just a moment. Would you be willing to say that it just isn't true that humans have a single heart... because there exist some conjoint twins with two hearts?

[Louden Wilde]

Originally Posted by mumblethrax

Not just hypothetically possible, but has in fact happened.




In some species, it's probably relatively common. Chimerism (including germ line chimerism) is extremely common among marmosets, for example.

In any case, your all-caps claim isn't true. Some individual mammals are in fact genuinely sex ambiguous.

If they (any individual mammal) are reproducing, it's by producing oocytes or sperm* And therefore not relevant to people with DSDs. If they are infertile, it's not relevant to a definition of sex/reproductive role

* If the rabbit example gets repeated, I'll amend to that some lagomorphs may be functional hermaphrodites, but I'm doubtful, given that rabbits are raised in large numbers and that they noted that the testes were infertile.
Also chimeras are of course formed by two genetically distinct individuals anyway, so do not disprove the thesis.

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by Louden Wilde

Also chimeras are of course formed by two genetically distinct individuals anyway, so do not disprove the thesis.

But, mumblethrax already rejected that! Don't you know that they believe they know what they're talking about based on the talking points they've accepted as truth?

I wonder if mumblethrax would even consider changing their view on that, given your area of expertise?

[Louden Wilde]

Originally Posted by mumblethrax

Who said it was common?


Who said it was selected for?


Where did I make any claim about any of this?

I'm making the narrow claim that it isn't the case that every individual mammal on the planet is either male or female.

If not relevant to DSDs/CCSDs, why are you posting in this thread? This strikes me as sophistry to "pwn" us, rather than making a point. Lets hear the whole argument, if there is one.

It is clear that there are two sexes in mammals. You do not have a cogent counter-argument.

I responded to the latter claim above. Note again that chimeras are two (or more) individuals. If you want to argue that that people with brain-chimerism of XX & XY cells are a kind of DSD that underlies gender dysphoria, go for it.

Or is this all a big motte and bailey?

[Louden Wilde]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

But, mumblethrax already rejected that! Don't you know that they believe they know what they're talking about based on the talking points they've accepted as truth?

I wonder if mumblethrax would even consider changing their view on that, given your area of expertise?

Unfortunately, I suspect that's the case. To paraphrase Rolfe, the logic will likely be because one paper 30+ years ago claimed a rabbit self-fertilized, it therefore means that people with DSDs/CCSDs are additional sexes and anyone who claims an "intersex identity" can use whatever spaces they want...

[ponderingturtle]

Originally Posted by Louden Wilde

If not relevant to DSDs/CCSDs, why are you posting in this thread? This strikes me as sophistry to "pwn" us, rather than making a point. Lets hear the whole argument, if there is one.

It is clear that there are two sexes in mammals.

So there is reproductive male, reproductive female and sterile? That works for definitions but people don't like to be forced into a third category. The hard binary only works if you toss out all samples that are not clearly part of it.

[theprestige]

Originally Posted by ponderingturtle

So there is reproductive male, reproductive female and sterile? That works for definitions but people don't like to be forced into a third category. The hard binary only works if you toss out all samples that are not clearly part of it.

There is reproductive male and reproductive female, and failure modes in development along those two sexual development paths, and artificial "hacks" of those two sexes (e.g., vasectomies and hysterectomies).

None of those other things - developmental failure modes, end of life degradation, surgical intervention - amount to anything even remotely resembling additional sexes or a spectrum of sexes.

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by ponderingturtle

So there is reproductive male, reproductive female and sterile? That works for definitions but people don't like to be forced into a third category. The hard binary only works if you toss out all samples that are not clearly part of it.

Nope, wrong from the start. There are males, some of whom are reproductively capable and some of whom are not. There are females, some of whom are reproductively capable and some of whom are not. There is no third category.

[Rolfe]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

I'm curious who. I follow @DaysGoByGoBy (detrans XX/XY mosaic), @XO83766320 (Turner Syndrome), and @CAISFiles (CAIS, obviously).

Sorry, the conversation was quite a few weeks ago and I don't remember the poster's handle. As far as I remember he wasn't someone I follow.

[Rolfe]

Speaking as someone who has both published in the field of biology and acted as a scrutineer for journals in the field of biology, I do not believe a word of that self-fertilisation in rabbits (or even in one rabbit) claim. As my late supervisor used to say at times, "paper takes on anything". Or perhaps electrons in this case. The number of published papers making claims which were tenuous at the time and have never been repeated is astronomical.

However, even if it was true, so what? There are still only two sexes, nobody has ever found an organism that was a third sex or produced a third sort of gamete, and absolutely none of that either paints people with DSDs as somehow not real men or women, or gives any Tom Dick or Harry the right to enter and occupy women's intimate spaces on his say-so.

[Elaedith]

Originally Posted by Rolfe

Sorry, the conversation was quite a few weeks ago and I don't remember the poster's handle. As far as I remember he wasn't someone I follow.

It sounds like somebody who used to use the handle 'Nick of Wessex'. I was following him but he deleted his previous account. He described himself as a CCSD activist and I think I mentioned him in the other thread.

[mumblethrax]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

I'd like to reiterate the bit that you skipped:

I don't know why people have so much trouble with this. "Human beings have one heart" is a perfectly reasonable thing to say. If challenged by someone who wants to consider conjoint twins to be a single organism, and you agree that they are the same organism, then you have to concede that human beings sometimes have two hearts, and clarify that "human beings normally only have one heart."

"Human beings are normally either male or female" is a reasonable thing to say. Insisting that they are only male or female, in light of the fact that they are not, is not reasonable.

Originally Posted by Louden Wilde

Also chimeras are of course formed by two genetically distinct individuals anyway, so do not disprove the thesis.

This is a disingenuous genetic fallacy. "Formed by" does not mean "are."

Quote:

If not relevant to DSDs/CCSDs, why are you posting in this thread? This strikes me as sophistry to "pwn" us, rather than making a point. Lets hear the whole argument, if there is one.

I posted in this thread because someone made the insistent claim that all mammals are either male or female. This claim is false. You have to walk quite some way to get from correcting a falsehood to sophistry, not least because correcting a falsehood is not an argument.

If you want my view on it, "male" and "female" are best understood as developmental pathways, and attempting to force literally everyone into one box or the other is a fool's errand.

[mumblethrax]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

But, mumblethrax already rejected that! Don't you know that they believe they know what they're talking about based on the talking points they've accepted as truth?

No, I rejected your claim that both mosaicism and chimerism are "two individuals mixed together" because it's false. It's just not true at all in the case of mosaicism, and it's a very poor representation of chimerism. Chimeras are a single organism, not "two individuals mixed together".

Quote:

I wonder if mumblethrax would even consider changing their view on that, given your area of expertise?

No, I won't consider changing my view of your false claims in light of Louden's area of expertise. What a bizarre idea.

[Louden Wilde]

Originally Posted by mumblethrax

I don't know why people have so much trouble with this. "Human beings have one heart" is a perfectly reasonable thing to say. If challenged by someone who wants to consider conjoint twins to be a single organism, and you agree that they are the same organism, then you have to concede that human beings sometimes have two hearts, and clarify that "human beings only normally have one heart."

"Human beings are normally either male or female" is a reasonable thing to say. Insisting that they are only male or female, in light of the fact that they are not, is not reasonable.

There is likely no characteristic of humans or other organisms that
we can't find a deleterious mutation or accident that can alter. it adds nothing to the discussion or the argument. You are again conflating pathology with benign/adaptive variation.

Originally Posted by mumblethrax

This is a disingenuous genetic fallacy. "Formed by" does not mean "are."

Disingenuous is the above (conflating medical conditions/accidents with adaptive or neutral variants, when the difference has been pointed out to you repeatedly).

Originally Posted by mumblethrax

I posted in this thread because someone made the insistent claim that all mammals are either male or female. This claim is false. You have to walk quite some way to get from correcting a falsehood to sophistry, not least because correcting a falsehood is not an argument.

If you want my view on it, "male" and "female" are best understood as developmental pathways, and attempting to force literally everyone into one box or the other is a fool's errand.

Again, there are only two reproductive roles, which are produced by the developmental pathways. Apart from pathological conditions, each mammal falls into one of those two body plans. You have not proved that false (& if you had, you'd be writing in a flashy journal).

Each individual human has developed along either the female or male pathway, and/or possibly had a pathogenic genetic variant that hindered that development (the subject of this thread). This is important to recognize because: Females are oppressed/subject to discrimination on the basis of that pathway/reproductive role and those with DSDs/CCSDs have fertility and often other issues because of defects in those pathways. In the case of the latter, we can tell which pathway they were developing along or would have without the mutation.

It's not 'forcing people into boxes' - these are not identities, but descriptors of physical realities. And they don't apply just to people - any definition has to work in a comparative context. If I find an infertile XY hamster and discover a mutation in SRY or the androgen receptor gene, I note that it is a male with a developmental defect. Unless you want to try a creationist argument, humans don't get differential treatment here.

Who are the people you think are not either female or male?

[mumblethrax]

Originally Posted by Louden Wilde

There is likely no characteristic of humans or other organisms that
we can't find a deleterious mutation or accident that can alter. it adds nothing to the discussion or the argument. You are again conflating pathology with benign/adaptive variation.

Am I? I think I'm just saying that pathological cases exist.

You seem to think there's some significance to the fact that there likely no characteristic of human being that can't be altered, but I'm unclear about what you're inferring from that.

Quote:

Disingenuous is the above (conflating medical conditions/accidents with adaptive or neutral variants, when the difference has been pointed out to you repeatedly.

No such conflation has occurred.

Quote:

Again, there are only two reproductive roles, which are produced by the developmental pathways. Apart from pathological conditions, each mammal falls into one of those two body plans. You have not proved that false (& if you had, you'd be writing in a flashy journal).

I don't need to prove it false. "Apart from" isn't doing the work you think it is.

Quote:

Each individual human has developed along either the female or male pathway, and/or possibly had a pathogenic genetic variant that hindered that development (the subject of this thread). This is important to recognize because: Females are oppressed/subject to discrimination on the basis of that pathway and those with DSDs/CCSDs have fertility and often other issues because of defects in those pathways.

I'd think the most important reason to recognize that would be that it's true.

Quote:

It's not 'forcing people into boxes' - these are not identities, but physical realities. And they don't apply just to people - any definition has to work in a comparative context.

I'm not claiming they're identities. I'm saying it's foolish to try to force people into these boxes because it isn't the physical reality.

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by Elaedith

It sounds like somebody who used to use the handle 'Nick of Wessex'. I was following him but he deleted his previous account. He described himself as a CCSD activist and I think I mentioned him in the other thread.

I suspect you're right. That's who I was thinking of, but I couldn't recall the name.

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by mumblethrax

I'm saying it's foolish to try to force people into these boxes because it isn't the physical reality.

Hmm. It's foolish to try to force bicycles into having two wheels, because it isn't the physical reality... because this manufacturer over here had a production line error that ended up missing the back wheel, so this one bicycle only has one wheel.

And the inevitable leap from Motte to Bailey: Therefore unicycles are bicycles!

[Rolfe]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

I suspect you're right. That's who I was thinking of, but I couldn't recall the name.

The name does ring a bell but I really can't remember.

[theprestige]

Originally Posted by mumblethrax

I'm not claiming they're identities. I'm saying it's foolish to try to force people into these boxes because it isn't the physical reality.

There is no try. People really are in these boxes. Even people who have DSDs are suffering from afflictions defined by their relation to these two boxes.

And remember that this thread is a spin off of the transgender policy issues being discussed in The Other Thread. Nobody is forcing Lia Thomas into a box despite her DSD. She's straight up in the male box, and forcing her way into the female box.

All this rigamarole about "intersex" conditions is a red herring.

[mumblethrax]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

Hmm. It's foolish to try to force bicycles into having two wheels, because it isn't the physical reality... because this manufacturer over here had a production line error that ended up missing the back wheel, so this one bicycle only has one wheel.

Yes, it would be extremely foolish to say that a bicycle with only one wheel has two wheels. You might want to come up with a better analogy.

Originally Posted by theprestige

There is no try. People really are in these boxes. Even people who have DSDs are suffering from afflictions defined by their relation to these two boxes.

You'll note that "suffering from afflictions defined by their relation to these two boxes" does not mean "in one of these two boxes".

Quote:

And remember that this thread is a spin off of the transgender policy issues being discussed in The Other Thread. Nobody is forcing Lia Thomas into a box despite her DSD. She's straight up in the male box, and forcing her way into the female box.

What does that have to do with anything? We're discussing sex, not gender.

Quote:

All this rigamarole about "intersex" conditions is a red herring.

If you think so, it's probably advisable that you not participate in the thread about intersex conditions.

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by mumblethrax

Yes, it would be extremely foolish to say that a bicycle with only one wheel has two wheels. You might want to come up with a better analogy.

I didn't say that a bicycle with only one wheel has two wheels. Read it again.

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

Hmm. It's foolish to try to force bicycles into having two wheels, because it isn't the physical reality... because this manufacturer over here had a production line error that ended up missing the back wheel, so this one bicycle only has one wheel.

This is pretty damned analogous to what you're doing. You're saying that the definitions of male and female are not distinct and explicit, because some edge cases that that occur when development goes awry produce cases that don't exactly fit the mold.

Which is pretty much tantamount to saying that the definition of a bicycle cannot be limited to having two wheels... because some manufacturing errors accidentally produce a bicycle with only one wheel.

[d4m10n]

Originally Posted by theprestige

And remember that this thread is a spin off of the transgender policy issues being discussed in The Other Thread.

I just wanted to clarify something here, as the original poster. It is a spinoff topic in the sense that individuals with DSDs deserve their own thread, regardless of the current state of trans vs. sex-based rights in culture, law, & policy. Their plight is unique and worthy of consideration, in and of itself.

[mumblethrax]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

I didn't say that a bicycle with only one wheel has two wheels. Read it again.

Read what I said again, and then come up with a relevant analogy.

Quote:

This is pretty damned analogous to what you're doing. You're saying that the definitions of male and female are not distinct and explicit,

No, I'm not saying that at all.

Quote:

Because some edge cases that that occur when development goes awry produce cases that don't exactly fit the mold.

No, I'm saying that those "edge cases" (people) don't fit the mold, and that it's vacuous to say "If we set aside precisely those individuals whose sex is potentially ambiguous, then sex is never ambiguous."

Quote:

Which is pretty much tantamount to saying that the definition of a bicycle cannot be limited to having two wheels... because some manufacturing errors accidentally produce a bicycle with only one wheel.

No. I'm saying that at least some ambiguously sexed individuals cannot be neatly slotted into one category or the other. How was that not clear?

[d4m10n]

Science Based Medicine confuses humans and crustaceans...?

https://twitter.com/SwipeWright/stat...52336796848129

[Elaedith]

Originally Posted by d4m10n

Science Based Medicine confuses humans and crustaceans...?

https://twitter.com/SwipeWright/stat...52336796848129

Well to be fair, he didn't actually say he was referring to humans, he just said there are 'individuals' with ovotestes. Individual intersex crustaceans?

Of course SBM is not exactly know for caring much about whether citations in this topic area actually support their claims (remember the claim that puberty blockers do not affect brain development, support by a citation to an article that says puberty blockers may have detrimental effects on brain development but we don't know because there are no studies).

That is a common effect of motivated reasoning.

Then there are always clownfish to fall back on.

[d4m10n]

It's just plain sloppy, though. If I wanted to make claims about human individuals with ovotestes I'd link to this summary: https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseas...x-development/

[Elaedith]

Originally Posted by d4m10n

It's just plain sloppy, though. If I wanted to make claims about human individuals with ovotestes I'd link to this summary: https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseas...x-development/

Yes, but why bother searching when people will lap up whatever you say without question?

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by d4m10n

Science Based Medicine confuses humans and crustaceans...?

https://twitter.com/SwipeWright/stat...52336796848129

That fact that someone actually needs to say "humans are not crustaceans" is just breathtaking.

[d4m10n]

Originally Posted by Elaedith

Yes, but why bother searching when people will lap up whatever you say without question?

I forget who it was that pointed out that scientific skepticism doesn't mean lapping up the opinions of prominent skeptics, but I'm going to have to dig up the quote and frame it.

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

That fact that someone actually needs to say "humans are not crustaceans" is just breathtaking.

There are many ways in which Novella beclowns himself in that article, and I'm not sure that's even the worst one.

Novella says, for example, "[Lyons-Weiler] is saying that sex is strictly binary," when what he actually said was "most of us" are either either male or female. That's a pretty big oversight, and it should be obvious even to a casual reader.

Novella goes on to say that sexual orientation tells us something about an individual's sex, but doesn't cite any scientific authority on point. Was Rock Hudson somehow less of a male?

He does the same for gender expression, which is just plain bizarre. Was David Bowie somehow less of a male?

It's all just such a mess, I'm vicariously embarrassed for SBM.

[Elaedith]

Originally Posted by d4m10n

Novella goes on to say that sexual orientation tells us something about an individual's sex, but doesn't cite any scientific authority on point. Was Rock Hudson somehow less of a male?

He does the same for gender expression, which is just plain bizarre. Was David Bowie somehow less of a male?

It's all just such a mess, I'm vicariously embarrassed for SBM.

He has some strange proposal that sex is a set of continuously distributed characteristics that cluster around two poles, and that sexual orientation and gender identity are characteristics that make up part of one's sex. The implication indeed appears to be that a gay man is less male and a lesbian less female because they have the orientation more typical of the other sex.

It isn't even clear how 'intersex' people fit in, because they only way they could possibly support an argument that sex is bimodal is by applying this term to a categorical variable that is essentially binary but with a miniscule number of 'edge cases' that don't clearly fit one of the two categories. But even then these cases are not additional sexes. In any case, this has nothing to do with the secondary characteristics associated with sex being distributed on continuous scales. The reason these characteristics are bimodally distributed is that they cluster around two categories.

[Rolfe]

There's a woman called Claire on Twitter who has CAIS. Her Twitter bio reads "Not a clownfish."

[d4m10n]

Originally Posted by Elaedith

He has some strange proposal that sex is a set of continuously distributed characteristics that cluster around two poles, and that sexual orientation and gender identity are characteristics that make up part of one's sex.

I don't think it's particularly strange to propose that karyotype, reproductive organs, external genitalia, gametes (if any) and secondary sexual characteristics constitute a cluster of characteristics which tell us whether an individual is male, female, or intersex. I do think it's very strange to include sexual orientation and gender identity on that list, since those are mental rather than physical attributes and I've always assumed—perhaps naively—that "sex" is a concept which we can readily apply to animals who don't talk back to us about their internal sense of self.

[theprestige]

Originally Posted by d4m10n

I don't think it's particularly strange to propose that karyotype, reproductive organs, external genitalia, gametes (if any) and secondary sexual characteristics constitute a cluster of characteristics which tell us whether an individual is male, female, or intersex. I do think it's very strange to include sexual orientation and gender identity on that list, since those are mental rather than physical attributes and I've always assumed (perhaps naively) that sex is a concept which we can readily apply to animals who don't talk back to us about their internal sense of self.

I don't think that second bit is very strange at all. It's a necessary evolution of trans-inclusionary ideology. The "received wisdom" being transmitted to us pretty much has to transition to sex-as-spectrum. Gender-as-spectrum is simply not enough.

So we're going to see more and more pseudoscientific gaslighting about differences in sex development. We're going to see the widespread fetishization of "science" exploited more and more to feed unscientific crap to people who think that "I **** ing love science!" is the same as being a well-informed critical thinker.

Basing medicine on science is a good thing. "Science based medicine" is propaganda.

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by d4m10n

I don't think it's particularly strange to propose that karyotype, reproductive organs, external genitalia, gametes (if any) and secondary sexual characteristics constitute a cluster of characteristics which tell us whether an individual is male, female, or intersex.

I would push back slightly on this. Those constellations are correlated with sex. The descriptive characteristics correlated with sex form clusters around the sexes, and several of those characteristics have continuous distributions with a fair amount of overlap between sexes. But those clusters are not the actual identifier of sex. A person with a beard, no breasts, a deep voice, broad shoulders, and high muscle density may still be female, regardless of how many of their descriptive characteristics fall into the range of male-typical. At the end of the day, if that person has a reproductive system organized around the production of large sessile gametes, they are female, regardless of how they look.

This is like defining a rose as being a flowering plant with multiple red petals clustered tightly in a large-spread flower head, that grows as a bush, with multiple leaves on each stem, and having thorns. Then you see a flower that fist most of those descriptions and decide it's a "rose", even though it's a dahlia.

Originally Posted by d4m10n

I do think it's very strange to include sexual orientation and gender identity on that list, since those are mental rather than physical attributes and I've always assumed—perhaps naively—that "sex" is a concept which we can readily apply to animals who don't talk back to us about their internal sense of self.

On this I agree. Although, we can observe homosexuality in animals, but that doesn't change their sex one whit.

[d4m10n]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

At the end of the day, if that person has a reproductive system organized around the production of large sessile gametes, they are female, regardless of how they look.

When you say "reproductive system" in the case of females I think of reproductive organs (e.g. uterus and associated plumbing), external genitalia, gametes (i.e. ova), and—to a somewhat lesser extent—secondary sexual characteristics which aid in reproduction (e.g. breasts, broad hips). Some of these are much less vital than others to the task of turning large immobile gametes into viable offspring which can learn to hunt and gather for themselves, but they are all adaptive to that end.

Originally Posted by theprestige

I don't think that second bit is very strange at all. It's a necessary evolution of trans-inclusionary ideology. The "received wisdom" being transmitted to us pretty much has to transition to sex-as-spectrum.

Why, though? I see these issues as completely orthogonal, given that dysphoria would still exist as a diagnosis even if every single human was born unambiguously male or female.

[Elaedith]

Originally Posted by d4m10n

Science Based Medicine confuses humans and crustaceans...?

https://twitter.com/SwipeWright/stat...52336796848129

Andy Lewis has posted part 1 of a rebuttal to Novella on Quackometer. Andy Lewis was banned from commenting on SBM.

The Muddling of the American Mind: Part I

[d4m10n]

Originally Posted by Elaedith

Andy Lewis has posted part 1 of a rebuttal to Novella on Quackometer. Andy Lewis was banned from commenting on SBM.

Good stuff.

Here is something that really stuck out to me as someone who once trained in statistics:

Quote:

The claim sex is bimodal suggests we can make a measurement on an individual and use that to plot them along a distribution. The most basic question you can ask about a bimodal distribution is “what is the measurement you are taking that leads to this bimodal distribution”? We are not told this in Novella’s blog. At least, not one that defines “sex”. If you are going to claim “sex is bimodal” you need to say what measurement characterises sex. No-one ever has.

It occurs to me just now that we could conceivably choose a variable worth graphing out, e.g. number of viable gametes produced per month.

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by d4m10n

Good stuff.

Here is something that really stuck out to me as someone who once trained in statistics: It occurs to me just now that we could conceivably choose a variable worth graphing out, e.g. number of viable gametes produced per month.

That would be an interesting graph. Males would likely have a normal distribution of production (after puberty), whereas females would all have zero. Infertile males may have zero... but no females will have more than zero.