Getting a grip on childhood sex differences in muscle strength
Pre-print of a new meta-analysis now online
Dear Subscribers and Followers,
You might have noticed The Nuzzo Letter quiet in recent weeks. The reason for this relative silence is that I have been dedicating most of my cognitive energy to finishing the previously announced research on childhood sex differences in muscle strength. The exciting news is that I have finished the paper, and it is now publicly available as a pre-print at SportRxiv!
What is a pre-print?
SportRxiv is not an academic journal. SportRxiv is a server that hosts initial drafts of exercise science papers currently undergoing peer-review at academic journals. These initial drafts are called pre-prints. Because peer review takes months (sometimes 1-2 years), a purpose of pre-prints is to communicate new research findings as quickly as possible, while authors and reviewers debate aspects of the paper. After reviewer feedback is received, the paper is then edited and eventually published in the journal. In most cases, the version of the paper that appears in-print does not differ significantly from the pre-print. Nevertheless, the pre-print is not the final version of the paper.
What did the research show?
In the coming days, I will be interviewed at Men are Good to discuss the study’s methods, findings, and implications. I am also tentatively scheduled to summarize the results in a piece for Reality’s Last Stand. Consequently, I will not detail the findings at this time, but here are a couple of quotes from the paper that summarize the key findings:
"From birth to 16 years of age, grip strength was consistently greater in boys than girls."
"...the sex difference is broadly similar between countries and has been mostly stable since the 1960s..."
What’s next?
Peer review is a long slog. It involves many frustrations, and I have documented my most dramatic and frustrating experiences in a series of essays and podcasts starting here. In fact, this paper on childhood sex differences in strength has already received an “editor’s desk rejection” (without genuine explanation, of course). Consequently, I will now need to reformat the paper and submit it to another journal.
Because reformatting papers and addressing reviewer comments takes considerable time (unpaid work in my case), the Go Fund Me for the project will remain open for anyone who wishes to support the project further. Donations can also be made to the Donorbox at The Nuzzo Letter. I am grateful for all the support received so far. Thank you!
Excitingly, in conducting this research, I have identified opportunities for additional meta-analyses on sex differences during development. In fact, I have already finished extracting and analysing data from approximately 100 studies on childhood sex differences in flexibility (another reason for recent silence at The Nuzzo Letter). The results of this new analysis show, just like the results from the analysis of muscle strength, a clear sexual dimorphism in a fitness attribute that appears early in development, and is more likely due to biology than socialisation. I forecast that the pre-print for this new paper will be available in September. Support for this new meta-analysis can also be provided via Donorbox or the ongoing Go Fund Me.
Finally, new content at The Nuzzo Letter is just around the corner. There is much to comment on, including Movember’s gynocentrism, UN Women’s one-sided story about “gender-based” violence in sports, Raygun as the culmination of Woke academia applied to sports, misogyny as domestic terrorism in the United Kingdom, and the Women’s Caucus at the Democratic National Convention failing miserably at singing the Star-Spangled Banner.
Currently, I am trying to balance writing multiple scientific papers for journals while crafting several new essays and podcasts for The Nuzzo Letter. Maintaining this balance is challenging. Nevertheless, I believe both types of outputs are important, and I will continue to pursue both. But please know that if The Nuzzo Letter is, at times, silent, it does not mean that I am silent. It simply means that I am temporarily battling the enemies of reason in a different theatre.
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