Weekly Roundup
Dec 2 – 8, 2024
THE NUZZO LETTER IN THE NEWS
Over 60 years of research supports the biological basis for sex differences in physical fitness
ARTICLES AND ESSAYS
LPGA Updates Gender Policy for Competition Eligibility
LPGA, 2024
The evolutionary psychology infidelity
The Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche Newsletter, 2024
Victor Davis Hanson: Universities have a 2025 rendezvous with reality
Las Vegas Review Journal, 2024
Degree inflation: undermining the value of higher education
Centre for Independent Studies, 2023
NIH Funding Trends for Men's and Women's Urologic Conditions
Journal of Sexual Medicine, 2023
Abstract: Introduction: Existing literature reports a general trend of increasing National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding for surgeon-scientists in America and shows that urology has not benefited from this trend. NIH funding for urologists continues to lag behind that of our peers in other surgical specialties. Between 2010-2019 urology departments received the second-lowest amount of NIH funding of all surgical specialties, only above plastic surgery. The literature also shows that NIH awards significantly less money to male cancer research (i.e., prostate cancer) than female cancer research (i.e., breast cancer). We sought to explore further gender-specific grant variation within NIH urologic funding by exploring dollars awarded to benign gender-specific non-cancer topics of urologic research. We hypothesized that an NIH funding disparity would exist between men’s health urologic research and research devoted to women’s health urologic issues. Objective: To explore NIH funding trends for men's and women's urologic health conditions via the NIH Reporter database. Methods: We used the publicly available NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools Expenditures and Results (NIH RePORTER) to perform our data collection. NIH RePORTER is an online search tool of the repository of NIH-funded research projects and is linked to publications, patents and clinical trials resulting from NIH funding. Data was queried for a ten-year period between 2012-2021. We used uniform search parameters including “Department Type: urology” to filter for publications from departments of urology, “Funding Mechanism: research project grant” to eliminate R&D, and “Award Type: new” to capture only first-time awards in our search period. All authors were included in our search, which encompassed both trainees and non-trainees independent of Activity Code. We selected four women’s urological health issues and four men’s urological health issues to guide a keyword search. Our women’s urological health issues included overactive bladder, incontinence, and pelvic organ prolapse. In addition, we queried the NIH Spending Category of “Women’s Health”. Our men’s urological health issues include erectile dysfunction, Peyronie's disease, hypogonadism and male stress incontinence. Search terms related to these health conditions were used to query project title, projects terms and project abstracts in the NIH RePORTER. Results: Results of our research findings are summarized in Table 1. Of the 12 projects identified that exclusively investigate either a men’s health condition or a women’s health condition, 7 focused on men’s health and 5 on women’s health. NIH spending on women’s health issues exceeded that for men's health conditions by $833,964, a 51% difference, even though fewer projects were identified related to women’s health conditions. Overall, fewer gender-exclusive projects were found than expected. For example, incontinence projects frequently included both male and female-bodied participants. Conclusions: NIH appears to devote substantially less funding for investigating benign urologic men’s health issues than benign urologic women’s health issues. Further examination of this funding gap is warranted, and if confirmed it would be prudent to improve NIH urologic funding in general and men’s health research funding specifically.
Prevalence of lateral violence in nurse workplace: a systematic review and meta-analysis
BMJ Open, 2022
Abstract: Background: The prevalence of inter-nurse lateral violence (LV) reported in current studies is inconsistent, ranging from 7% to 83%. The purpose of this study is to quantify the prevalence of LV in nurses' workplaces. Methods: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Cochrane, PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, CNKI and Wanfang databases were searched for relevant studies (up to 27 January 2021). We included cross-sectional, case-control or cohort studies in which both abusers and victims were nurses. Studies that did not provide specific data on abusers were excluded. Stata V.16.0 was used for statistical analysis. Fixed-effect or random-effect model was adopted according to heterogeneity, which was evaluated by Cochran's Q and I2 values. The main indicator was LV prevalence. Sensitivity analysis, subgroup analysis and meta-regression were performed to investigate the sources of heterogeneity. Results: A total of 14 studies with 6124 nurses were included. Further, 13 articles with 5745 nurses were included in the meta-analysis, and the pooled prevalence of LV among nurses was 33.08% (95% CI: 23.41% to 42.75%, p<0.05; I2=99.0%). The remaining one study containing 370 samples reported that the prevalence of inter-nurse LV was 7.92%. Subgroup analysis showed that region, sample size, sampling, study's quality, response rate and publication time might not be the sources of heterogeneity. Meta-regression indicated that sample size had the main influence on model heterogeneity. Egger's test showed the existence of publication bias (p=0.03). Discussion: The prevalence of inter-nurse LV is high in nurse workplace. It is suggested that scholars pay more attention to the cultural differences of inter-nurse LV between regions in the future. This study has the following limitations: there is a lack of studies on LV prevalence in many countries; lack of standard assessment tools; no grey literature was searched.
HISTORICAL ARTICLES AND ESSAYS
Does Size Matter? Men’s and Women’s Views on Penis Size Across the Lifespan
Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 2006
Abstract: The media equate a man's penis size with his power and masculinity. Views about penis size were assessed in an Internet survey of 52,031 heterosexual men and women. Most men (66%) rated their penis as average, 22% as large, and 12% as small. Self-reported penis size was correlated positively with height and negatively with body fat level. Whereas 85% of women were satisfied with their partner's penis size, only 55% of men were satisfied with their penis size, 45% wanted to be larger, and 0.2% wanted to be smaller. Satisfaction did not vary across age groups from 18 to 65. Men reporting a larger-than-average penis rated their appearance most favorably, suggesting a possible confidence effect of perceived large penis size.
RUBBISH BIN
Editorial: Queer(ing) age(ing)
Frontiers in Sociology, 2024
Workshop summary: National Institutes of Health (NIH) 2022 scientific workshop on gender and health
Social Science & Medicine, 2024
Abstract: In this manuscript, we summarize the goals, content, and impact of the Gender and Health: Impacts of Structural Sexism, Gender Norms, Relational Power Dynamics, and Gender Inequities workshop held by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Research on Women's Health (ORWH) in collaboration with 10 NIH Institutes, Centers, and Offices. Specifically, we outline the key points emerging from the workshop presentations, which are the focus of the collection of articles in this supplement. The overarching goals of the workshop were to convene NIH staff, the external scientific community, and the public to discuss methods, measurement, modifiable factors, interventions, and best practices in health research on gender as a social and cultural variable and to identify opportunities to advance research and foster collaborations on these key topics. Themes emerging from the workshop include the need for intersectional measures in research on gender and health, the role of multilevel interventions and analyses, and the importance of considering gender as a social and structural determinant of health. Careful, nuanced, and rigorous integration of gender in health research can contribute to knowledge about and interventions to change the social and structural forces that lead to disparate health outcomes and perpetuate inequities.
British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2023
Abstract: Objectives: We aimed to determine (1) the proportion of women authors overall, in first (lead) and last (senior) author positions, (2) the proportion of women research participants and (3) the association between women in first and/or last author positions and the proportion of women research participants in original research articles and editorials/opinion pieces in four sport and exercise medicine/physiotherapy journals. Methods: The journals evaluated were the British Journal of Sports Medicine, Journal of Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy, Physical Therapy in Sport and International Journal of Sports Physical Therapy.We reviewed all original research articles and editorials/opinion pieces published in 2008, 2009, 2018 and 2019. For each, we aimed to determine the gender/sex of all authors (through gender pronouns, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, institutional profiles, personal websites, photographs and/or social media), and the gender/sex of study participants reported as 'female' or 'male' or 'women' or 'men' or 'girls' or 'boys'. Results: We included 952 original studies and 219 editorials/opinion pieces. There were 5146 authors of original studies and 706 authors of editorials/opinion pieces. Compared with 2008/2009, the proportion of women as first and last authors was 3.6% (33.0% compared with 29.4%) and 4.8% (33.2% compared with 27.4%) higher respectively in 2018/2019. On average, the proportion of women participants in original studies remained largely unchanged over the 10-year period, only 10% of all participants were women in studies. Conclusion: Women are strikingly under-represented in first and last author positions, as are women participants in sports and exercise medicine/physiotherapy journals.
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