In this Friday’s issue of Science the GenderSci Lab has a peer-reviewed Policy Forum article,“Law, Policy, Biology, and Sex: Critical Issues for Researchers.” In this explainer, we provide additional background and context on this piece, and answer common questions.

Today, the GenderSci Lab has a new commentary out in Cell Reports Medicine, which argues that mandates to make male-female sex comparisons in all areas of biomedical research conflict with precision medicine’s goal of individualized and targeted treatments.

New and out from the GenderSci Lab this week in the journal Social Science and Medicine is a comprehensive paper characterizing extensive heterogeneity in COVID-19 sex disparities over time and across states in the U.S. The paper is the first longitudinal study to quantify variation in COVID-19 gender/sex disparities across U.S. states.

Through what methods would we know whether COVID-19 deadlier for men than for women? In a new commentary just out in Women’s Health Issues, the GenderSci Lab examines the limitations of case fatality rate (CFR) as a metric for studying sex disparities in COVID-19 outcomes.

Our new study evaluated the prevalence and performance of private equity-owned fertility clinics in the United States. This study is the first to quantify the extent to which private equity is acquiring swaths of the fertility industry.

In our Matters Arising piece, we aren’t just arguing that there are some small issues with the original paper. We argue that its core claim is completely unsubstantiated: that the Takahashi et al. study does not, in fact, demonstrate that biological sex explains differences in COVID-19 patient outcomes.

In a collaboration with the Harvard SOGIE Health Equity Research Collaborative, today the Harvard GenderSci Lab has a new post up on the Health Affairs blog about gaps in COVID-19 public health data collection on trans, non-binary, and gender-expansive people.

We wanted to understand whether sperm counts were truly declining and whether evidence supported the authors' claims of imminent danger to fertility, health, and the environment. That analysis led us to be skeptical of claims of dramatic global sperm decline leading to an imminent crisis in male fertility and health. We think the patterns hinted at in Levine et al.’s meta-analysis rather offer compelling evidence that sperm count can vary both pathologically and non-pathologically under different conditions and environments.

Our findings are stark. Black men are far more likely to die than any other group; but Black women have over 3 times higher mortality rates than white or Asian/Pacific Islander men (Figure 1). Further, the sex disparity within race varies widely.

Is the feminist project to bring about parity for women and men in traditionally male fields doomed? In this blog post series, we expand on these contributions and offer a thorough consideration of the “Gender Equality Paradox” hypothesis and its theoretical and methodological underpinnings and the assumptions required for it to operate.

In a recent Science Letter, “Genome Studies Must Account for History”, and in this short blog series, the GenderSci Lab investigates the social and historical context of the biobank data used for a recent genetic study of same-sex sexuality, and explores the political and ethical implications of these projects.