Re:CDC orders mass retraction of research across all science...
by brigandish on Sunday February 02, 2025 @05:59AM
(#42907868)
> So if you went by chromosomes alone, there's more than two sexes.
That "science" would certainly be wrong, because sex is defined by the gamete size that an individual's reproduction strategy is set up to produce (anisogamety, which holds for over 99.99% of eukaryotes), and there are animals where the differentiation occurs not because of chromosomes/genes but other factors, e.g. crocodiles[0]:
> Sex in crocodilians is not determined by chromosomes, but by egg incubation temperature, where different temperatures produce different clutch sex ratios
So that's out. "And if you go by phenotypic categorization"… well, that's a bimodal distribution that indicates but doesn't determine (in either meaning of the word used here) sex, so that's not scientific either. The following is "biology 101":
> “In anisogamety, an individual's sex condition coincides with the type of gametes it produces; male if it produces male gametes exclusively, female if it only produces female gametes, and hermaphrodite if simultaneously or at different times” [1]
To produce scientific literature that does not provide further insight nor (legitimate) challenge to this is fine, if that's how one wishes to spend their time and money, but I don't see why the government should spend its money and time on such things.
> It's the book Nineteen-Eighty-Four, being enacted in real life.
I read it quite recently, this is nothing like the book.
That "science" would certainly be wrong, because sex is defined by the gamete size that an individual's reproduction strategy is set up to produce (anisogamety, which holds for over 99.99% of eukaryotes), and there are animals where the differentiation occurs not because of chromosomes/genes but other factors, e.g. crocodiles[0]:
> Sex in crocodilians is not determined by chromosomes, but by egg incubation temperature, where different temperatures produce different clutch sex ratios
So that's out. "And if you go by phenotypic categorization"… well, that's a bimodal distribution that indicates but doesn't determine (in either meaning of the word used here) sex, so that's not scientific either. The following is "biology 101":
> “In anisogamety, an individual's sex condition coincides with the type of gametes it produces; male if it produces male gametes exclusively, female if it only produces female gametes, and hermaphrodite if simultaneously or at different times” [1]
To produce scientific literature that does not provide further insight nor (legitimate) challenge to this is fine, if that's how one wishes to spend their time and money, but I don't see why the government should spend its money and time on such things.
> It's the book Nineteen-Eighty-Four, being enacted in real life.
I read it quite recently, this is nothing like the book.
[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31286510/
[1] The Biology of Reproduction, Cambridge University Press, Giuseppe Fusco, Alessandro Minelli