There is a presumption that science has no agenda, which is rarely true. I believe that several of the people who have appointed themselves experts and indeed gone on to study at degree level and beyond are transgender.
There is Blair Hamilton who competes in women's sport and also researching the same
https://www.outsports.com/trans/2022/4/ ... women-team
https://twitter.com/BlairH_PhD
Another is Joanna Harper, who wrote an extremely poor quality study study which purported to show based on performance measured with a several decade gap based on a handful of athletes, that there was no fairness issue
https://www.science.org/content/article ... -including
It is indeed hard to control all the variables and come up with good scientific answers, but I suppose this rather depends on whether you believe that there is some sort of right to change sex and compete in elite sport after doing so, ignoring the indelible effects of male puberty - some of us see no credibility in the underlying claim about having effected a change of gender, let alone a reversal of sexual dimorphism, and as such regard to argument of a right to compete in the new gender as ludicrous.
It is a matter of fact that scientists in sport have set out to deceive the public on many occasions, further to political goals, as was the case when the IOC and IAAF held several meetings and decided to misappropriate the term 'hyperandrogenism', which previously applied to women suffering hirsutism etc. as a result of PCOS, ovarian tumours, etc., to apply it to people who had testicular DSDs, who were competing in the female category. This political act, whether motivated by protecting the privacy of the athletes, or the credibility of the sport, or something else, was extremely successful as many swore blind, based on the misuse of 'hyperandrogenism' and the decision to further deceive and lie to the public by including conditions such as luteoma of pregnancy in their banned list, that these were women with overactive ovaries or similar, not just a relatively minor steroid synthesis malfunction from testicular testosterone.
It seems to me that in the present case it's essentially a kneejerk response to kick things down the line a bit. It is self-evident to most of humanity that these people should not be competing in women's sport, but there are armies of well-funded charities and lawyers who would love to take this to court, where some sort of metaphysics has developed whereby men can become women, compete against women, and it is then incumbent on those who doubt some part of this alleged transformation to prove their case, rather than vice versa.
