The science behind sex, gender, and athletic competition is still pretty shaky
Medical physicist Joanna Harper is going the distance in researching when and how trans athletes should qualify for women's sports. (Jon Enoch/)Popular Science’s Play issue is now available to everyone. Read it now, no app or credit card required.Joanna Harper’s research started not in a lab, but on the track. Though she didn’t have a background in sports science—she held a master’s in medical physics, and her work involved tailoring cancer radiation treatments—she was an athlete in a unique situation: In 2004, the nationally ranked long-distance runner started hormone therapy (HT) as part of her transition to female.She knew the testosterone blocker and estrogen would alter her body. What the then-47-year-old was uncertain of was how the regimen would impact her racing, so she started tracking her times. “I realized there was this huge gap, there was no quantitative data published on transgender athletes,” says Harper. “I knew that the...