Third Excerpt from The Edge in The Guardian

A third excerpt from The Edge has been published in The Guardian this week. It is the third of three such pieces that will appear over the coming weeks.

Here is how it starts:

In difficult social or political contexts, we often hope that science will forge a path to decision making that sidesteps the messiness of culture and values. If only scientists could identify the specific biological factors that distinguish male from female, then the issue of “sex testing” in athletics would be easy to resolve.

But sometimes the most important thing we learn from science is that science cannot perform the political or social work that we’d like it to. In my forthcoming book, The Edge: The War Against Cheating and Corruption in the Cutthroat World of Elite Sports, I explore the science and politics of sex testing in elite sport, an issue that continues to bedevil sport administrators. After years looking for and not finding the sex testing Holy Grail via science, it is time to look at alternative ways to determine who is eligible for participation in elite women’s sports.

Read the whole thing here.