In this Sunday's Washington Post, I reviewed Hannah Holmes's book The Well-Dressed Ape. Overall it was a pretty positive review, but I criticized her for the way she linked testosterone (via left-handedness and ring-finger length) with various traits, including violence, autism, homosexuality, etc (see review for details). So I was very interested to see this great post on Neuroskeptic today about the problems with coverage of testosterone (pictured left) and autism. Check it out.
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One only has to turn on a TV, or browse through any news site, to read the story of disgraced Tour de France winner Flloyd Landis.
A man on TV is selling me a miracle cure that will keep me young forever. It’s called Androgel…for treating something called Low T, a pharmaceutical company–recognized condition affecting millions of men with low testosterone, previously known as getting older.
As some of you may have noticed, I have been keeping up with the science of Floyd Landis's failed drug test in a rather long post here.
What do you think a group of women would do if they were given a dose of testosterone before playing a game? Our folk wisdom tells us that they would probably become more aggressive, selfish or antisocial. Well, that's true... but only if they think they've been given testosterone.
As I understand it; autism is not caused by high testosterone, high testosterone is caused by autism.
It could be either - at the moment there's no way of knowing.