this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2026
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Critical Analysis

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🎓 Sex Differences in Grip Strength From Birth to Age 16: A Meta-Analysis (onlinelibrary.wiley.com)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by Oryx_404@lemmy.today to c/critical_analysis@lemmy.today
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In 1985, Thomas and French published results of a meta-analysis that examined sex differences in grip strength in children 5 years of age and older. Their analysis included results from only four studies, and no update has been published. The purpose of the current study was to use meta-analysis to examine sex differences in grip strength from birth to age 16. The analysis included 808 effects from 169 studies conducted in 45 countries between 1961 and 2023. The total sample was 353,676 (178,588 boys, 175,088 girls). From birth to 16 years of age, grip strength was consistently greater in boys than girls. Between 3 and 10 years old, the effect size was small-to-moderate, with female grip strength equaling 90% of male grip strength (Hedges g = 0.33–0.46). At age 11, the effect size decreased slightly, likely due to girls reaching puberty before boys (g = 0.29, 95% confidence intervals (CI) [0.22, 0.35]). At age 13, the effect size increased markedly likely due to male puberty (g = 0.63, 95% CIs [0.55, 0.70]). By age 16, the sex difference in grip strength was substantial, with female grip strength equaling 65% of male grip strength (g = 2.07, 95% CIs [1.86, 2.27]). Secondary analyses revealed that the sex difference in grip strength is broadly similar between countries and has been mostly stable since the 1960s, except for a narrowing of the difference among 5–10-year-olds after 2010. Various biological factors explain why, on average, boys are stronger than girls from birth onward.

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[–] Oryx_404@lemmy.today 1 points 1 week ago

https://xcancel.com/JamesLNuzzo/status/1891781779578925492

This study is a great example of why DOGE is needed.

Anyone over the age of 18 knows these things and you spent time doing this “research” and publishing a paper and now expecting others to read it for any reason other than parody value.

Brilliant.

Before criticizing my research, how about you actually read the paper and explore all the graphs, analyses, and discussion points?

  1. No government funding was received for this project. I completed it entirely unpaid and in my spare time. In fact, because this was the case, I set up a designated crowdfunding account for people to make volunteer donations. Many people who value this research made donations. In fact, on the title page of the paper, just underneath the title, in a section titled “Funding,” it states that that crowdfunding (not a government grant) was used to support this research.

  2. Did you really know that there was a sex difference in grip strength in the earliest years of development? It would be odd for you to know such a thing considering that no one has ever meta-analyzed data prior to age 5, and the one previous meta-analysis that examined kids above the age of 5 included results from only 4 studies. Your certainty about this result is further odd because if you actually look at one of the graphs in the paper, you will see that, although the aggregate data show a sex difference in grip strength favouring boys prior to puberty, some studies show no difference and others show that girls are actually stronger.

  3. Did you really know that the sex difference in grip strength remains stable between ages 5 to 10? Are you sure that you wouldn’t have predicted the size of the sex difference in grip strength to increase or decrease between the ages of 5 and 10?

  4. And what about the narrowing of the sex difference in grip strength at age 11? Did you really know about that prior to this paper? And did you really know the likely reason for that specific result (i.e., girls reaching puberty before boys)?

  5. And what about the finding about sex differences in grip strength being roughly equal across countries (both before and after puberty). Are you 100% certain that you would have predicted that?

  6. Finally, the analysis examined the size of the sex difference in grip strength over the past 60 years. Are you certain that you knew that the size of that sex difference has remained roughly the same each decade from 1960 to now?