←back to thread

Secret changes to major U.S. health datasets raise alarms

(www.psypost.org)
27 points DocFeind | 2 comments | 15 Jul 25 15:09 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
1. deweller ◴[15 Jul 25 16:37 UTC] No.44573039[source]▶
The title implies that the data was manipulated. What happened was column headers were renamed without an official entry in the changelog.

Most of these changes were the column heading “Gender” renamed to “Sex.”

replies(1): >>44574385 #
2. readthenotes1 ◴[15 Jul 25 18:32 UTC] No.44574385[source]▶
I would imagine that the modern definition of gender is less important for healthcare then the biological sex of the patient.

I feel it is one of the unfortunate consequences of "sex" being a noun and a verb, as well as a somewhat prudish desinclination to asking "has external genitalia" and use "gender" instead that lead us to the logomachy we have today.

(Of course the label should not have been gender or sex in either case because all one can determine at birth is whether they see a penis or not, and for less than 1% of humans that's not sufficient to determine their genetic makeup)