There is no good scientific reason for testing troops' testosterone levels.

Hormones affect us, but not in linear fashion; high levels of testosterone don't trigger killer instincts.

Screening for low testosterone provides a seemingly objective way to push women out of the military.

At the turn of the 21st century, a sociologist from the University of North Carolina published an article claiming that in utero hormones could predict how “feminine” or “masculine” women became as they aged. As a sociologist of gender, I published a critique of his methodology. And I spent years searching for and cleaning the data, and then published an article with Shannon Davis replicating his research, showing that his results were inaccurate, exaggerating the power of hormones sometimes by a factor of 10. It isn’t that in utero hormones don’t matter; it’s just that they don’t matter very much and always matter in complicated interaction with contextual experiences. Much other research has also shown that the relationship between hormones and behavior is complicated and not unidirectional. That is, while hormones may affect behavior, it is also the case that experiences elevate or decrease hormone levels across each and every day.

And yet, here we are in 2026, with the Secretary of Defense (or War) Hegseth announcing that every member of the military, male and female, over the age of 30 must have their testosterone levels monitored. What function does such testing have? Secretary Hegseth claims that soldiers with low testosterone are not top-flight fighters, and so wants to offer hormone treatment to anyone with “too low” testosterone. Let me explain why there is no science behind this claim. And once I’ve shown you that the stated reason doesn’t have any basis in fact, I will propose an alternative hypothesis for this new........

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