The Nuzzo Letter

For several years, I have had scribbled down in my notes an idea for an essay that I had planned to title, “What will happen when Bobby Knight dies?” Obviously, I never got around to writing this essay, and on November 1, 2023, legendary basketball coach Bobby Knight passed away. Here, I want to share some notes that I had written for this unfinished essay. I think the notes will suffice for under...

In 2022, American astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss brought international attention to Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) by writing an essay in Quillette about the bias against men within the agency. The NHMRC resides within the Australian federal government and is tasked with funding much of the country’s health and medical research. Krauss’ criticism of the agency cen...

I want you to pretend for a moment that today is your first day lifting weights at the gym. You have a hired a personal trainer to create and guide you through a resistance exercise program. In one of your first sessions with your personal trainer, they assess your maximal strength. They do this by testing, what is called, the one repetition maximum or 1RM. The 1RM is the maximal amount of weight...

On September 13 th , here on The Nuzzo Letter, I discussed an advertisement for research grants aimed at funding projects in Australia that “address equity issues across the entire higher education student lifecycle.” I explained that the grants were intended to help improve higher education outcomes for six groups. One of the groups was “women in non-traditional areas” while the other groups were...

The field of women’s studies, sometimes called gender studies, concerns itself with the lives and experiences of girls and women. It is defined by the National Center for Education Statistics in the United States as: “A program that focuses on the history, sociology, politics, culture, and economics of women, and the development of modern feminism in relation to the roles played by women in differ...

Recently, while searching for research grants to support my own projects, I came across a call for grant applications advertised by the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE). This is an organisation housed within Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia. The call for grants was termed the Small Grants Research Program. A total of 13 grants valued at $30,000 to $50,00...

In June of this year, I entered the Joondalup Shopping Centre in Perth, Western Australia to grab a couple of groceries on my way to work. I entered from the south entrance. I walked down the southern corridor toward one of the food courts at the centre of the mall. The food court serves as a sort of four-way intersection for mall traffic. As I approached the intersection, I could see a man walkin...

In the United States, life expectancy for men is 5.9 years less than it is for women. A number of factors contribute to this sex difference. Deaths from cardiovascular disease, cancer, and occupational and motor vehicle accidents are all more common among men than women. Men are also more likely to use alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs, leading to greater lifetime prevalence of drug-use disorder ....

The muscles that make up your body are composed of individual muscle fibres. Think of the biceps muscle of your arm as a handful of spaghetti strands. Each strand of spaghetti represents a long muscle fibre that runs from the front of your shoulder to the inner crease of your elbow. However, not all spaghetti strands are necessarily the same, nor are all of the muscle fibres that make up your bice...

Participation in physical exercise is important for one’s mental and physical wellbeing. Decades of research supports this conclusion. With such evidence in their back pockets, some exercise activists have started to proclaim that physical activity is a “right.” For example, a group in England called the Sport and Recreation Alliance is petitioning government to “give every child the fundamental r...

Are you frustrated with movies coming out of Hollywood today? Are you tired of the endless numbers of remakes and sequels? Are you unsatisfied with the stories that have no impact on your emotions other than to make you cringe? Or perhaps you are annoyed by the political messaging that is forced into movie scripts? Or maybe you have simply had enough of bad acting? If you answered yes to these que...

Academic publishing is currently experiencing a number of problems. Authorship inflation, long review times, and lack of payment for reviewers’ work in appraising manuscripts are just a couple of examples. Here, I highlight another issue in academic publishing – one that has received little attention, but that readers of scientific journals should be aware of. Editorials in academic journals are b...

In contemporary society, we are bombarded with negative messages about men. We are told that men “toxic” and “privileged,” and we are given the impression that most men are abusers of women. In media, you will be hard pressed to find stories that talk about masculinity, and men as a group, in a positive light. Here, I want to change that. I want to highlight an unrecognized good that men have prov...

In August of 2020, one the highest ranked exercise science journals, called Sports Medicine , published a commentary titled, “Gender-based violence is a blind spot for sports and exercise medicine professionals.” The commentary was problematic for a variety reasons, and this prompted Dr. John Barry of the Centre for Male Psychology, Deborah Powney of the University of Central Lancashire, and me to...

Biological males are now competing against biological females in sports. Biological males have various physical advantages over biological females, rendering this new form of athletic competition problematic. The purpose here is not to revisit the various ways in which men are advantaged over women in sports. Instead, the purpose is to highlight the failure of female exercise scientists to play a...

In November of 2020, the American Journal of Preventive Medicine published a paper titled, “Homicide mortality inequities in the 30 biggest cities in the U.S.” A few months after the paper was published, in April of 2021, I submitted a letter to the journal’s editor, challenging some of the ideas put forward in the paper. The editor rejected my letter. The reasons for the rejection were not entire...