Carole Hooven’s T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us is well written. I recommend it to everyone. There are lots of little details that make the book shine, but, I have to be honest and say that’s it’s not really changing my priors. I have a biological science education and I was always taught that testosterone was a big deal.

But things have changed since the early 2010’s. For example, Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography and Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society have both been published to great acclaim in the last five years, transforming the ideas of well-informed people about the importance (or lack thereof) of testosterone. Testosterone Rex won an award from The Royal Society. Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography has endorsements from Robert Sapolsky, John Ioannidis (back when he was good actually!), and Nature.

In other words, if you are not a biologist you can reasonably assert that testosterone doesn’t make a huge difference. If you are a biologist and not focused on hormones, you can reasonably say that the science “community” has changed its views on the topic. But at best these books are probably misleading, and at worst they are perpetuating people lying to themselves.

Unfortunately, the only thing that Hooven’s book is convincing me that I shouldn’t trust anyone because they’re all liars and/or self-deluded.