Bibliometric guide to photographs of male participants in early exercise and physical medicine research

2.1 Literature search

The literature search combined two methods. The first method was a search of the entire digital archives of the Journal of Applied Physiology (1948–1979), Medicine and Science in Sports (1969–1979), and Research Quarterly (1930–1979). These journals are three of the most important and relevant journals in terms of the history of exercise science research prior to 1980. For these three journals, the entire digital archives were downloaded to the author’s computer. Each paper was saved in portable document format (pdf) and then opened and browsed page-by-page for photographs. Other journals were not searched in their entirety because complete digital archives were not available to the author. The year 1979 was chosen as the end year of the analysis to align with other historical research [10, 11, 12] and to limit the scope of the project and make its completion more feasible.

The second search method was a check of personal digital files associated with previous historical research [10, 11]. This method allowed for identification of photographs of exercise science research published in other journals. Though the current paper is framed around education efforts in exercise science, exercise science has historical links with fields like physical education, medicine, therapy and rehabilitation. Thus, journals in those fields often contain studies classified as exercise science, and the final bibliometric list does not reflect solely the field of exercise science. Instead, the final bibliometric list represents an amalgamation of the fields of exercise science, physical education, applied physiology and physical medicine, therapy and rehabilitation.

2.2 Data extraction and processing

The following information was extracted from the papers and entered in a spreadsheet: journal name, year of publication, author name, number of photographs of boys or men, number of boys and men shown in the photographs and the general topic of the research study. One-sentence descriptions of each photograph were also generated by the author.

To be qualified for inclusion in the current bibliometric list, a paper had to include a photograph of a male—either as researcher or research participant. The photograph had to either show the individual’s face, or it had to show most of the individual’s body and state elsewhere in the paper that only boys or men were participants in the study. For most papers in the final bibliometric list, faces of the male participants were visible in the photographs.

Some papers included several photographs taken as part of high-frequency motion capture biomechanical analyses. These biomechanical analyses were often conducted on sports skills, such as baseball swings, swimming strokes, or gymnastics maneuvers. Researchers typically presented these motion-capture photographs within the context of a single manuscript figure. For the current bibliometric list, such occurrences were classified as one photograph rather than as a dozen or so separate photographs.

Papers were classified by general topic. The classifications were: (a) cardiorespiratory and thermophysiology (e.g., a participant exercising while wearing an oxygen mask); (b) neuromuscular (e.g., a participant performing a test of muscle strength); (c) motor skill learning (e.g., a participant performing a motor learning task with their hand or finger); (d) biomechanics (e.g., a participant photographed by a motion capture system while performing a sports skill); (e) anthropometrics (e.g., a participant being assessed on skinfolds or somatotype); (f) posture (e.g., a participant being assessed on spinal curvature); (g) proprioception (e.g., a participant being assessed on perceived response to movement induced by an external stimulus); and (h) other (i.e., photographs that did not fit in the other categories). Study aims and methods often traversed multiple classification topics. Consequently, for the bibliometric list, the single most relevant classification for each study was recorded.

4.1 Education

The bibliometric list can aid efforts by lecturers and writers to educate audiences about the history of exercise science research. The bibliometric list can be used as a quick reference to find photographs that are relevant to the topic of one’s presentations or writings. After educators obtain relevant copyright permissions, they can use the photographs in classroom lecturers, conference presentations, journal articles, and textbooks. Such photographs can be used to help achieve Ivy’s [3] suggestion that the history of exercise science be taught to undergraduate students to help them “acquire an appreciation for the discipline of exercise physiology” and understand how the field has evolved over time. Use of such photographs might also facilitate an overall greater interest in and knowledge of exercise science history.

4.2 Male participants

The current research focused on male participants because there is currently a need to give male experiences and contributions their own space for acknowledgement. Within exercise physiology, a growing number of researchers have been conducting audits of journals and reporting on numbers of male and female research participants [317]. The underlying rationale for these audits is often that women have been historically “underrepresented” in research trials and that this imbalance needs to be corrected. Putting aside the sometimes-inaccurate portrayal of women’s representation as participants in exercise and medical research [10, 318, 319], contextual discussion points about men’s more frequent research participation often are absent from this audit literature. Lack of contextual discussion about men’s early research participation occurs, in part, because authors of audit papers frequently assume that greater male than female representation is due to bias against women. However, there are many factors other than gender bias that can contribute to sex differences in research representations [317, 319, 320]. One example is the sex of the researcher [321, 322]. Other examples include sex differences in interest and willingness to participate in certain types of experiments [317, 319, 320] and sex differences in factors that are considered when deciding to participate in a study [317, 320]. One recent survey about exercise research participation revealed that men are more willing than women to undergo procedures that are discomforting, exhaustive, and involve monitoring or improving muscle mass and power. Moreover, compared to the women who completed the survey, the men reported being less concerned about their confidence to complete the study procedures and less concerned about the anxiety they might experience during the experiment [317, 320]. Results from other survey studies also support the existence of sex differences in interest and willingness to participate in specific types of research [319]. These sex differences are important to acknowledge because they illustrate the unique ways that men and masculinity contribute to society and the advancement of science—for example, through risk taking [323].

Photographs in the current bibliometric list illustrate what men’s historical participation in exercise physiology has entailed. These photographs show men participating in a range of physiological and medical procedures. It is difficult to imagine women being more likely than men to volunteer to undergo many of these procedures. Some examples include exposure to high gravitational forces or other environmental conditions that cause “blackouts” or increase the risk of losing consciousness [23, 37, 53, 324]; exposure to gasses that cause itchiness and damage to the skin of the face [87]; sitting on an apparatus designed to induce motion sickness [16]; and standing on one’s head while cardiorespiratory outcomes are measured [31, 35, 65]. In another study, men who were deaf or who had trouble hearing were dumped into a swimming pool to try to better understand human proprioception [172]. Finally, two papers on the bibliometric list include photographs of men sitting on moving cars, while holding gas collection bags, which are attached to a man who is running next to the moving car [79, 94].

The idea that men might be more willing to expose themselves to unique and risky medical and physiological scenarios is not new. In the first half of the 1900s, men were recognized as the “martyrs of medicine”, sometimes submitting themselves to risky experiments that resulted in illness or death [325]. Such aspects of men’s historical participation in medical research lacks explicit mention in contemporary writings on research participant representations. Moreover, to the extent that men might have been more frequent participants in early research than women, this should not be automatically regarded as a negative for women. Men might have spared women from participating in certain experimental procedures until such procedures were better understood and deemed safe.

4.3 Male researchers

Male participants, not male researchers, were the focus of the current study. Nevertheless, male researchers appeared in many of the photographs. They were often shown conducting, observing, and supervising the research.

Some recent historical work has highlighted male accomplishments in exercise science, including men being the most prolific researchers of resistance exercise [11] and the inventors of nearly all resistance exercise equipment [12]. However, other opportunities for highlighting male accomplishment in the field have been missed. For example, de Koning et al. [326] surveyed 52 exercise scientists about essential readings for undergraduate and graduate students. From the survey responses, de Koning et al. [326] generated the “100 essential papers in sports and exercise physiology”. A quick browse of the top 100 list seemed to indicate that most of the papers were written by male researchers. Yet, sex of the researchers was not considered [326]. A secondary analysis of the top 100 list, presented here in Fig. 1 (Ref. [326]), reveals that men were first authors of 95 of the top 100 papers. Such important male contributions to humanity warrant acknowledgement, in part, to combat misguided negative portrayals of men and masculinity made in academia and the media (e.g., “male privilege”, “toxic masculinity”) [4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9].

Fig. 1.Sex of the first author of the “100 essential papers in sports and exercise physiology”. These data on author sex are a secondary analysis of the list of top 100 papers presented by de Koning et al. [326].

4.4 Limitations

The current research has limitations. First, the entire archives prior to 1980 were searched for only three journals. Papers published in other journals were identified, but these discoveries resulted from searches of personal digital files related to previous historical work [10, 11]. Thus, some photographs of boys and men published in certain journals are likely missing from the bibliometric list. Future work can aim to identify additional photographs of boys and men participating in exercise science experiments prior to 1980. The journals in which photographs were most likely missed include general medicine journals and physical medicine and therapy journals (e.g., Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Physical Therapy).

Second, the current research focused on papers published before 1980. This era of research was chosen because it is the oldest era, it aligned with other exercise history papers [10, 11, 12], and it limited the scope of the work to allow for more feasible completion of the bibliometric list. Nevertheless, papers in the 1980s and 1990s will also contain photographs of boys and men participating in exercise and physical medical research. Identifying and creating a bibliometric list of these photographs is something that can be addressed in future research. This future research can also focus on subareas of exercise and physical medicine and present photographs that show the evolution of laboratory techniques and exercise equipment over time.

Third, the current study’s bibliometric list is likely biased toward topics associated with the author’s previous historical research (i.e., resistance exercise, tests of neuromuscular function) [11]. Nevertheless, the current study is a “first step” in identifying photographs that depict the history of exercise science research. Future work can focus exclusively on other exercise modalities and test types.

Fourth, the current work focused explicitly on boys and men. The current work did not identify papers that include photographs of girls and women. This was not done to dismiss or minimize the role of female participants in early exercise research. Instead, it was done to limit the scope of the work and provide a dedicated space for presentation and discussion of male experiences and contributions. The author is currently developing a similar bibliometric list of exercise and physical medicine papers that include photographs of girls and women participating in early research.

4.5 Conclusion

Photographs of male participants in early exercise and physical medicine research papers were identified, aggregated into a bibliometric list and described. The bibliometric list can be used as a quick reference for educators who want to find historical photographs to use in their lectures and writings. Presentation of photographs is likely to facilitate learning of the history of exercise science. The role that men have played as participants and conductors of this early research ought to also be emphasized in future education efforts.