Creating policy based on feelings, fear and bigotry is never wise.

Yet here we are with the International Olympic Committee and its transgender ban.

The IOC is going to ban transgender women from women’s events in the absence of science, using a flawed verification method that also is illegal in some countries, and in a way that sanctions discrimination against all women. And those are only some of the bad and unconsidered outcomes!

Designed to “protect” women, this ban does the opposite.

"The thing I think most people miss is they’re not actually engaging with the people affected by the policy decision," said Madeleine Pape, a researcher at the University of Lausanne who would know better than most.

A 2008 Olympian from Australia, Pape went on to work at the IOC from 2022 to 2025 as an inclusion specialist, educating the various sports federations on how transgender athletes could participate in a way that was fair to all.

“There’s just really a lack of curiosity of, 'Huh, where is this policy actually coming from? What will it actually mean?'" Pape said. "People are just really quick to accept a narrative that feels familiar to them."

OPINION: Transgender witch hunt of San Jose State volleyball player is not protecting women

Minuscule number of transgender athletes compete at highest levels

One of the biggest grifts of the last decade is how people with deep pockets and large platforms have managed to hoodwink the general public into believing that transgender women are a threat to women’s sports and the athletes who participate in them. That if something is not done, no cisgender woman will ever stand on a podium again or earn a scholarship.

It’s not true, of course. Instead of a marauding horde of transgender athletes, there’s been one openly transgender woman ever at the Olympics. Weightlifter Laurel Hubbard posted a DNF in her event, about as far from the podium as you can get. At the NCAA level, president Charlie Baker said there were "less than 10" transgender athletes out of the half-million young men and women competing.

Oh, the IOC will spout all kinds of statistics about the purported advantage transgender women have. But when asked for the source of this information, or to see the science behind the ban, the IOC refuses. Which tells you everything you need to know.

If you’re confident in your facts, you show them. If you’re not, you put up smokescreens.

The larger problem, though, is that these bans try to make black and white what is so many shades of grey.

IOC transgender athlete ban not a simple matter of X and Y

The IOC has decided to use the SRY gene to determine whether someone is male or female because it is located on the Y chromosome. But even the geneticist who discovered it says that’s too simplistic.

People with intersex conditions – variances in chromosomes, hormones, reproductive systems or genitalia – make up as much as 1.7% of the population. That includes women with XY chromosomes who have internal testes but female genitalia, as well as women who have XY chromosomes but female reproductive systems.

Under the IOC’s wisdom, those women will not be allowed to compete.

Many girls and women with these conditions, also called Differences in Sex Development, don’t even know it. The IOC is unbothered by this landmine, lobbing it off with the suggestion that someone else should consider offering mental health resources to women who test positive.

Imagine the psychological devastation of discovering you can’t compete, and then learning it’s because you have a condition that, in the eyes of the IOC, makes you not a “real” woman. Now imagine learning this as an 11- or 12-year-old, which is a very real possibility given there were preteen girls competing at the last two Olympics.

And then, on top of that, imagine learning this in a country where women are already marginalized and mere existence is an excuse for harassment, physical abuse and worse.

I’m sure it will go well, no harm coming to these women because the IOC has decided to play fast and loose with both science and ethics.

“This policy goes well beyond the boundaries of sporting governance,” Saad Kassis-Mohamed, chair of the Human Rights Association, said in a statement condemning the new IOC policy.

“Mandating compulsory genetic testing for every woman competing at Olympic level, and using that test to determine whether she is permitted to compete, is a profound human rights question,” he added. “It demands independent scrutiny, not a unilateral ruling.”

Requiring test only of women is discrimination

And about that compulsory testing …

The IOC loves to pat itself on the back for its gender equity efforts, touting the increased participation of women at the Games and the addition of mixed-gender events. But requiring that women take a genetic test to compete when the same is not demanded of men is the sports equivalent of a poll tax.

The IOC is also forcing athletes from countries where genetic testing is illegal for non-medical purposes to break their nation’s laws. Which seems the opposite of “protecting” women athletes, but what do I know?

“This conviction that you can be above the law, in part, because you have such a strong feeling about transgender athletes and athletes with intersex variations …” Pape said. “A process was retrofitted to this policy outcome. But the policy outcome was decided in advance.

“From a legal point of view, that’s a very risky strategy.”

For the better part of 20 years, transgender athletes were allowed to participate in the Olympics and NCAA sports without issue. Cisgender women are still winning medals and earning scholarships, and the world has not ended.

But because transgender men and women make some people uncomfortable, because most people don’t know someone who is transgender and so don’t realize they’re being fed a bunch of lies, we’ve decided it’s OK to throw out all decency and make rules up on the fly. People are going to be harmed as a result, including the very women the IOC claims to care so much about protecting.

Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Transgender ban from IOC harms women with mandated genetic testing

Tiger Woods needs help.

Not a high-priced attorney who can make his latest DUI go away. Not a spin doctor who can make excuses for him. Not sycophants who will tell him how wonderful he is and minimize the recklessness of his actions.

As soon as he's released from the Martin County Jail in Florida, Woods needs to go straight to rehab and stay there for as long as it takes for him to overcome his addiction. Weeks, months — no matter. He needs to get clean and he needs tools to help him stay that way.

Woods is fortunate he's only facing DUI allegations and not something worse. If there's a next time, he might not be so lucky.

What's most troubling is, after similar incidents in 2021, 2017 and 2009, this was already the next time.

Woods was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence on March 27, after clipping a pickup truck towing a small trailer while trying to overtake it at high speed. Woods' Range Rover tipped over and slid several feet on the driver's side before coming to a stop.

Officers on the scene believed Woods was impaired and not from alcohol, Martin County Sheriff John Budensiek said.

"They believed it was some type of medication or drugs. He cooperated with the Breathalyzer and then the urine (test), he wanted no part of," Budensiek said.

Neither Woods nor the driver of the truck were hurt, fortunately. That's far better than his last rollover crash, when Woods nearly had to have his right leg amputated because of the extent of his injuries.

"This," Budensiek said, "could have been a lot worse."

Pain, addiction authoring tragic passages in Tiger Woods' story

It must not take Woods killing someone else to sober him up. His life cannot end in tragedy because he couldn't, or wouldn't, get clean.

Addiction is a vicious and relentless disease, and Woods deserves empathy that he appears to be in its grip. It is also not a surprise, given how many back injuries and surgeries he's had, that Woods became susceptible to painkillers.

But having sympathy that Woods is fighting addiction again — he spent time in rehab in 2017 for abusing painkillers — does not give him a free pass for the mistakes he makes while in its throes. The 15-time major champion is a person of considerable means and privilege, who has resources that most people struggling with addiction don't have.

Woods can afford to hire a driver. He can afford to hire a sober living coach. He can afford to go to the best rehab center, regardless of where it is. He can afford to do any of the things necessary to help him manage his addiction or, short of that, keep him and others out of harm's way.

And yet, once again, Woods put himself at risk, to say nothing of endangering those who had the misfortune of being on the same road at the same time.

Under the influence of something that police believe made him "lethargic," Woods got behind the wheel of an SUV that weighs several tons. He sped through a residential neighborhood. He tried to pass another heavy vehicle while on a road that had little room for anyone to get out of his way.

This wasn't in the dead of night, either, when there are few vehicles on the road. This was in the middle of the afternoon, when Woods was all but assured of encountering someone else on the road.

Worse, he knew after the crash occurred that he'd done wrong. Impaired as police say he was, Woods still knew he was driving when he shouldn't have been.

"He is cooperative but he was not trying to incriminate himself. So he was careful in what he said and didn't say," Budensiek said.

Woods needs help. Before it's too late. For him or someone else.

Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Tiger Woods' reckless driving needs to stop after Florida rollover