The British Medical Journal is accused of rejecting research from top academics over their belief that sex is biological and unchangeable. The Mail has the story.
One researcher had his paper rejected because he was “opinionated” and had tweeted in support of author J.K. Rowling’s gender-critical views.
The other’s research was taken offline by BMJ staff who accused him of being “transphobic” based on a student paper article about him. Both academics saw the discussions in BMJ staff emails after making Freedom of Information requests.
Dr. Michael Biggs, an Oxford University sociologist, was blacklisted over a paper saying the official number of transgender people in the U.K. – 262,000 – is unreliable because of a confusingly-worded census question.
He said a number of people who don’t speak English as a first language had answered “no” to: “Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?”
BMJ staff emails claimed Dr. Biggs’s piece “portrays trans individuals as uneducated and implies they weren’t able to understand the question on the census”. …
Dr. John Armstrong, a mathematician at King’s College London, submitted a paper to BMJ Open on findings that institutions with higher ‘Athena Swan’ ratings – an award given for promoting gender equality – had fewer women in senior roles.
After it was rejected, he found a member of staff had told a colleague his social media account had “coloured our impression of the manuscript”. …
Dr. Armstrong said: “If a journal censors findings because they don’t like the results or the author, it has abandoned science.”
Worth reading in full.
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