Category: scientists behaving badly

Colin Wright on trans data epistomology: a new “way of knowing” that prioritizes ideology over truth

November 4, 2025 • 11:00 am

One of the recurrent themes on this site—and in the new anthology The War on Science, including the paper byLuana and Maroja and me—is the erosion of scientific standards by ideology.  Now a new paper in the peer-reviewed journal Big Data & Society (first title below), analyzed by Colin Wright on his website (second title), shows more than anything the explicit antiscientific aims of some ideologues. And those aims include clear guidance to prioritize ideology and politics over truth. Nowhere else have i seen this aim stated more blatantly.

In this case, the ideology promoted to distort or efface truth is “trans data epistomology”: a way to deal with data on trans issues. (As you know, empirical data, because they sometimes counteract accepted trans ideologies, have been controversial, leading to withholding of data that has real effects on human beings.)

I hasten to add that the distortion of data and prioritizing of politics over truth can be and has been applied to any group that does “science” with a political agenda—not just minority groups but entire organizations like scientific journals, medical schools, and professional organizations.  I emphasize this because trans matters are the hottest of political hot potatoes, but what this paper exemplifies is not at all unique to trans issues, and calling it out is not “transphobic”. In this time of extreme political division, science has become a tool not for finding truth, but for advancing your cause, no matter what the cause may be. Damn the truth, and full steam ahead.

The authors of this paper (again, it’s peer-reviewed) conducted 13 interviews of activists involved in “trans community care” and, from the 16 people involved in these interviews, the authors derived four pillars of what they call “trans data epistemology”, which turns out to involve, as Colin notes, ways you can use data to advance your cause.

Click the title below to read the paper:

Here’s part of the abstract; I’ve bolded the four pillars, but pay attention to the third one: “community well-being is more important than ‘accurate’ data”.  The last one, “data makes us visible to institutions,” apparently means “reframing your data in a way that serves your needs.”

 Drawing on literature from trans theory, data activism, critical data studies, philosophy, and critical social theory we offer a narrative of trans people as creators of knowledge, data-based and otherwise, undergirded by four pillars of a trans data epistemology: categories are provisional and productive, data can be a tool of community care, community well-being is more important than “accurate” data, and data makes us visible to institutions.

This is from the paper’s section on “pillar 3”: prioritizing ideology over truth:

Community well-being is more important than “accurate” data

Trans communities are experiencing an emergency. Well, it was already an emergency, but this is an epidemic. This is a crisis. This is, stop what you’re doing. We have to help now, today. And sometimes these pieces of data really can be a very strong call to action. (George)
In this pillar, we examine how participants prioritized actionable data for the trans community. Our participants reflected an understanding of data as rhetoric, as merely “one mode of conveying information” (Haarman, 2021: 35), not the only mode. When data is simply one of many ways of conveying information, it does not need to be viewed as the canonical source of truth. Our participants repeatedly emphasized that actionable and useful data for community care was the utmost priority over true, accurate, or verifiable data. We do not mean to undermine the meticulous data work of our participants but to emphasize the desired outcome of community well-being of their data work. This aspect of trans data epistemology is consonant with the idea that data is for community care.

This is an academic way of saying that there are other ways of knowing besides the data itself, and data doesn’t have to be the “canonical source of truth.” In fact, when the data conflict with “community care,” you give priority to the latter.  For things like “affirmative care” in gender medicine, this has obvious implications. One example is the withholding of data that counteract accepted ideology, like recent data showing that untreated gender dysphoria does not increase the suicide rate, or that affirmative care does not bolster mental health.

I’ll leave you to read the paper itself and Colin’s analysis below (I’ll quote him a bit), but want to add one part of the paper that’s becoming increasingly commonplace: “author positionality”—statements in which authors reveal aspects of their personal life, including their activities and ideologies. Here’s the positionality statement of the second author from the University of Washington (the first author works at MIT):

Amelia Lee Doğan: I came to this project after its development as a trans person interested in activism and data. My experience include working part-time for a university LGBTQ+ office for several years and researching other activists communities’ data and technical needs. I had no direct contact with any of the interview participants but their words and work truly made me cry at how other trans people are making this world a little better for us. Especially, as a trans young person of color, it was an honor to get to hear our elders talk about how they have fought and continue to fight and care for us.

Stevens’s statement is pretty much the same, except for the crying part. But is it any wonder that authors so deeply dedicated to a specific ideological aim are willing to allow distortion of data to achieve that aim?

On his site Reality’s Last Stand, Colin gives a succinct and, in my view, an accurate summary of the paper and its problems. Click below to read it:

I’ll give a few quotes, but if you like Colin’s analysis and work you should subscribe to his site.

Over the past few decades, universities have churned out a steady stream of papers so detached from reality that they often read like parodies. Many of them have been highlghted right here on Reality’s Last Stand: the infamous “feminist glaciology” paper that sought to “decolonize” ice; the surreal paper where two “hydrosexual” researchers married brine shrimp and made love to a lake; and the deeply disturbing pieces on “queering babies” and questioning childhood sexual innocence. Those were insane. Others—like those calling to “Indigenize” and “decolonize” medicine by rejecting the scientific method—are not just ridiculous, but genuinely dangerous.

Now, a new peer-reviewed article in Big Data & Society breaks new ground by openly arguing that lying with data is not only acceptable but morally required when it comes to transgender issues.

The paper, titled “Trans Data Epistemologies: Transgender Ways of Knowing with Data,” was written by Nikko Stevens, an assistant professor of statistical and data sciences at Smith College, and Amelia Lee Doğan, a PhD candidate at the University of Washington and research affiliate with MIT’s Data + Feminism Lab. What makes this paper truly remarkable is how the authors openly admit that “truth” in their work takes a back seat to politics. “Actionable and useful data for community care,” they write, is “the utmost priority over true, accurate, or verifiable data.”

They are so ideologically blinkered that they’re not even hiding the fact that they’re committing research misconduct. They’re openly celebrating it in a peer-reviewed journal. The very existence of “data activism” as an academic field shows just how thoroughly higher education has been captured by ideology.

. . .The paper presents this approach as a “trans data epistemology,” supposedly a new “way of knowing” based on “trans experiences.” The authors argue that “mainstream Western epistemology”—the normal way of doing science—has historically favored the perspectives of the dominant group—white, cisgender, heterosexual men.” Because there’s “no universal knowledge system,” they claim, “epistemologies based solely on the perspectives of one group are necessarily limited and incomplete.” Every group must therefore have its own truth, and the truth according to marginalized groups trumps all others.

In other words, they believe truth itself depends on identity. Instead of minimizing bias, as real scientists strive to do, these authors maximize it.

Colin goes through the four pillars of the new epistemology, which remind me of the indigenous “ways of knowing” capturing New Zealand. Colin views the new epistemology as “an assault on the scientific method itself, and it erodes public trust in the very institutions built to safeguard truth.”  Note that this assault comes from the left flank of politics.

There’s a lot more, but I’ll just give Colin’s conclusion and, below that, one of my favorite quotes about science.

Colin:

Underlying all of this is the belief that scientific standards are oppressive. The authors proudly conclude that their “trans data epistemology stands apart from hegemonic values about data, in which data is a mimetic representation of reality [and] a way to discern truths about the world through big data insights.” The idea that “represent[ing] reality” with data is “hegemonic” is absurd.

It’s hard to overstate how blatantly this paper rejects the basic principles that make science possible. Principles that have slowly evolved over centuries to reduce bias and uncover truth. That this paper survived the gauntlet of peer-review at Big Data & Society—supposedly a top journal in the field by impact—shows just how far the academic world has fallen.

And Richard Feynman, on the Challenger disaster:

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

The only silver lining to this dreadful paper is that hardly anybody will read it, as it’s buried in a rather obscure journal. On the other hand, people need to know stuff like this so they can see how real, objective science is going down the drain, washed away by the shower of ideology. And “regular” people are starting to realize this because some ideological nonsense, like the view that there is a spectrum of biological sex in humans, has made it into the public ear.

Shame on this journal, and shame on the peer reviews who denigrate truth in favor of politics.

A new issue of J. Controversial Ideas on censorship in the sciences

October 28, 2025 • 9:30 am

For several years a group of us have been working on a paper on censorship in the sciences, and it’s finally come out in the Journal of Controversial Ideas (go here to access all the papers ever published). This “heterodox” journal founded in November 2018 by moral philosophers Francesca Minerva, Jeff McMahan, and Peter Singer. It’s peer-reviewed and open access, but believe me, the reviews are every bit as stringent as those for a science “journal of noncontroversial ideas.”

At any rate, our paper came out, but I didn’t realize that it was part of a special issue on censorship in the sciences until Heterodox at USC posted an announcement. Here’s part of it:

A special issue of the Journal of Controversial Ideas published today explores the serious problem of censorship plaguing the sciences, from the classroom to the research lab to scientific journals. The special issue contains 9 peer-reviewed papers including:

●     From Worriers to Warriors: The Cultural Rise of Women by Cory Clark, Executive Director of the Adversarial Project at the University of Pennsylvania

●     Fire the Censors! It’s the Only Way to Restore Free Inquiry by Robert Maranto, 21st Century Chair in Leadership at the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas

●     Silencing Science at MIT: MIT Shows that Cancel Culture Causes Self-Censorship at STEM Universities by Wayne Stargardt, President of the MIT Free Speech Alliance

●     With Friends Like These: On the Role of Presupposition in Pseudo-Defenses of Free Speech on Campus by Mike Veber, Associate Professor of Philosophy at East Carolina University

The collection expands upon subjects discussed at the Censorship in the Sciences conference held at the University of Southern California in January 2025. Over 100 academics gathered for three days to discuss what constitutes censorship, how this problem impacts scientific research and teaching, and how to combat its spread.

The collection also includes an introduction highlighting the themes discussed at the conference.

Contrary to the popular belief that censorship emanates mostly from authoritarian governments or religious mandates, this conference and follow-up publications, including this special issue, revealed that self-censorship and censorship attempts led by academics against their peers form the majority of “cancellations” occurring within the academy today.

Moreover, such censoring of science originates largely from the progressive left. This is unsurprising, given that the academy is now overwhelmingly dominated by faculty who self-identify as liberal or progressive.

Such intra-academic censorship is a serious problem, as the introduction to the special issue makes clear: “Academic jobs and promotions require letters of recommendation from colleagues. Grants necessitate approval from other academics, as do publications. Thus, control over the careers of scientists from within academia influences what subjects are researched and what scientific information is disseminated. In short, it is academics who are the gatekeepers of knowledge production and dissemination. They have the means to block publication, funding, and even employment of their peers.”

 

You can peruse the contents, and choose which papers you want to read, if any, by clicking on the screenshot below.  You can get our paper, which puts present instances of censorship in historical context (including censorship in Soviet Russia), by clicking below.

And the abstract:

The 20th century witnessed unimaginable atrocities perpetrated in the name of ideologies that stifled dissent in favour of political narratives, with numerous examples of resulting long-term societal harm. Despite clear historical precedents, calls to deal with dissent through censorship have risen dramatically. Most alarmingly, politically motivated censorship has risen in the academic community, where pluralism is most needed to seek truth and generate knowledge. Recent calls for censorship have come under the name of “consequences culture”, a culture structured around the inclusion of those sharing a particular narrative while imposing adverse consequences on those who dissent. Here, we place “consequences culture” in the historical context of totalitarian societies, focusing on the fate suffered by academics in those societies. We support our arguments with extensive references, many of which are not widely known in the West. We invite the broader scientific community to consider yet again what are timeless subjects: the importance of freely exchanging views and ideas; the freedom to do so without fear of intimidation; the folly of undermining such exchanges with distortions; and the peril of attempting to eliminate exchanges by purging published documents from the official record. We conclude with suggestions on where to go from here.

It’s a cry in the wilderness. . . ,.

A panel of authors from the anthology “The War on Science”

October 8, 2025 • 11:45 am

As I’ve mentioned, the anthology The War on Science, edited by Lawrence Krauss, has gotten some flak from “progressives”. These critics argue that it really should have been a book about how Trump and the Republicans are attacking science rather than a book about how the Left is damaging science. I’m not going to go after that whataboutery again, as I’ve done it before. No one side is immune from criticism, and there are a gazillion people noting, correctly, that Trump is doing rather serious damage to scientific funding right now. But how many people are showing how the leftist ideology is injuring science? QED. (Full disclosure: Luana Maroja and I have a chapter in this book, one that’s a slight revision of one we wrote for The Skeptical Inquirer.)

At any rate, there is now a longish video, featuring Krauss and three authors, with moderator Joshua Katz.  Everyone on the panel is listed below in bold.  It was based on a discussion held by the American Enterprise Institute, and if you want to damn it because the AEI is a generally conservative venue, damn away, but you’ll be outing yourself as narrow minded.  Here are the AEI notes for the discussion that I’ve put below.

On October 2, AEI’s Joshua T. Katz hosted an event to discuss The War on Science, a new volume to which he and several other AEI fellows contributed chapters.

After brief opening remarks from AEI’s M. Anthony Mills, the Origins Project Foundation’s Lawrence M. Krauss, the volume’s editor, delivered a presentation offering historical context for the book and detailing some notable instances of the imposition of ideology on scholarly practices. Each panelist then gave brief overviews of their respective chapters: AEI’s Sally Satel discussed her chapter “Social Justice, MD—Medicine Under Threat”; AEI’s Carole Hooven discussed her chapter “Why I Left Harvard”; and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s Solveig Lucia Gold discussed “An Apology for Philology,” a chapter she coauthored with Dr. Katz.

Following these remarks, the panelists engaged in a discussion moderated by Dr. Katz, and the event concluded with a Q&A, wherein panelists fielded questions from the audience.

Event description

Among assaults on merit-based hiring, the policing of language, the denial of empirical data in medicine and science, and the replacement of well-established standards with ideological mantras, rigorous scholarship is under threat throughout Western institutions. To make matters worse, many who have spoken up against this threat have faced professional consequences, creating a climate of fear that undermines the very foundation of modern research. In The War on Science, the Origins Project Foundation’s Lawrence M. Krauss assembles a group of prominent scholars from wide-ranging disciplines to detail ongoing efforts to impose ideological restrictions on scholarship—and issue a clarion call for change.

Solveig Lucia Gold, Senior Fellow in Education and Society, American Council of Trustees and Alumni
Carole Hooven, Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Lawrence M. Krauss, President, Origins Project Foundation
Sally Satel, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

Moderator:
Joshua T. Katz, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

Now I haven’t yet listened to the whole thing, as I cannot abide long podcasts and videos, so I’m going through it person by person.  So far I’ve heard Krauss’s nice opening (31 min.), which spares no science-warping ideologue from the Left, giving lots of cringeworthy examples.  If you have the patience to listen to a 1.5-hour long discussion all the way through, knock yourself out and comment below.

Misleading letter from three scientific societies, arguing that sex is a spectrum in all species, remains online

March 21, 2025 • 11:10 am

As I wrote on February 13:

. . . . the Presidents of three organismal-biology societies, the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), the American Society of Naturalists (ASN) and the Society of Systematic Biologists (SSB) sent a declaration addressed to President Trump and all the members of Congress. (declaration archived here)  Implicitly claiming that its sentiments were endorsed by the 3500 members of the societies, the declaration also claimed that there is a scientific consensus on the definition of sex, and that is that sex is NOT binary but rather some unspecified but multivariate combination of different traits, a definition that makes sex a continuum or spectrum—and in all species!

You can see the tri-Societies’ announcement, published on February 5 on the SSE’s website, by clicking on the headline below:

On Feb. 13,, 23 biologists wrote to the Presidents of the three societies (our letter is at the link above), correcting their view that sex is a “construct” and is multidimensional. (Our response was largely confected by Luana Maroja of Williams College.) We emphasized that biological sex in humans (and in other animals and vascular plants) is as close to a binary as you can get (exceptions in humans range from 0.005% to .018%). We noted as well that biological sex is defined by the nature of the two observed reproductive systems in nature: one designed to produce large, immobile gametes (females) or small, mobile gametes (males). In some species of plants there are individuals of both sexes (“hermaphrodites”), but there are only two separate sexes, and each species has only two types of gametes.

We later got more people to sign the letter to the societies, ending up with 125 signatures of people willing to reveal their names.

The Presidents of the three Societies did not answer us at first, though eventually they did respond, though we cannot publicize their private email.  I’ve outlined the tenor of their response here, saying that they largely conceded our points:

 I will say that [the Society Presidents] admitted that they think they’re in close agreement with us (I am not so sure!), that their letter wasn’t properly phrased, that some of our differences come from different semantic interpretations of words like “binary” and “continuum”(nope), and that they didn’t send the letter anyway because a federal judge changed the Executive Order on sex (this didn’t affect our criticisms). At any rate, the tri-Societies letter is on hold because the organizations are now concerned with more serious threats from the Trump Administration, like science funding.

So the letter was never sent, and is still sitting on the SSE website, an embarrassing and biologically misleading example of virtue signaling. Nor did they answer Luana Maroja’s subsequent email asking whether they would remove the announcement from the SSE website and inform the Societies’ members of the change.  They have been notably unresponsive, and, although admitting problems with their announcement about sex, they have neither changed the letter nor explained how it is misleading.

You can see all my posts about this kerfuffle here. Besides our weighing in, Richard Dawkins put up two relevant posts on his website, one mentioning the kerfuffle and explaining very clearly why there are only two sexes, and the other showing that even the three Presidents who wrote the declarations implicitly accepted the binary nature of sex in their own published research.

Given that the three Society Presidents who wrote the letter never sent it, and have backed off on its assertions, I call on them to either retract the letter or clarify and qualify it. Right now it stands as an embarrassment to not just the Societies, but to biologists in general—people who are supposed to be wedded to the truth and not to woke ideology. It goes without saying that the claim that sex is nonbinary is made simply to make people who feel that they’re neither male nor female feel better about themselves. But someone’s self-image should not depend on biological definitions and realities. It does not “erase” non-binary people, nor diminish their worth, to note that biological sex is binary.

I will echo Ronald Reagan, “Please, Society Presidents, tear down that announcement.”

***********

Finally, in a new post called “Debunking Mainstream Media Lies about Biological Sex,” Colin Wright shows that this kind of distortion is widespread in the media. Here’s how he begins his defense of the sex binary—by showing  misleading articles in the media (he mentions the SSE statement):

On January 20, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order affirming the binary nature of sex in federal law, a move that was solidified a month later by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with a scientifically robust definition of sex and the sexes: male and female. This reaffirmation of biological reality sent left-wing media into a frenzy, unleashing a flood of articles attempting to deconstruct and redefine sex through the lens of progressive queer ideology.

The Society for the Study of Evolution quickly issued a statement, purportedly on behalf of all 3,500 of its members, claiming that the executive order’s recognition of the sex binary “is contradicted by extensive scientific evidence,” and, remarkably, even invoked the subjective “lived experience of people” as part of their counterargument. The Washington Post followed suit on February 19 with an article titled, “Trump says there are ‘two sexes.’ Experts and science say it’s not binary.” A piece in The Hill this week accused the executive order and HHS guidelines of containing “profound scientific inaccuracies,” while Science News proclaimed that “sex is messy” and that “choosing any single definer of sex is bound to sow confusion.” Similar articles challenging the definitions outlined in Trump’s executive order and the HHS guidance have also appeared in Time Magazine, The Boston Globe, Scientific American, The Guardian, and numerous other outlets.

These responses have come in waves, with new attempts to muddy the waters appearing weekly. But one recent article from NPR—“How is sex determined? Scientists say it’s complicated”—encapsulates virtually every fallacious argument and pseudoscientific distortion used in the others. As such, it serves as the ideal target to be used for a collective rebuttal.

He then proceeds with the debunking and ends with this:

The left’s assault on the binary reality of sex is not about science—it is about politics. The goal is to deconstruct and redefine fundamental biological truths to serve ideological ends, whether that be justifying the inclusion of males in female sports, allowing men into women’s prisons, or pushing irreversible medical interventions on children under the guise of “gender-affirming care.”

The exchange of letters to the tri-Societies continues; they largely concede our points

March 7, 2025 • 9:30 am

On March 2, 125 scientists and people affiliated with biology (from 18 countries) signed a letter to the presidents of the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), the American Society of Naturalists (ASN), and the Society of Systematic Biologists (SSB) See my post about this here.

Our letter and signatures, resulting largely from the effort of Luana Maroja of Williams College, was written to object to the three societies’ previously published claim that biological sex in all species (not just humans) was some sort of multidimensional social construct that was, above all, NOT binary. Here’s one paragraph from their letter, dated February 5, 2025 and addressed to President Trump and “Members of the U.S. Congress.”

Scientific consensus defines sex in humans as a biological construct that relies on a combination of chromosomes, hormonal balances, and the resulting expression of gonads, external genitalia and secondary sex characteristics. There is variation in all these biological attributes that make up sex. Accordingly, sex (and gendered expression) is not a binary trait. While some aspects of sex are bimodal, variation along the continuum of male to female is well documented in humans through hundreds of scientific articles. Such variation is observed at both the genetic level and at the individual level (including hormone levels, secondary sexual characteristics, as well as genital morphology). Beyond the incorrect claim that science backs up a simple binary definition of sex, the lived experience of people clearly demonstrates that the genetic composition at conception does not define one’s identity. Rather, sex and gender result from the interplay of genetics and environment. Such diversity is a hallmark of biological species, including humans.

I can’t resist pointing out that the “lived identity” part has nothing to do with biological sex, but shows more than anything the ideological purposes of this letter.

Although these views were presented as a “scientific consensus”, the societies did not poll their members. Rather, I gather that they consulted their executive boards and decided that this was a good way to signal their virtue—even if involved distorting biology.  Their “multidimensional, multivariate” concept of sex, which incorporates information from a number of disparate traits, is in sharp contrast with what most biologists see as the definition of sex: a binary trait in all animals and plants that is based solely on whether they have the reproductive apparatus to produce large versus small gametes.  As Richard Dawkins has explained, the latter gamete-based “Universal Biological Definition” (UBD) of sex has the advantage that, yes, it’s universal (every plant and animal species has only two types of gametes), and it’s also explanatory, essential for understanding stuff like natural selection and sexual dimorphism. The multidimensional definition is neither universal nor explanatory.

The Tri-Societies “definition”—which isn’t really a definition—gives us no way to answer the two questions, “Well, how do you tell what sex a person/animal/plant really is?” and “How many sexes are there, then?” It’s a useless construct foisted on the public to show solidarity with those people who don’t identify with one of the two biological sexes. (I repeat again that it’s a description of nature, not a a prescription about how people should be treated.) But we felt that such a letter needed to be sent to show that by no means do all biologists agree on a multivariate definite of sex.

Our first letter (identical, but with only 23 signatures) was never answered, but this time we asked for a response and got one, signed by all three Presidents.  I can’t reprint it because we didn’t ask for permission, but some of its gist is in the response below from Luana. I will say that they admitted that they think they’re in close agreement with us (I am not so sure!), that their letter wasn’t properly phrased, that some of our differences come from different semantic interpretations of words like “binary” and “continuum”(nope), and that they didn’t send the letter anyway because a federal judge changed the Executive Order on sex (this didn’t affect our criticisms). At any rate, the tri-Societies letter is on hold because the organizations are now concerned with more serious threats from the Trump Administration, like science funding.

While I can’t reveal all the points they made, I can say that I see this largely as a victory for reason, as although the letter is still up at the link (they really should remove it and inform the members of the Societies), it wasn’t ever sent and they admit that it has several deficiencies. However, since they do admit those deficiencies, they really should take the letter down because it misrepresents biological reality as well the views of many–perhaps most–evolutionists. (You can also find the letter archived here).

At any rate, the Societies’ letter was sent to all 125 signers, some of whom read this website and are able to comment on the response. In the meantime, yesterday Luana sent the letter below to the Societies (quoted with permission).  Given that the Societies admit the letter was misleading and yet it’s still on the internet representing what is said to be a “scientific consensus” and not even giving a definition of biological sex, the proper thing to do would involve either taking it down or writing something newer based on a poll of the Societies’ members.

Luana’s letter:

Dear Dan, Jessica and Carol,

Thank you for your response.  We are pleased to hear that the letter has not yet been sent . Is the letter going to be removed from the website and members notified of the change and any future changes?

I am unclear what you mean by “Subsequently a federal judge decided against the Executive Order we were commenting on, and the wording of that EO then changed, rendering our original letter moot.”  I am not aware of such change – the EO is still in place (here). What are you referring to?

Furthermore, subsequent to the Executive Order 14168, the HHS has released a guidance (here) to the U.S. government, external partners, and the public to expand on the sex-based definitions. The HHS guidance changed the definition related to “producing gametes” (at conception) to sex “characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing” eggs (ova) or sperm.

We hope we can indeed find common ground,

Best,
Luana

I end by saying that scientific societies need not be “institutionally neutral” when they are dealing with issues that affect the mission of the societies, as the definition of sex surely does. But what’s not okay is for the societies to distort “scientific consensus” in the interest of ideology. I have no idea if the Presidents of these societies really believe what they said (as Dawkins has pointed out, all three Presidents use a binary notion of sex in their own biological work), but something is deeply wrong when you use one notion of sex in your own science and yet deny that notion when you’re telling politicians what scientists “really believe.”

More censorship of science by political correctness: cousin marriage becomes a taboo topic in the UK

December 16, 2024 • 9:30 am

This new Times of London piece by writer (and former table tennis champion) Matthew Syed describes a new form of “taboo science” that, although normally a topic of discourse and treaching in genetics, has become verboten to discuss: cousin marriage. This is because of wokeness. Click on the screenshot below to see the piece (or find it archived here). I’ll quote it after I explain a bit of genetics.

I’m sure you’ve heard that marriage among relatives is not a good thing, and that the closer the relatedness, the worse it can be. The reason is that relatives carry identical gene forms, and the closer you’re related to your mate, the more identical genes you share.  For instance, my sister and I share half our genes, which means that if you single out one of the two gene copies I have at a given DNA site (“locus”), the chance that my sister has that identical copy is 1/2, or 50%.  This is expressed as a “coefficient of relatedness,” which in this case is 0.5. It’s the same for me and either of my parents, or any of my offspring (if I had any). Identical twins, being genetically the same at every locus, have a coefficient of relatedness of one.

Because of the dilution effect of marrying someone unrelated, my coefficient of relatedness to any of my grandparents is 0.25, and you can probably figure out that my coefficient of relatedness to any of my first cousins (say the daughter of my mother’s brother) is 1/8, or 0.125. That’s because I carry half the genes of my mother, a quarter of the genes of my mother’s brother, and thus an eighth of the genes of my mother’s brother’s offspring.

What this means for medical genetics is that because each human carries a certain proportion of deleterious recessive genes (that is, genes that have a very bad effect, but only when an individual carries two copies), there is a chance that such genes might come together in those two copies when relatives marry.  Because nearly all these genes are normally present in only one copy, we don’t get the genetic disease, but if two copies appear in a mating between relatives, that offspring will show the bad trait. (An example of such genes are sickle-cell anemia or Tay-Sachs disease, the former more common in West African blacks, the latter in Ashkenazi Jews. But there are many, many deleterious recessive genes, whose frequencies are kept low by natural selection against the few people unlucky enough to get two copies.)

Since most of us carry some really bad disease-causing genes, but in single copies (the average number is 1-2), if we marry a relative the chances that those genes can appear in two copies, producing a sick or dead offspring, increases. For example, if I carry a gene for Tay-Sachs disease, the chance that my sister would have the gene copy would be 50%, and if that were to be the case, if we mated the chance that the offspring would get both copies of the gene would be 1/4.  Thus for every bad recessive gene a person has (and most of us have one or two) incest with a sibling would give a probability of 12.5% that our offspring would get the genetic disease. This is why incest is prohibited: it produces an inordinately high proportion of offspring with genetic diseases or homozygosity for rare genes that have milder deleterious conditions.

The chances are lower for first-cousin marriages because first cousins share fewer gene copies in general.  Although it’s generally seen as bad to marry a first cousin, if the practice hasn’t been going on in your lineage for a long time, the harmfulness of such marriages isn’t so great. To quote Wikipedia:

Opinions vary widely as to the merits of the practice. Children of first-cousin marriages have a 4-6% risk of autosomal recessive genetic disorders compared to the 3% of the children of totally unrelated parents. A study indicated that between 1800 and 1965 in Iceland, more children and grandchildren were produced from marriages between third or fourth cousins (people with common great-great- or great-great-great-grandparents) than from other degrees of separation. [JAC: Thus not just child mortality can be lowered, but also fertility, perhaps because of early miscarriages.]

. . . . In April 2002, the Journal of Genetic Counseling released a report which estimated the average risk of birth defects in a child born of first cousins at 1.1–2.0 percentage points above the average base risk for non-cousin couples of 3%, or about the same as that of any woman over age 40. In terms of mortality, a 1994 study found a mean excess pre-reproductive mortality rate of 4.4%,  while another study published in 2009 suggests the rate may be closer to 3.5%.  Put differently, a single first-cousin marriage entails a similar increased risk of birth defects and mortality as a woman faces when she gives birth at age 41 rather than at 30.

This is still stuff you need to know if you’re contemplating marrying a cousin, especially if you’re in an ethnic group with a high frequency of certain genetic diseases. That’s why we have genetic counseling. First cousins still need to know that the risk of having a genetically diseased child could be 50-100% greater than for nonrelated couples.  It’s still low, but could affect one’s decision  And if you are, for example, an Ashkenazi Jew, it’s best for both partners to get genetically tested, for if neither carries the Tay-Sachs gene, they can go ahead and reproduce like rabbits. If only one carries the gene, they can still go ahead without worry, though that gene will still be passed on in single form to half their offspring, who will be “carriers.”

Given the low relative risk of having kids with your first cousin, it’s still curious that such marriages are widely prohibited. Again from Wikipedia:

In some jurisdictions, cousin marriage is legally prohibited: for example, first-cousin marriage in China, North Korea, South Korea, the Philippines, for Hindus in some jurisdictions of India, some countries in the Balkans, and 30 out of the 50 U.S. states. It is criminalized in 8 states in the US, the only jurisdictions in the world to do so. The laws of many jurisdictions set out the degree of consanguinity prohibited among sexual relations and marriage parties. Supporters of cousin marriage where it is banned may view the prohibition as discrimination, while opponents may appeal to moral or other arguments.

There’s a reason to prohibit first-cousin marriages in some groups, though, and I’ll explain this below.

This kind of stuff has been taught for decades in genetics classes.  There should be no taboo about talking about why brother-sister or first-cousin matings are frowned upon. But it has recently become taboo to discuss, as you can see from the article above. The reason is that some communities keep mating with their relatives generation after generation, and that considerably increases the chances that two relatives who mate within that community will have a genetically diseased offspring (this “inbreeding” raises the frequency of some genes that cause genetic disease, which is why the Amish and Ashlenazi Jews happen to have high frequencies of different genetic diseases.  Here’s one more paragraph from the Wikipedia article on “cousin marriage”:

After repeated generations of cousin marriage the actual genetic relationship between two people is closer than the most immediate relationship would suggest. In Pakistan, where there has been cousin marriage for generations and the current rate may exceed 50%, one study estimated infant mortality at 12.7 percent for married double first cousins, 7.9 percent for first cousins, 9.2 percent for first cousins once removed/double second cousins, 6.9 percent for second cousins, and 5.1 percent among nonconsanguineous progeny. Among double first cousin progeny, 41.2 percent of prereproductive deaths were associated with the expression of detrimental recessive genes, with equivalent values of 26.0, 14.9, and 8.1 percent for first cousins, first cousins once removed/double second cousins, and second cousins respectively.

The higher the frequency of deleterious recessive genes, the greater the relative risk of first-cousin matings compared to matings between unrelated people, and in the Pakistani community the frequencyu of deleterious recessive genes have been increased by inbreeding (“consanguineous mating”). Sometimes it can be hundreds of times higher!

Thus it becomes even more imperative to discuss the dangers of “consanguineous” matings (matings with relatives) with members of such communities. Sadly, the opposite has occurred. Because one of the communities that do this is in fact Pakistani (I’m not sure if other Muslim national groups do the same), the taboo with dissing people of color has now made it off limits to talk about cousin marriages. I quote from the Times article. Note that Syed’s father was a Pakistani immigrant to the UK.

Let me start by telling you about Dr Patrick Nash, a somewhat shy legal academic who in 2017 came across an intriguing finding. He noticed that much of the “extremism” emanating from Pakistani communities seemed to have a “clan” component. The perpetrators were linked not just through ideology or religion but by family ties stretching through generations. He noticed something else too: these communities were cemented together by cousin marriage, a common practice in Pakistani culture. By marrying within small, tightknit groups, they ensure everything is kept within the baradari, or brotherhood — property, secrets, loyalty — binding them closer together while sequestering them from wider society.

At this point Dr Nash hadn’t come to understand the genetic risks, the patriarchal oppression and the bloc voting, nor the growing evidence that rates of cousin marriage strongly correlate with corruption and poverty, but — like any good scholar — he thought he’d do a bit more digging.

But then something odd happened: several academics invited him to the pub for a “drink and chat”. He thought nothing of it, but it turned out to be an informal tribunal. “It was put to me that I might consider another line of inquiry that would be more ‘culturally sensitive’, less likely to provide ‘ammo for the right’ and less likely to ‘make life more difficult for myself’ as a junior, untenured academic,” he told me. “It was sinister.”

It was not just sinister, but woke, with the wokeness working to silence scientific discourse. And, as Syed discovered, the wokeness spread quickly. I’ve bolded the most arrant example of scientific censorship.

I quickly discovered that researchers wouldn’t return emails or calls. When I got through to one geneticist, he said: “I can’t go there.” It was like hitting a succession of ever-higher brick walls. I then came across evidence that scientists examining the UK Biobank had found that levels of incest (father-daughter, siblings etc) were significantly higher in the British Pakistani community than the wider population. This was a disturbing finding, possibly indicating abuse of a shocking kind. But the paper was never published, disappearing into what I can only describe as an Orwellian memory hole. When I approached the researchers, they were not prepared to talk on the record. One said that he feared he might not be able to bring up his children if he whispered the truth and lost his job as a result. It was like something out of Kafka.

What I hope you are gleaning from all this is how scientific inquiry is being distorted and suppressed out of an almost crippling fear of offending cultural sensitivities; how information vital to the public interest is being censored out of concern that it might be prejudicial to the “customs” of immigrant communities. It is a phenomenon that directly parallels the Rotherham scandal, in which young girls suffering horrific abuse at the hands of mainly Pakistani gangs were betrayed by the police and social services, which refused to investigate for fear of appearing racist.

Finally, there’s this:

But the other striking aspect of the debate was the sinister influence of scientific malpractice. MPs on all sides kept referring to the genetic risks of cousin marriage as “double” those of relationships between unrelated couples. This “fact” is endemic throughout the media, from the BBC to The Telegraph, and for good reason: journalists trust what scientists tell them. But the stat isn’t true — indeed, it’s absurd. When inbreeding persists through generations (when cousins get married who are themselves the children of cousins), the risks are far higher, which is why British Pakistanis account for 3.4 per cent of births nationwide but 30 per cent of recessive gene disorders, consanguineous relationships are the cause of one in five child deaths in Redbridge and the NHS hires staff specifically to deal with these afflictions.

And that, as Syed says, raises the chances of genetic defects in offspring of Pakistani-Pakistani matings far above those of matings of two people from non-Pakistani communities who aren’t part of a group that has mated consanguineously for generations.

What we see here is one more instance of scientific truth (like the sex binary) being suppressed because it supposedly demonizes a minority group.  But no good can come of such taboos. For one thing, the data don’t show that Pakistani people are morally worse than other people; they simply have a cultural custom that results in more child mortality.  Isn’t that worth spreading to both them and to genetic counselors? For another thing, it takes the whole topic of consanguineous matings off the table for discussion, which is both socially and scientifically harmful.  This kind of censorship is not new to me, as there are lots of examples, but Syed just grasped it:

I realised something else too. I was a victim of racism growing up, ostracised for long periods at school for the colour of my skin, which is why I’ve spent my life fighting the bigotry of the hard right. But I now believe the soft bigotry of the left is more insidious. After all, you can see and challenge a thug using the P-word, but how to combat the subtler bias that has seeped into our institutions? Ponder the scientists who, with the terrible certainty of their own virtue, played down the risks of cousin marriage, thereby denying the very community they presume to help crucial information; the researchers who concealed information on incest to “protect” minorities, thereby condemning the most vulnerable to sickening abuse.

The way to combat the bias is to tell the scientific truth and then add that the scientific truth doesn’t carry any moral or ideological implications. The taboo we see comes from bigots: in this case, the bigots of the left who don’t think that people, including Pakistanis, can handle the truth.

In this case there are lives that can be saved by telling the truth, but the “soft bigotry” of the left prevents that. It is, in effect, killing babies.

********

A few relevant tweets from Luana Maroja. Note that the first one uses a picture of a family that is NOT Pakistani!

This must be the paper that wasn’t allowed to be published (see above). The tweet has apparently been deleted.

Bonkers paper of the year

December 3, 2024 • 11:00 am

This paper in the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics (click title below to read, or find the pdf here) is a strong contender for Bonkers Paper of the Year. The author, Ewelina Jarosz, is a Polish professor from Kraków—not a scientist, but an assistant professor of Media and Cultural Studies (of course).

Ewelina Jarosz

  • University of the National Education Commission, Krakow; Department of Media and Cultural Reseach, Kraków, małopolskie, Poland

Below is the abstract, which promotes “hydrosexuality” and denigrates “settler science”. If you had a shot of tequila for every buzzword in this abstract, you’d be stinking drunk at the end:

The article aims to transform narratives surrounding Utah’s Great Salt Lake, often referred to as “America’s Dead Sea,” by reimagining how brine shrimp (Artemia franciscana) are perceived in science, culture, and art. It introduces the concept of hydrosexuality to bridge these realms, thereby enriching feminist blue posthumanities and feminist biology through art-based practices and queer advocacy. By navigating the environmental narrative of the GSL, the hydrosexual perspective challenges settler science by exploring the connections between the reproductive system of brine shrimp and the economy, ecology and culture. The article provides a framework for integrative cultural analysis that bolsters arguments about the multilayered exploitation of the lake and amplifies voices that recognize the brine shrimp as vital to the survival of multiple species and to the GSL as a unique ecosystem. Furthermore, this cultural analysis draws inspiration from low trophic theory and Queer Death Studies. This multifaceted approach is exemplified by two case studies in the arts, which gradually alter white humans’ perceptions and understandings of the brine shrimp, helping to reimagine the GSL in the context of rapid climate change.

If you want an analysis of what the paper actually says, read and give credit to Colin Wright, who read it and analyzed it on his site Reality’s Last Stand (click below to read):

Colin’s introduction (I can’t believe he read the entire paper, apparently without gastric distress, but he did):

In the annals of academic absurdity, there are moments that make even seasoned critics pause in awe. “Loving the Brine Shrimp: Exploring Queer Feminist Blue Posthumanities to Reimagine the ‘America’s Dead Sea’” is one such moment. This is not a parody—though it reads like one—but a “serious” paper, or so the author insists. In what is best described as a surrealist love letter to brine shrimp, the author, Ewelina Jarosz (she/they), wades through a soup of critical theory, environmental activism, and performance art, asking the reader to reconsider their relationship with brine shrimp—not as mere crustaceans but as symbols of queer resilience, ecological ethics, and, somehow, hydrosexual love.

This paper is part of a growing tradition of postmodern scholarship that prioritizes ideological signaling over intellectual rigor. Following in the footsteps of infamous works like the 2016 “Feminist Glaciology” paper—which posited that glaciers are gendered—“Loving the Brine Shrimp” sets a new standard for academic ridiculousness. Its culmination in a cyber wedding to augmented reality brine shrimp makes feminist glaciers seem like a grounded scientific pursuit by comparison. But before we arrive at the nuptial climax, let’s examine how this spectacle unfolds.

There was performance art involved: a marriage of two Polish academics to brine shrimp at the Great Salt Lake of Utah:

The paper reached peak woke in a section titled “Loving the Brine Shrimp,” which recounts a performance art piece called Cyber Wedding to the Brine Shrimp. This event, staged on the receding shores of the Great Salt Lake, involved artists, scientists, and augmented reality brine shrimp. Participants made vows to the crustaceans, marched in a procession, and capped it off with a communal bath in the lake. The author describes this as “making love to the lake,” a phrase that may haunt frequent swimmers of the Great Salt Lake for the rest of their lives.

Here’s a photo and article found by Malgorzata at the right-wing website David Horowitz’s The Front Page. Just read it for the lolz:

On September 14, 2021, two Polish female professors headed to the Great Salt Lake in Utah to marry some brine shrimp in an ecosexual wedding.

Presided over by Bonnie Baxter PhD, a biology professor at Westminster University in nearby Salt Lake City, the two Polish professor brides in clinging wedding dresses approached holding hands and together with the rest of the wedding party which included a sexologist and Elizabeth Stephens, the chair of UC Santa Cruz’s Art Department, who helped create the ‘Ecosexual’ movement, went into the lake to marry the shrimp through an exchange of psychic vows.

The 12-minute video of the wedding vows and the postnuptial swim in the lake, “Cyber Wedding to the Brine Shrimp”, can (and must) be seen at Colin’s website.  

One thing is clear: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics lacks even a scintilla of academic rigor. In fact, when the journal publishes a paper, replete with buzzwords, that’s indistinguishable from the “hoax papers” of Alan Sokal or of Boghossian, Pluckrose, and Lindsay, you know that something has gone badly wrong with scholarship. Is there any contribution to knowledge here? I can’t detect any.

Yes, it’s all hilarious, but only in the sense that academics become lunatics in their effort to promulgate social justice, or, in this case, “environmental justice.” As Colin says at the end of his herculean reading of the paper:

In an era where intellectual rigor often takes a backseat to performative absurdity, it’s important to keep a sense of humor about the bizarre trajectory of academic publishing. After all, what else can we do when purportedly serious scholars convene weddings for brine shrimp or ascribe nonbinary identities to water?

Alas, these are the times we live in.

h/t: Ann