Academic: ‘Erasing biological sex from research undermines academia’

A prominent academic has urged his colleagues to stand against the “quiet disappearance” of biological sex in research data collection.

Sir Anthony Finkelstein, who is President of City St George’s, University of London, warned that replacing the default category of biological sex with gender identity causes “whole domains of policy analysis” to become “weaker and less reliable”.

The academic, who was previously a Government advisor on national security, made the comments during a discussion about Professor Alice Sullivan’s recommendations on accurate data collection of sex and gender identity.

‘Long-term danger’

Sir Anthony stated: “In recent years, there’s been growing unease about recording sex as a basic variable, and pressure — sometimes explicit and sometimes ambient — to replace it with or collapse it into gender identity.”

The academic noted that although biological sex has become “politically uncomfortable”, there is “a long-term danger of governing the degraded data and discovering too late that we are not describing the world we inhabit”.

He emphasised that “sex correlates strongly with capital, health, mortality, fertility, violence, incarceration, employment, caring responsibilities”.

Sir Anthony noted that gender identity “may be an important subject study”, but “not as a substitute for a foundational demographic category”.

Bullying

Last year, university staff and students across the UK reported suffering “extreme personal consequences” for upholding the reality of biological sex.

A report on ‘Barriers to research on sex and gender’, led by Professor Sullivan, analysed 130 responses to a call for evidence by University College London.

Overall, 58 per cent reported “self-censorship and chilling effects”, followed by “bullying, harassment and ostracism” at 42 per cent, and “barriers to publication” at 39 per cent.