Professor warns of eroding scientific integrity as ‘diversity and inclusion’ committees rule

Scientific research is losing its integrity worldwide due to “activist interference,” warns a professor whose project proposal was rejected for using the term “male.”

“I submitted a proposal for ethical review… which stated that the aim of the research was ‘to find the views of athletes and volunteers on the question of when males should be allowed to compete in the female category,’” John Armstrong, a senior lecturer of mathematics at Kings College London, told Fox News. “The ethics committee [at King’s College] rejected the proposal, on the grounds that using the terms ‘male’ and ‘female’ in this sentence constituted ‘misgendering.'”

Armstrong told Fox that activist interference in research, such as found in diversity and inclusion departments, as is common at U.S. universities, is beginning to erode the integrity of scientific studies.

“Activist interference in what can be researched erodes the integrity of science… Political policing of research introduces a new ethical-review bias. If the ethics team at my university limits what questions can be asked about gender-identity, this introduces a bias into all the work conducted on gender at the university,” said Armstrong. 

Last month, the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine (SEBGM) warned about the myth of reliable gender research which is already demonstrating negative effects in public policy and healthcare in the U.S. because of transgender political activism.

SEBGM cited the “low quality of the research” and the “runaway diffusion” effect that such research has had on decision-makers, who are writing policies based on flawed evidence.

It’s particularly problematic in one of the most controversial areas of research, pediatric gender, said SEBGM. 

“As a result, a false narrative has taken root,” SEBGM authors write in an open-access study on pediatric gender care. “It is that ‘gender-affirming medical and surgical interventions for youth are as benign as aspirin, as well-studied as penicillin and statins, and as essential to survival as insulin for childhood diabetes.” 

Standard, vigorous scientific debate has been stifled with politically-charged narratives “crafted by clinician-advocates,” who accuse those who disagree with their conclusions of “ignorance, religious zeal, and transphobia,” said the study.

“The key problem in pediatric gender medicine is not the lack of research rigor in the past—it is the field’s present-day denial of the profound problems in the existing research, and an unwillingness to engage in high quality research requisite in evidence-based medicine,” concluded the authors, echoing the claims of Armstrong.

Armstrong contends that this isn’t the first time that a so-called ethics committee has scuttled good scientific data over the political bias of transgender activists.

For its part, King’s College answered the charges by Armstrong with a noncommittal statement:

“While we can’t comment on individual research applications, we are strongly committed to ensuring that the research carried out by our staff and students is consistently of the highest quality and to the most rigorous standards.”