Maya Forstater has challenged Adam Rutherford and Ben Goldacre to set Bragg straight about Cass and systematic reviews

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There's always a tweet...

Link to tweet with screenshot

I work with academics like this and they are not, and never have been, about the data,p. They are all about being Right, and ideally taking down the perceived establishment du jour. There was a time when their schtick coincided with socially acceptable viewpoints and genuinely good things (uncovering dodgy pharma practice, for example), but that was a success because their work was entirely fitting with the prevailing liberal world view, and they were therefore the Good Guys.

People like this are the absolute poster children for why many liberal viewpoints are no different from those espoused by GB news and the like, despite their smug sense of superiority and should be rigorously scrutinised. Goldacre and Rutherford are the modern union leaders, braying about equality for all (except women who are taking jobs from Hard Working Men, and should get back to making the tea).

Oxford should be embarrassed and ashamed to have Goldacre as a Professor of Evidence Based Medicine.

"It must be galling for Rutherford, as the foremost communicator for science and a critic of bad research and quackery, to have – somehow – missed the big medical/scientific scandal story of the age."

Glorious shade thrown by the Speccie today 😀

Archaeology is tricky for the TWAW crew because, however supposedly 'crossgendered' the grave goods may be, skeletal sex is exposed in all its glory.

There have been some rather creaky segments in "Digging for Britain" of late.

I am prepared to forgive women for not wanting to put themselves and their families in the firing line and lose their entire career, but Alice Roberts was worse than that, she enthusiastically joined in.

I don't know much about Rutherford, but I remember Goldacre from his Guardian column heyday. It's shitty and cowardly from the lot of them! Alice Roberts and Hannah Fry too, if the cap fits. When you think what some women have risked to put themselves in the firing line, who don't have the media standing of R & G...

I'd love it if you were right and I was wrong... not holding my breath.

India Knight is married to a convicted paedophile.

Nothing. Just that some years ago Lauren Laverne was part of a trio of celebs (Sali Hughes and India Knight were the other two) who spent a few months viciously bullying and bitching about Dawn O'Porter on Twitter

This was in the relatively early days of Twitter so a good decade ago and they were all grown women at the time, really made me think twice about the characters of all three of them

@popebishop that doesn't surprise me as many years ago I went to (as it turned out one of their last) Kenickie gigs and Johnny X was being a right prat, insulting the audience etc etc

Laverne's brother, also formerly of Kenickie, is rabidly pro-TWAW.

Billy Bragg is a busker who got lucky

I think the true cowardice is not backing away saying "that's a toxic area and I'm going to focus on my areas of expertise", and then doing that and sticking to it, but to pretend to be above it all but snipe from the sideline in favour of one side from time to time in order to get clout points.

I don’t think the thinking goes any further than ‘do I care about this enough to engage on Twitter publicly, taking into account the potential impact on my professional and personal life? No’

"Big gender" isn't in the same class as "big pharma" when it comes to selling tabloids to tabloid readers.

What did Dawn O'Porter do/say? Apologies if I missed part of the thread

This is an important point, and one on which Douglas Murray has written fluently.

The fact is that we really don't know much about the science of sexuality: whether people are born gay, become gay, and why sexuality changes over time (as it often does).

The field of research into these topics lost funding and died in the 1980s as the gay rights movement took up steam. I think it's very understandable as to why this happened although I do think it's a shame to have lost out on scientific research into an important area of human behaviour.

On Rutherford - it must be really strange to have a career as a scientist and yet also try to support a belief in transness which is basically a mirage, a vision in which humans have 'souls'/'gender identities' which are somehow different from themselves ie their bodies. It must cause him a lot of cognitive dissonance. It'd make me uncomfortable too and in a way I'm not surprised that he's trying to take refuge in pretend ignorance. In his position I might do the same (although I hope I would have the courage to admit I was wrong - but then, if my entire career and reputation depended on it, I too might take the cowardly way out).

@Grumblevision as a former teenaged Kenickie fan, I'm so sad to see what Lauren Laverne has become. hanging out with Sali Hughes and India Knight, partaking in the online bullying of Dawn O'Porter, and deplatforming people who express reasonable GC views, is not a great look.

Hmm. I know a few fans of Goldacre and Rutherford..... They're a range of very sensible, logical people of varying politics but definitely not gender idealogues! If Rutherford has genuinely fallen for this shit, his book about "Gender" in sport is going to be a bit embarrassing and seem extremely dated.

Is it possible he's using "gender" in the very old fashioned synonym for "sex" way? And I suppose his book could be completely scientifically accurate without mentioning trans issues at all (which, being truth based, would still support gender critical arguments and thus be inadvertently transphobic - oops!!). Lots of people choose to work like this and whilst it seems cowardly I can fully understand why.

In fairness, Goldacre did a lot to raise public awareness of how pharma companies manipulate medicine, but that was 15 years ago.

These men get elevated into Experts by the media, fêted, never challenged, and it goes to their heads. I can't think of a single woman scientist who is given uncritical admiration, or even expert status, in the same way.

bloody hell… GENDER in sport. I wonder what he’ll actually say then?

i’m also sure Ben Goldacre was always incredibly and yes performatively sanctimonious anyway.

I wonder if Rutherford’s employer, UCL, are aware that he doesn’t know how systematic reviews work. It seems like a major gap in knowledge for a senior academic scientist.

It would be interesting to see how the various tinfoil grifters react to Cass. Many TRAs would be believers in WEF , chemtrails and whatnot theories . But I'm not sure how of a 'read across' there is.