BMJ rejecting papers based on SM accounts and ideology

[RethinkingLife]

FOIs revealed internal staff emails.

The British Medical Journal has been accused of 'abandoning science' after it rejected research from top academics over their views on the trans debate.
One researcher had his paper rejected because he was 'opinionated' and had tweeted in support of author JK 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 UK – 262,000 – is unreliable because of a confusingly-worded census question.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13458211/british-medical-journal-abandoning-science-transgender.html?

It’s like McCarthyism all over again!

But I must admit, I work in a very captured sector and this is why I only work for the GC cause in underground ways.

This ongoing level of capture is something I could never have imagined. I feel like I’m living in some kind of dystopian novel.

We are living in a dystopia, @PriOn1.

I'm currently reading 'Mania' by Lionel Shriver. It's all very familiar.

FFS. This is terrifying.

Yet a key senior editor, Kamran Abbasi, wrote that excellent piece about Hilary Cass.

Does he have no idea of what his staff are doing?

Have the staff taken it upon themselves to override the opinions of the reviewers to do this?

I'm a reviewer for them. What's the point if they're going to ignore us and then fib to us about why something isn't going to be published?

I feel like I’m living in the opening chapters of 1984

@RethinkingLife ditto.

I think people with a medical background who are my age or older tend to be much more cautious with social media than many academics in different disciplines. I remember reading the first version of the GMC guidelines and since then my public facing social media has been quite spectacularly bland. My impression is that younger medics are more candid, and a regulatory lawyer I know has said a few times recently that there is a big upswing in disciplinary proceedings related to social media posts - many of which are ultimately found to be vexatious and are dismissed, but as we know from elsewhere the process is quite some punishment. These are not posts about sex/gender necessarily - she was just making the point that (1) yes, there is a trend for medics to be more outspoken on social media and the moment, and (2) this is not without consequences. So it may be that this trend towards candour may shift back.

I mention this because plenty of academics who think sex is important and of consequence for policy and law have published in BMJ. Armstrong and Biggs have different disciplinary backgrounds, and have far more candid social media accounts than the people I know personally who have similar views and publish in these journals. And, to be clear, I am not excusing the BMJ here: I think Armstrong and Biggs have done great public service by exposing this practice, which will disproportionately affect the work of those academics in medicine-adjacent fields who do not think about the GMC when they post on social media. Knowing that the BMJ - and presumably other medical journals - are doing this means it’s even less likely that medically qualified individuals with concerns about issues related to sex and gender will speak openly about them. Or even raise them in a whistleblower capacity. This of course has wider implications - and a couple of days ago I posted a link to John Armstrong’s Twitter thread where he talks about this to the thread about medical experts not wanting to give expert opinions to courts on issues related to sex and gender. This is why!

I know exactly what you mean.

They’ve conflated two journals - it’s BMJ Open that’s doing this, not The BMJ proper. Hence the seeming dissonance of Abbasi (BMJ) supporting Cass.

Agreed, AnotherAngryAcademic.

Gurwinder Bhogal: When intelligent people affiliate themselves to ideology, their intellect ceases to guard against wishful thinking, and instead begins to fortify it, causing them to inadvertently mastermind their own delusions, and to very cleverly become stupid.

However, as so often, it's the internal staff who seem to be disproportionately powerful.

I'm now reflecting on whether the emails reviewers receive about whether something is going on to be published are truthful. I sometimes take a look at other reviewers' reviews but now wonder if I should be doing this more often.

That or start refusing to review until the BMJ clarifies matters and comments on this.

Paywalled, but also reported here:

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/gender-critical-scholars-claim-discrimination-over-bmj-rejections

BMJ is a family of journals with overlaps.

Abbasi has a role with other journals in his role as editorial director. I expect him to have oversight of what the editors are doing across the family. You will already know this but sometimes the editors ask us to review a paper that is subsequently judged as not the right fit for the flagship BMJ journal. However, it is acceptable to pass along to another journal in the family and they ask us if we're happy for our review to be used (it's an open review process) so that the publication timeline can be streamlined there.

https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o696

It's another example of the war on women, a concerted, worldwide effort to put women back in a box and restrict our lives.

And alongside the trans thing we have governments, UN and other enormous NGOs, plus 'left-wing' activists, supporting Islamist regimes, who as we all know, oppress women terribly. It feels so sinister at this point.

I've just read it: https://archive.is/W8dB5

It is truly shocking.

In Dr Armstrong’s case, a paper co-authored with UCL sociology professor Alice Sullivan was submitted in July 2022 and sent out for review that month. Despite the journal stating that its median time to review is 105 days, it took nearly nine months to make a call on the paper, which was rejected in May 2023 – despite two reviewers recommending its acceptance and another offering only a “few minor comments” on a “well-presented study”.
After an appeal to reconsider was successful and minor revisions responding to criticisms were submitted, the paper was again rejected with no option to appeal in September 2023, despite further endorsement by reviewers.
The paper – which challenged a 2020 BMJ Open paper by US- and Hong Kong-based researchers that asserted institutions with Athena Swan accreditation had more diverse leadership teams – was turned down, the journal said, because of “editorialising throughout the manuscript [which] was not appropriate for a research article” and because “conclusions are not supported by the data”.
However, emails obtained by Dr Armstrong through a subject access request reveal that a member of editorial staff had told a colleague that the “author’s social media account also coloured our impression of the manuscript as the author is very outspoken on issues relating to EDI”, claiming that Dr Armstrong had a “broader agenda, rather than just questioning the statistical approach taken on the original article”.

…
A BMJ spokesperson said the journal would “not comment publicly on individual editorial decisions, but den[ies] absolutely any suggestion that BMJ would reject a paper for political or ideological reasons”.
They added that the BMJ “has extensive editorial due diligence procedures which it applies to all papers that are submitted for publication. External reviewers advise on a range of factors, including importance, originality, and scientific quality; and editors consider those comments before making a final decision on a paper.”

I'm now reflecting on whether the emails reviewers receive about whether something is going on to be published are truthful. I sometimes take a look at other reviewers' reviews but now wonder if I should be doing this more often.

That or start refusing to review until the BMJ clarifies matters and comments on this.

I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that it’s been the combination of peer reviewers and editors that have been stalling publication of research in any way critical of gender ideology. (Possibly an article about the UCL neurologist who was unable to publish her work suggesting that puberty blockers affect IQ?) I get very angry about lots of things to do with peer review (that it is unpaid, and that it has to be done in that magic invisible “free” time etc) - but withholding peer review just on ideological grounds seems problematic. That said, I agree with your stance here, because this is about an editorial team abusing the peer review process - and they need to clarify what has happened. Aside from anything else, reviewers have given their time to consider an article and have recommended publication. Refusing to publish for editorial reasons once peer review is complete is disrespectful to the reviewers as well as the authors, and BMJ should not be surprised if reviewers start to decline requests as a result.

This is an appalling betrayal. I always trusted the BMJ, and its former editor Richard Smith used to campaign for higher standards of honesty and integrity in research. What a disappointment it is now.

Peer review and journals building a credible evidence base are completely broken.
Conflicts of interest often not declared.
Pressure to publish favouring quantity over quality.
More writers than readers.
Poor peer review.
AI written pieces being published apparently unread by reviewers or editors in some journals with ridiculous errors.
And even highly reputed journals like the BMJ being unduly influenced by the politics du jour.

Interestingly, the editor of BMJ Open doesn’t have a social media presence - at least, nothing under his own name. He might be out there with an anime picture & a pseudonym; but unusually, he’s not on TwiX - so he gets mentioned in photos etc by name & as the Editor of BMJ Open.

I knew peer review in the arts & humanities was an absolute nightmare - lots of blatant “reference my irrelevant work”; editors seeing nothing wrong in saying you should make edits that satisfy all of the directly contradictory reviewer feedback (who knew the 3 Bears were peer reviewers?!); the centring of ideology is off the scale; & of course that’s once you’ve got past nepotism central. I suppose I’d hoped science journals wouldn’t be so ideologically driven - but that was a wee bit silly given the mess that’s the medical field itself 🫤