Richard Dawkin's new book warns against denial of scientific truth by ‘astonishingly vicious’ trans activists and other threats on science

[IwantToRetire]

In The War on Science, Dawkins joins several scientists and philosophers contending that academic freedom and truth in universities was being stifled by diversity, equity and inclusion policies that promoted falsehoods under the banner of social justice.

“I draw the line at the belligerent slogan ‘trans women are women’ because it is scientifically false,” he said. “When taken literally, it can infringe the rights of other people, especially women.

“It logically entails the right to enter women’s sporting events, women’s changing rooms, women’s prisons and so on.

“So powerful has this postmodern counter-factualism become, that newspapers refer to ‘her penis’ as a matter of unremarked routine.”

Full article at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/25/richard-dawkins-trans-women-slogan-scientifically-false/ and at https://archive.is/zAFxS

The Wooist Society.

WooManists?

🤣🤣🤣

The only thing one has to say is how many transmen are clamouring to get into male sports or male prisons and changing rooms. I think one will find it is zero.

I've decided that I like Dawkins (I'm sure he'll be relieved). I like the way he writes, and I am jealous of his literate fluency. I think that "The blind watchmaker" and "climbing mount improbable" are first rate books that present their subject mattter clearly, convincingly and persuasively. I think he makes mistakes in "The God Delusion", mainly about "Non Overlapping Magistera". I agree more with Gould. I think he has done stupid things (anyone remember the embarrassing "Brights" idea that he came up with with Daniel Dennett?), but on the whole he is a good thing. I've almost finished the "War on Science", and while there is a sense of an old man ranting in his part of it, he still makes very good points.

Being a biologist and an expert in his field, Dawkins almost certainly knows that bi/multi modal distinctions are primarily about not sex-based but gender-based behaviours. Therefore when discussing sex, as opposed to gender, he doesn't mention them.

He doesn't mention tone deafness either, because it isn't relevant.

When talking about sex in the human mammal he also doesn't mention banana slugs, frogs, copperhead snakes, bearded dragons, green sea turtles, humphead wrasse, black sea bass, hawkfish or even clown fish, on the grounds that they are not the same species as the human mammal and are also not relevant.

(I am aware that Howseitgoin has filled the thread with gobbledegook and I am late to the ball, but I am tired and going to bed so I shall post this reply to something on about page 4 before I start to snore. Garbage, like lettuce, is very soporific.)

"Being a biologist and an expert in his field, Dawkins almost certainly knows that bi/multi modal distinctions are primarily about not sex-based but gender-based behaviours. Therefore when discussing sex, as opposed to gender, he doesn't mention them."

Nice try but that is not what he is doing. He strawmans/pretends (as other bad faith science grifters like Colin Wright do) that a third sex is being alleged by insisting sex is binary when he knows that's not the argument. The point is to act as if there's a scientific absurdity being alleged. He knows full well that mentioning multi/bi modality delegitimises the absurdity. If he were at all acting in good faith he would acknowledge the conflation regardless of it being a 'gendered' outcome.

Let's not forget that bi/multi modality isn't just about gender & not sex but legitimises the existing of gender non conforming people. And when you want 'sell' the existence of these people as a delusional fiction, best conveniently leave out the biological process that creates them.

No one is suggesting those who believe that normative outcomes are the most practical way forward in organising society are not justified to those beliefs. What they aren’t justified to is lying by omission about the process to justify those beliefs.

I don't really agree that brights was an embarrassing idea. It was basically an attempt to make explicit how most liberals think that society should be run: i.e. by highly accomplished administrators with deep knowledge and integrity within a transparent democratic framework. That the term 'brights' didn't catch on is basically the failure of creating a movement that captures the zeitgeist -- a failure in marketing. There's nothing particularly cringe-worthy about that.

The brights idea is defective, but not for an embarrassing reason, but for a profound (and eternal) one: who watches the watchman? It aims to create a system rooted in science, which is after all the what the social sciences are, but the social sciences are especially susceptible to ideological capture under pseudoscience claiming to be science -- which is more or less the situation we find ourselves in today.

Your ChatGPT is glitching. Wanna reboot and try again?

First, thank you for answering. It makes posting worthwhile!

My problem with it lies in the suggestion in the name that atheists are more intelligent than theists. It sounds snotty and arrogrant. IIRC (this was a long time ago) Dawkins and Dennett introduced the term to try and spread a positive meme (in the Dawkins sense, not as a picture on Twitter) about atheistic natural science people. He drew an explicit comparison to the way "gay" was more positive than "homosexual", and hoped "bright" would do the same thing for his position. It was embarrassing, to my memory, because it could only be seen as "We are bright and therefore you who disagree with us are dim". People just don't see intellectuals as an oppressed minority who need a positive word to describe them.

On your second point, about watchmen, bang on! I completely agree. But I'm not sure that Dawkins meant that. He's definitely an "Open society" kind of guy, and I don't think he has ever been in favour of philosopher kings however liberal they are.

My problem with it lies in the suggestion in the name that atheists are more intelligent than theists.

That's fair and might very well be why it failed and if so rises to the level of 'embarrassing'. But he was was responding to the fact that in his opinion the elites running the country - not just the politicians, but including them too - were a bit dim, and it went well beyond atheism; there was a disdain among the chattering classes of rational argument and scientific method.

For sure Dawkins emphasized democratic principles; I wouldn't suggest that he didn't. But running a modern state is highly complex and individual decisions can't be made democratically; the public can't possibly inform itself on all of them or arrive at coherent compromises when opinions differ - instead you must elect the best (so the thinking goes) who will in turn appoint the best to solve hard societal problems and shield them, by common consensus, from the day to day ups and down of popular opinion.

That is is the state that both Tories and Labour have tried to build. But the problem is that you have a myriad of special purpose administrative bodies, highly specialized, with exclusive knowledge and expertise, that sit in an intermediate state between government and the private sector, quangos if you will, that have been ideologically captured and exploit their insulation from popular opinion to push a decidedly ideological agenda. They were put in place through the democratic process, and the fact that they were non-partisan, knowledge based positions was supposed to usher in the age of the brights, but there was still no one to keep them accountable, science wasn't enough.

I think that's a good point @GallantKumquat , and I agree with a lot of what you say. but I just don't see any reason to think that this is what Dawkins had in mind when coming up with the "Brights".