"Put before the world what you wish them to see, and they’ll never know any different"

Ross Tucker talks about when science is a platform for gaslighting, censorship, and ideological abuse

Would you ever in a million years imagine that the scientific paper of 26 of the world's preeminent sport scientists would be rejected out of hand by a scientific journal because the paper used “transwoman” (one word) as opposed to “trans woman” (two words), indicating, as the associate editor claimed, that the authors were transphobic?

Often the story behind the story is the story. This is one of those instances.

On March 21, 2024 a group of 26 highly credentialed sports physiologists, exercise scientists, sports philosophers and attorneys, evolutionary biologists, and geneticists wrote a rebuttal to the International Olympic Committee’s 2021 framework for inclusion of trans-identified males in the female category. The authors showed that the IOC’s document, which was adopted by nearly all sports, worldwide, at levels from NCAA to club to professional and elite, was deeply flawed and is unfair, and in some cases, unsafe, to women. Sport scientist Ross Tucker, one of the authors of the IOC rebuttal, summarizes their rebuttal at that link above, and I encourage you to read it.

But even more disturbing than the IOC’s politically skewed guidelines is the apparent capture of the scientific community by gender identity ideologues, and censorship of opposing views. There have always been differing scientific views, and criticism of ideas. This is different. See below, an associate editor of the British Journal of Sports Medicine’s “justification” for rejection of this scientific paper.

Ross Tucker responded to emailed questions from his home in South Africa. I switched the final Q&As to the beginning—cut to the chase, as it were—with Tucker’s usual thorough explanations and insider anecdotes that led up to these conclusions following.

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The Female Category: Recently, Andy Harvey, posting on Play the Game, started by saying there's no robust data about male advantage in sport. CNN, the New York Times, NPR, the BBC and many other mainstream outlets spout this out and out lie. There’s plenty of robust research. Why is that information not getting to The Public?  Is it getting hung up at the science journal step? 

Ross Tucker: I think the media are influenced by society and then they decide what will sell and have value.  The “personality” of the media comes from the personality of the people who make decisions behind it.  So if those people have a bias or inclination, then the media goes that way too.  They choose their position on the issues.  Not unique to this issue, obviously. Look at the USA, and how very clearly you have blue and red supporting media outlets.

I also think a lot of people are now personally affected by this stuff.  Remember that thing Helen Joyce once said, where she pointed out that there are now so many people who are personally affected by gender ideology that they cannot change their minds, because they have family who are trans, or close friends?  I think that drives some of it too.

So the media control the narrative by deciding who to put on camera, and who not to.

The scientific journals control it by deciding who to publish, and who to reject.  This is arguably more dangerous, because it moulds the general understanding of what truth is. Yes, a lot of people watch CNN and think it is the source of truth too.  But most realise it’s just opinion.  The scientific journals are supposed to achieve a higher standard.  And don’t let’s pretend the scientific papers on this issue are not opinionated.  There is no such thing as a perfectly black and white, factual, scientific narrative paper, like we have written, like [Joanna] Harper has, like the IOC have.  Scientific journals are also informed and “steered” by the interpretation of the research. And that’s fine. The point is that the journals should be publishing both sets of these interpretations, so that the arguments and the merits of those reasoned explanations can be evaluated.  But when the science journals decide that some things should not be published for consumption, and others should, they control the narrative by making it appear that there is one truth.

The Female Category: Is knowledge production ideologically captured?

Ross Tucker: I think the science journal issues are a symptom of the same ‘disease’ as the article on the website [Andy Harvey’s], the coverage by the news etc.  I’m sure there are theories for how this kind of thinking begins or emerges from our academic institutions, but I don’t know if it’s even worth trying to untangle the cause from the effect on this stuff. The way I see it, the academic institutions, which includes the scientific journals, are just as vulnerable to the social shifts and pressures as the sporting bodies, the music industry, the movie industry, news outlets, schools, etc.

So what happens is, borne of some ‘kindness’ that wants to accept the whole world as they are, a few people start to tolerate unfairness (to borrow from Play the Game’s language) in one area, then another, then another. Maybe they don’t realise it is unfair at the time, or maybe they are prepared to accept this unfairness to indulge the desires or wants of a person or a group.  But then it grows and expands, because people take space and they take opportunities.  What’s the harm?  It’s not hurting anyone.  But then it does start to affect other people, and the concession of rights begins to impinge on other people’s rights.

One example where this happens in a good way is when we start changing our built environment to accommodate people in wheelchairs or with mobility issues.  Build ramps. It’s good, it’s what a reasonable society should be doing.  But this is an example of where it doesn’t affect any other group negatively.  Yes, there’s a cost, and so I suppose someone, somewhere has to accommodate and face a ‘cost’ to do this, but it’s accepted as the right thing to do, because, well, it is.  But, and I’m reliably informed of this, it’s not a legal obligation for existing infrastructure to be changed because of prohibitive costs in some cases.  And that’s fine—the point is that we can and should accommodate all people as far as possible.

But at some point, that becomes “too far”, and it does that when it begins to ‘harm’ other groups.  Concessions to one compromise others.  Sport is just the most obvious place where this happens, because it’s so publicly, visibly unfair when Lia Thomas wins NCAA titles, or Ivy/McKinnon wins cycling championships and titles, or when any one of dozens of those cyclists in the USA take women’s awards.  I read about a soccer team with six trans identified males on it beating a women’s team 10-0 the other day.

But this ‘creep’, slow at first, and then all at once, affects journals too, because journals are run by humans who maybe feel some obligation that they, too, should reflect society.  One editor of a very prominent journal told me, and I’m literally paraphrasing, is that, “As a doctor, I just feel so much deep sympathy for these people who are trapped in the wrong bodies”.  Now, is that an editor who is going to approach the review of a submission on trans women or girls in sport?  

Whatever it is that has affected society, where they’ve lost sight of the existence of other groups who have rights, this has affected the scientific journals too.  They have been influenced by humans, who are themselves influenced by other humans, and they have a disproportionate effect because they do, to some degree, influence what is perceived to be accepted knowledge and “conventional wisdom”.  So when Ada Cheung or Madeline Pape get something published that makes claims about testosterone and male biology being some kind of social construct, then that lie is leapt upon by people who want science to be their weapon.  At the same time, they are accusing the “other side” of weaponizing bad science, so the whole thing very much becomes a stand off, right?

And the British Journal of Sports Medicine (BJSM) situation is so bad because this is a stand-off where the narrative can be controlled by one side because they can reject the arguments of the other side without ever allowing them to see the light of day.  What an effective way to control the narrative—simply deny the other viewpoint and stop it from ever being read by people who may be persuaded by the substance of the argument.

If I got a review from BJSM that pointed out very specific arguments that were not well constructed, that offered constructive input on articles we’d misrepresented or omitted entirely, that suggested we include (which is to say ADD) certain views around the social elements of categories and participation in sport, then I would view that as a set of legitimate arguments, and would gladly entertain them.  Doesn’t mean I would agree—someone who says “social inclusion should trump fairness and safety because sport is a part of society that needs to reflect society” is a slippery argument that is basically just a repositioning of discrimination against females for the sake of some higher purpose.  Which, by definition, relegates females in society.  So no, I would absolutely reject that, but it’s at least a conversation we can have.  You put your facts on the table, and I will put my facts on the table, and then we can debate and discuss the interpretation of those facts in a reasoned manner, even if that debate means strong disagreement.

But when we see science as a platform for a) gaslighting (no evidence of male advantage, or as was the case in our BJSM reviewer 2, calling the concept of male advantage a “trope” that lacks any evidence, or a “knowledge claim”, then that is a disgrace when it’s coming from a journal, and b) censorship, where an entire set of arguments, many of which are factual, are shut down and denied because of some personal attacks (You’re a transphobic biased hateful bigot—just look at your use of language and choice of words), then that is a problem.

And that’s the issue with BJSM.  There was not a shred of constructive review in what they allowed to pass as review.  The Associate Editor, in fact, doubled the problem by reinforcing what Reviewer 2 accused us of.  So the review makes no contribution to the understanding of knowledge. It shuts it down.  That’s ideological abuse, and that’s why it is so dangerous. Much like state run governments try to control the population through propaganda and manipulation of what is available to them on the media, society can be manipulated by scientific journals when they choose to suppress certain facts and interpretation of research, while favouring the publication of others.  Put before the world what you wish them to see, and they’ll never know any different.  And whether this is done because a group of people with influence are able to deliberately control it, or whether it happens ‘accidentally’ because people feel some misplaced desire to “be kind” and somehow forget that their kindness is harmful to everyone else, almost doesn’t matter to me.

The Female Category: You and the co-authors of this rebuttal wanted to show that the IOC's framework for inclusion is not fair to women. Who was your intended audience—the IOC? Other scientists? The public? And on a related note, why did you target a scientific journal rather than a letter to the IOC and/or an op-ed in a big newspaper like the New York Times?

Ross Tucker: Yeah, ever since the IOC Framework and the accompanying paper came out, it’s really demanded a response.  I don’t believe anyone should allow some of those statements to stand unchallenged.  Remember, this is the Framework and paper that gave us pearls like “No presumption of advantage”, advocated for a “case by case approach” to trans women, challenged the role of testosterone in sexual dimorphism, and also publicly stated that the stakeholder group most affected by the policies are "transgender athletes and/or athletes with sex variations”.  Not women, but the athletes who identify as women and who are then entering their spaces. 

That set of concepts, among others, really demanded a challenge.  In my opinion, if you’re a sports scientist, and an influential body like the IOC puts out some of that stuff, you’re negligent if you don’t respond!  Some of it was untrue.  Some of it was propaganda.  But it’s the IOC, so a lot people will see it and say, “That must be the current state of knowledge”.  If that’s not corrected, well, it’s a problem.

People might remember that there was a lot conversation and debate about the Framework in the media at the time, but it needed some kind of scientific response too.  Plus, the other bit of context is that another group, FIMS, had published their own response to the IOC Framework, but it was pretty unsatisfactory, too (https://bmjopensem.bmj.com/content/8/1/e001273).  It did at least sort of call out the “no presumption of advantage” issue, but even then, did so in the context of it being “contrary to the 2015 IOC consensus”.  So what?  It’s contrary to everything known about biology and sport over generations.  It’s contrary to why women’s sport, and indeed, any category (age, Paralympic, weight) exists.  So the FIMS response didn’t go far enough on that, which is one of the most obvious issues with the latest IOC Framework. 

But then even more concerningly, the IOC Framework, and the FIMS response both try to straddle that untenable, impossible concept that you can balance out fairness and inclusion (and safety in some sports).  Usually by lowering testosterone and hoping for the best.  Hoping that the trans woman doesn’t win by too much.   So between the IOC Framework, and the FIMS statement, you have all these scientists and medical doctors (particularly on the FIMS paper) putting out in scientific journals these deeply flawed ideas.

 If those are not challenged, they become the accepted truth, flaws and all.

So it was necessary, I believe, to respond.  That response could take various forms.  As I mentioned, there was some discussion in the media, including from me, and other co-authors on this paper.  But what is essential is to put a systematic response into the scientific literature too, because it provides balance by directly addressing the IOC’s flawed arguments and nonsensical foundations.

The obvious place to do this is the same scientific journal that published the Framework in the first place.  And, by the way, the FIMS Statement I referred to above was also published in British Journal of Sports Medicine (BJSM), so there was actually precedent, in this SPECIFIC instance, of responding to one article with another, in the same journal.  The selection of the journal was then pretty obvious.  BJSM it was.

As for the target audience, I think after being in this “battle” for six years, and actually even longer if you include the DSD debate that really kicked off for me in 2009 with Caster Semenya, it was pretty obvious to many of us that it was too late to move the needle for the IOC.   The IOC will not be persuaded until a high profile Olympic women’s gold is literally won, in dominant fashion, by a trans woman.  Or, heaven forbid, a serious injury happens in the full glare of the media spotlight at the Olympics.

I’ve also been involved with them [IOC] on the sports governance issues because I was involved in the World Rugby Transgender guidelines. Other co-authors like Tommy [Lundberg], Emma [Hilton], and Jon [Pike] have also been involved with various sports federations, both global and national.  All in all, we had a reasonable idea of the likely response from the IOC to a challenge.  I think even now, if you read that IOC Framework and the accompanying article, they’re proud of it, and believe that it represents the best possible outcome following the best possible process.

So the IOC was definitely NOT the target.  Instead, what sport (women’s sport) needed was to have a group of scientists put their names behind a statement that unequivocally said “No, enough.  This is what the science says, and this is how we should recognise women’s sport”.

The audience is thus everyone, though I know that sounds trite.  More specifically, it’s to make very clear to the invested public and those who run sport that the science on this issue is not as uncertain and equivocal as people believe.  It's to call out the warped and distorted thinking of those sports who are still ‘holdouts’ and who are not yet protecting women’s sports integrity, and also to shore up and support, in the strongest way possible, those sports who HAVE in fact recognised biological reality and created guidelines and policies that exclude male advantage from women’s sport.  Remember that we are now at the point where rugby, followed by swimming, athletics and cycling, have all adopted policies to exclude males from women’s sport.  They’re by no means perfect, but they’re there, and they’re under pressure. Those sports need to know that they have biology and physiology, and philosophy on their side.

TFC: Is it normal to have that many authors on a paper? I recognize some of the names as being top authorities on topics of sex differences in sport—are the other authors similarly credentialed? 

Ross Tucker: For a position statement, yes.  The original IOC Framework was accompanied by the paper in BJSM that had nine authors.  The FIMS response that I alluded to above, also in BJSM, had 38.  It helps, for this kind of thing, for two reasons.  The obvious is that the more minds apply themselves to the issue, the more diverse the opinions, the broader the expertise, and thus the better the finished product.  It also helps because it shows the target audience that this is not the opinion of a few people, this is a group of people who do actually come from a range of backgrounds, bringing a range of views and experiences to the issue.  So we began as a core group of scientists, who we were all talking, independently, to other academics about their views, and we pretty soon realised that a lot of sports scientists had similar concerns to us.  As we identified them we invited them to be part of this team, and that’s how we ended up with this group.  

I believe it’s highly credentialed.  We have world leaders in sports physiology, exercise science, philosophy, sports law, evolutionary biology, genetics etc.  These are very accomplished scientists, with specific expertise ranging from ultra-endurance exercise all the way to protein metabolism and health in exercise and sport.  

In fact, I think one of the most powerful things that this paper does is show the world that sports scientists are going to speak about this issue.  Six years ago, it would have been inconceivable that this paper would exist.  In fact, even in 2020 when Hilton and Lundberg wrote their paper, which was published in 2021 (also in BJSM, actually), it would have been hard to imagine. That was two of them.  I was going to be a co-author then, but I withdrew because we were about to publish the World Rugby guidelines, so it was viewed as a conflict because of the proximity of those two ‘papers’.  Jon Pike was there then, Cathy Devine too.

There’d have been a host of sports scientists who wished to speak, but couldn’t, or didn’t because of circumstance, pressure, fear of reprisal and criticism and overt threats.  The point is, a public group of even ten would have been ambitious.  Now, I’m very sure there are many, many more than the names on this paper, and that’s a sign of how this issue is evolving.

TFC: You just mentioned scientists who wanted to speak, but couldn’t, or didn’t because of circumstance, pressure, fear of reprisal, criticism, overt threats. Can you talk about that?

Ross Tucker: Yeah, all of the above.  I know of people who’ve even had criminal complaints laid against them for hate speech.  I think, though I stand corrected, that Emma Hilton has publicly said that she’d gone through that.  I know that Tommy Lundberg had some issues after he began to speak out in defence of women’s sport.  Carole Hooven is one case that comes to mind. She was eventually forced out at Harvard and smeared professionally and personally for trying to stand for biological sciences.  She’s been incredibly brave, but I know it’s been brutal for her.

Others are nervous and afraid because if you speak against the establishment, you limit your opportunities for career advancement.  Literally.  Remember, this is the IOC Framework we’re talking about.  The list of authors on that framework represent some pretty influential people in the sports science and medicine world, because they’re “THE IOC”.  All roads lead through them, in a way, because sports science and medicine, like most fields, is pretty insulated and closed.  So that’s part of it.  If you’re labelled a ‘disruptor’ or antagonist, you’re not getting a seat at that table.  Agitators!  And once you’re at that table, you sure don’t offend your ‘hosts’.  Don’t spit in the soup, as they once said about doping in sport.  You’re either compliant, or you’re out, and I think a lot of people prefer to remain silent because they’re playing a career advancement game.  I think you need to be pretty secure in your current situation to take the step of allowing future doors to close.

Getting grants may be affected. Reports to your employer over HR violations. Plus, don’t underestimate the deterrent effect of the personal abuse.  I don’t think a lot of people appreciate how draining it is to constantly be abused and harassed and lied about publicly.  Even that review from BJSM, with its very overt insinuation that we’re transphobes, is draining.  How do you refute those allegations?  Look at Twitter/X since the paper - you’ve got a handful of people who are flat out lying about various things, including the work.  And any conscientious scientist who wishes to stand for facts will want to correct those.  Next thing you’re down a deep hole, scrapping dirty in the mud.  And it’s easy to say ‘ignore it’, but when it just keeps coming, it does really wear people down.  I think a lot of people want to get on with their lives and their work freed from that kind of negativity.

In my own case, I’ve been pretty lucky.  I had a few complaints sent to people I worked for.  One company in South Africa that I consulted to got some objections to my position, which is in effect asking for me to be “fired”.  But I was fortunate compared to some.  Partly because of World Rugby, partly because I actually don’t give a shit about these academic games and pseudo-professional career advancement strategies.  And partly, I think, because I’m a man—I think women who try to speak about this get way more abuse and blowback than men do.  Which probably tells you something, actually.

But anyway, the recriminations are real, not just imagined.  And people see it, and they want no part of it.  So I know for sure that a lot of people are watching from the sidelines, a little nervous and hesitant to be involved because they’ve been “indirectly bullied” and threatened into silence.  That’s why this group who put their names to the paper is so significant.

TFC: I asked about the credentials of the authors of the rebuttal because it seems a group a this reputation would at least bear engagement with on a scientific basis rather than ideological.

Ross Tucker: On this issue, there will ALWAYS be other views. It’s divisive, polarised, and emotive.  I think we all understand this.  One group says X, another group says Y.  That’s part of why the direct response to the original Framework and paper was required.  Let people read BOTH viewpoints, and the arguments underpinning them, and judge the quality of the arguments.  I’d like to think that many people will, in fact, do this.

But I also realise that it’s naive to think it will happen as widely as it should.  Instead, many people use any and all arguments that support them to strengthen their position, saying “Look, more evidence that supports me”. But then they also read any arguments that challenge their position to double down on their position, this time saying “Look, transphobia and hate is alive even in academia, and that proves that I am correct”.  Our paper falls into the latter category for many.

It’s a remarkable contortion, but one that allows people to use evidence that supports and refutes their position for the same purpose, which is to strengthen their opinions.  We saw this in the immediate aftermath of this paper, because people sidestep every argument we make, instead honing in on something like the conflicts of interest statement, or the fact that the article was rejected by the BJSM, to confirm to themselves that they don’t actually need to engage with the substance of the debate, but can instead reinforce their already-entrenched position.  They also continue to make claims to historical arguments, like “None of the research is in trans athletes”.  Yes, but that’s actually something that we address in the article, because it’s fundamental to the IOC’s Framework.  But by deflecting the argument, or ignoring it entirely, we never really get a meeting of minds.  There’s no dialogue, only two separated monologues.  Which is a problem from both sides, actually, but while Twitter/X is hardly a good platform for it, every single time I have challenged these critics to come back to the substance of the discussion and talk about the arguments and evidence, they deflect and claim that we are making broad sweeping statements, failing to substantiate our arguments, ignoring a number of studies, and so on.  So it’s difficult to have a dialogue in this way.

That of course was not helped by the fact that the journal that published the original, now refused to publish the rebuttal.  Had it been the same journal, it would be much easier to portray our article as a direct response to the IOC.  But for reasons we get onto below, that didn’t happen.  This has allowed some Twitter experts to criticise us as “failing to engage directly with the IOC in the normal academic manner”.  You see how the game is played, though?  Heads I win, tails you lose.  Argument X that supports me is right, Argument Y that refutes me actually supports me because it must be wrong.

I’m of the opinion that these people are unreachable, and are largely a waste of energy.  Often, and I know this is a generalisation, but it’s specifically true of a few of the most prominent and loudest critics, they are invested at personal levels because they are trans, trans athletes, or they have family or friends who are, and so they cannot change their position.  Their position has evolved into one of entrenched opposition, where they have to oppose everything, break it down, blow it up.  I don’t believe it is worth any energy to debate them.  I have only ever found them to be dishonest and arguing in bad faith.  As happened when I published the comments of the Associate Editor of the BJSM when we submitted it there.  A number of these “intellectual terrorists” (who only wish to blow up the existing knowledge, not to build it) were triumphant in their interpretation that this rejection by this Associate Editor must mean the paper is deeply flawed and should have been rejected.  One even said that it wasn’t peer-reviewed, that we couldn’t find a “real publisher”.  The SJMSS is a very good journal, by the way.  But how do you argue against this kind of dishonesty?  A lie is lie, perhaps best left to decay.  Their triumph doesn’t even pause to appreciate that they’re celebrating the refusal to entertain arguments because of ideology, which is a dangerous slope to be throwing your arms up in triumph on.

TFC: Can you talk about the process of getting a paper published in a scientific journal?

Ross Tucker: You usually start by identifying the target journal, which is sometimes easy, sometimes not.  Journals have usually, over the course of years, positioned themselves as the go-to for specific topics, usually because of the editorial staff and their interests.  You need the paper to be a good “fit” with the journal.  As I said above, this was a particularly easy choice.  The BJSM published the IOC paper, which is the one we were critiquing, and they’d also published the FIMS response statement.  Couldn’t be easier, right?  Plus, they had in the last few years published a systematic review by Harper on trans women in sport, and a paper by Roberts, et al on trans men and women in the military.  So they had history, the original paper, it was a pretty obvious place.

Then what you do is prepare the paper, according to the journal guidelines (word count, max references, figures, format etc), and submit it.  The likely success of the paper is dependent on the journal.  The most popular journals in sports science and medicine probably accept 10 to 20% of the papers they get, so the chances are not all that high.  Of course, it helps if you know the editor, and relationships always improve the chances of the paper.  This is human nature, and even the scientific journals are not immune from that!

Once submitted, it’s received by the editor, but is usually quite quickly assigned to the desk of one of a number of associate editors.  These are usually people who have specific expertise in a field.  The journal may have an expert in say, knee injuries, and they’ll get the papers on that subject.

That person then manages the process of peer review, which involves sending your paper to two, sometimes three reviewers (sometimes one, because reviewers do it voluntarily, and sometimes you battle to get people to agree to a review, because they’re not all that interested).

Sometimes, though, it doesn’t even reach this stage.  The journal often writes back and says “Thanks, but no thanks”, which is kind of the academic equivalent of dating’s “It’s not you, it’s me!”  They reject papers because they aren’t in the scope of the journal, they aren’t thought to be impactful enough, they may be good papers, but they’re not clinical or applied enough, etc.  The Associate Editor will usually make this call, sometimes even the Editor, because it is usually pretty obvious when they’ve received a paper that just is not a good fit with the journal.

If your paper gets through this first filter, it is assigned to reviewers.  Those reviewers, incidentally, are not totally random.  When you submit, there is a section in which you have options to both recommend and “disapprove” of reviewers.   You can nominate a few people who you think will be suitable as reviewers, and you can also fill in a section that basically says “I wouldn’t recommend these people to review this article”.  With brief reasons.  This is part of the game, and to be clear, I’ve no doubt been a beneficiary of this, because if you get a sympathetic or supportive Associate Editor, then you can be very sure that your paper will be sent to the people who you have suggested as reviewers, and you know then you’ll be more likely to get a positive and supportive review.  But the reverse is also true—if you get an unsympathetic Associate Editor, they could well choose to send it to none of your suggested names, and might even send it to the people who you suggested it NOT go to.  Then you’re basically dead before they get beyond the abstract, especially on charged issues like this one.  Not uniquely, though. I think the same is playing out in the concussion and brain injury in sport space, but that’s a different matter.

All part of the dance, I suppose. In any event, those reviewers then get sent an email asking if they’d be willing to review it, and they accept or decline.  I guess it can be shopped around to a number of candidates, but eventually, you have two people accept.  They then review your paper, and are meant to do so in a non-biased objective manner.  This process is often contentious.  The reviewer looks at your study design, if it’s original research, and tries to ascertain if you’re clearly explained what you did, why you did it, what you found, and whether you’ve interpreted it right.  In our case, the paper is not original research, but rather a review, and so the reviewer has to try to evaluate the quality of your arguments.  Are they robust?  Were you systematic, have you included the relevant research? Do you substantiate claims you make?

In theory, they’re not there to judge the content or conclusion of those claims, but rather the process by which they’re generated.  You can disagree with the conclusions that are reached, but recognise that in science, this is reasonable and often happens, and so you’ll accept something that refutes your viewpoint or opinion, but is well argued and contributes to the general knowledge picture.  I’ve accepted papers like this before, where you end up recognising that the work you’re reading adds to the literature, even if it doesn’t agree with yours!  What you often do then is make suggestions for completeness.  You recommend that the authors considering discussion XYZ, or that they’ve glossed over some previous research that doesn’t support their point.  Sometimes it’s the tone of the argument, the ‘way’ something is said (as was the case for our paper with one reviewer, see below).

The authors then get this review back, and sometimes, you’ll have the opportunity to respond, to make some changes and the resubmit a second draft to those reviewers.  In my experience, this nearly always means your paper will be accepted, provided you show that you’ve made the changes they suggest.   

Sometimes the reviews come back and they’re split.  One is very positive and recommends that your paper be published with only minor revisions, things that are very easy to fix like formatting, one or two sentences of clarifications.  But the other reviewer might be more scathing, and believes that your paper should not be published.  When this happens, often a third reviewer is sought, or it goes to the associate editor to perform this third review.  

I suspect this is what happened to our submission to BJSM because we had one reviewer who was quite complimentary of the paper, but who did point out that we’d perhaps went too confrontational in our tone.  They recommended that we discuss skill elements of sport a bit more, not just physiological determinants. And that we give a bit more time to the arguments on inclusion and acceptance.  That we be more ‘diplomatic’.  This was a fair review, in my opinion.  It was not fawning, and it criticised things that may have been lacking, and was positive about good arguments. It did not once make the accusation of bias or that we’d failed to cite and substantiate claims.  I think the responses to this reviewer would make for a better paper (and indeed, when we then resubmitted it to the SJMSS, we took much of those thoughts onboard).

The second reviewer, as we’ll see shortly, was less complimentary.  And then the Associate Editor weighed in.  But more on that below!

So this ended up being one of those times where we got really bad reviews. Sometimes, what happens is that reviewers identify a number of substantial issues with the paper, that they don’t believe can be resolved on revision.  Then they reject it outright, and you never get the chance to respond.  This is where it can be particularly frustrating, because often times, a review comes back and you read it thinking “What on earth is this person thinking?  They’ve missed the three key implications of my paper!”.  Or you think “But none of this is major, I can very easily change three things that the reviewer has pointed out and then the paper is fine. Why are they rejecting it outright?”

 But that’s kind of a normal thing in publishing.  You get reviewers who just don’t “vibe” with your paper, and you end up having to go elsewhere.  I think every academic in the world has this experience, probably many times a year!  There’s always “that reviewer”. It’s almost a running joke in academia.

I don’t think that’s what happened here, though.  This was something quite different.

TFC: Regarding sex differences in sport, have the factors around getting something published changed over the past 20 years? (Maybe you're not that old) If they've changed, how?

Ross Tucker: I remember many years ago trying to get a paper published on physiological differences between Kenyan and Caucasian runners.  And there was some back and forth about that, and how one should identify the ethnicity of the athlete.  In the end, it was rather moot, because our paper actually made the argument that the performances of Kenyan runners was likely due to physiological differences, but that these were not ethnic differences that are unique to those athletes.  So maybe because the conclusion was “acceptably” correct, in the social sense, the language was less important.  But that was, until I found myself in this space, the only time I’d encountered this issue.  I have worked with groups who insist on using “male” and “female” when describing, for instance, rugby players.  Really, men and women would do, but they insist on using the sexed terms for the sake of clarity and out of respect that these people might not identify as men or women.  But that doesn’t make it any easier or harder to be published.

Journals now have DEI requirements, though, which is relatively new.   When you submit, you sometimes have to account for the composition of the author group, and their sex, gender, religions, ethnicity etc.  There are some journals where the demographics of your research participants are even considered as part of it.  And I’ve no issue with doing this, but I don’t know what happens on the other end of that submission - if I submitted work as part of a group of five white males who identify as men, would my paper be less likely to be published than if the paper was produced by what would be considered a more favourably comprised author group, with minorities on it?  I genuinely don’t know if they use this kind of information to make decisions, or just for data collection.  You’d hope that the quality of the work is the primary or even only determinant of what is published, and that good work isn’t being passed up because of who does it.  The very obvious need to expand opportunities to be involved in sports science and medicine research feels like it should be managed separately from the final output of the research.  This is a complex issue, though, and for instance, for someone coming from South Africa where these kinds of policies are applied to many areas, it’s one I’m all too familiar with.

In any event, it’s neither here nor there to me, I’ve been fortunate to be part of diverse groups of researchers anyway, so I’d like to think it’s a moot issue for papers I’ve submitted.

As for language of the manuscript, I gather there are certain guidelines around language.  We certainly fell foul of those in this instance, given the review we got from both the Associate Editor and Reviewer 2 (these two were very similar in the content and criticism).  The remarkable thing, though, was that we’d used the same language as the papers in the journal before us.  The Harper systematic review used transwomen [one word] 66 times.  The Roberts study used it 47 times. Those were in 2021. 

The thing about it is, I could accept that the word transwomen should be replaced in the paper by “trans women”.  I’d have no problem doing that, and how easy a solution is that?  I know some people might argue this point, and I totally respect their rights to that, but I have to be thinking pragmatically about this issue —my ultimate objective here is to get the scientific truth out.  To create and build solid, robust advantages for why women’s sport must be closed off to males.  And if that requires that a single space be inserted between “trans” and “women”, then I think it would be short sighted to refuse.  I appreciate that this battle over language and the meaning of words is real, and it needs to be fought, but it need not be fought here, for this specific argument, in this specific context.  We can move ahead with a paper that uses “trans women”, and avoids offending the sensibilities of the Reviewer 2 and the Associate Editor, if it allows the substantive arguments to be made public.  

But no, instead, this becomes the stick with which we are beaten as we are accused of using “transphobic language”.  Our motives are assumed to be nefarious and hateful, and not a single of the arguments we make in response to the IOC are even entertained, never mind engaged with.  I suspect that the transphobia accusation based on the word “transwomen” is a really convenient way to side-step the argument, precisely to avoid engaging on the substance, but there we go.

Other elements of the review are perhaps more problematic.  We were dismissed for not using the term “cisgender women”.  To many, that is itself a slur.  Who gets to decide what the only words to use are?  This feels like a very slippery slope to me.  I appreciate that terms must be accurately used, but if we define women as “female” for the argument, and we are clear about “trans women” (space included) having undergone male development, then our argument is coherent and understandable by anyway.  We don’t need to now also introduce “cisgender” to add additional clarity, and in fact, we’d need to define that anyway, for an article that is being written precisely because the terms are not defined!

Then, we were also criticised for using terms like “male advantage”, which the reviewer called a “trope rather than a scientific knowledge claim”.  How on earth does one respond to this?  It cuts the argument off before it can be made, so I suppose, in the ideological sense, it’s a very effective tactic to dismiss as a trope the very issue that needs to be front and centre in the discussion.  Reviewer 2 also challenges the notion of male advantage being insurmountable.  This person wrote:

The section titled “Females and males are physically different, translating into athletic advantage for males” draws sweeping conclusions based on highly cherry-picked and weak literature, and fails to engage with the wealth of literature available that critiques this view and problematizes oversimplified statements such as ‘insurmountable male advantage in athletic sports…’” 

It’s a staggering dismissal of sporting reality.  Even if the reviewer was making a reasonable point, I would hope at the very least to see some of the literature that we’ve omitted in our “cherry picking”.  But there is none.  This “wealth of literature”, where is it?  I’m not aware?  I’m certainly open to include it in the paper if it’s provided.  But now it’s being dismissed, despite literally tens of thousands of known manifestations of this apparently “sweeping conclusion”.

Ultimately, what this led to, in our specific case, is to take away our ability to describe the issue and problem properly.  This issue needs to be discussed precisely because male advantage undermines the integrity, fairness and safety of women’s sport.  If this is a trope, then it’s like throwing the light switch off at a party.  We can all stop dancing and go home.  And that’s why it’s done, I think.  It’s basically saying “You can’t discuss male advantage in sport, because it’s a “knowledge claim” without proof, and you also can’t discuss trans women as having that male advantage because “trans women are women” is the foundational position of those who insist that ‘cisgender’ must be used to describe women as a subset of their own sex.  So what are we left with?  They are attempting to paint us into a corner, an alternate reality in which “trans women” must be replaced by “women”, that male advantage doesn’t exist unless you prove it to, and in which “cisgender women" and "trans women” are in fact the same.

Imagine writing the conclusion of a paper in that alternative reality, while still trying to explain the issues re fairness and safety without being allowed to mention “trans” and “male advantage".  You’d end up writing something like “Women retain the advantages of testosterone-driven puberty, and as such, women have no advantage over women in sport”.  What?  It’s absurd.  We need to be able to discuss “trans women” retaining the male derived advantages that are acquired during puberty, and thus have significant performances over women in sport”.

In fact, even reading that, it probably still wouldn’t be acceptable because it says that testosterone is responsible for creating advantages, which is something Reviewer 2 also didn’t like or agree with, as this Reviewer wrote:

The section titled “Testosterone, as a driver of male development", explains performance differences between the sexes” contains knowledge claims that are contested or plain wrong (such as that of testosterone not being overlapping), and fails to cite evidence for the claims that are made in the rest of the section. Again, a wealth of evidence exists that critiques these statements, and these are not acknowledged nor addressed. Further, these unsubstantiated claims are not in line with contemporary evidence. 

Note, again, the complete lack of any constructive suggestions for this “wealth of evidence” that might correct our apparently very misguided biological understanding.  This was the pattern of Reviewer 2.  Disabling and dismissive, without substance.  By all means, criticise.  We would be very open to making changes, and I think we did, both in response to Reviewer 1, and to our reviews after the next successful submission to SJMSS.  Nobody is precious about this, we want a paper that is complete.  But I think this review was extraordinary, and the Associate Editor’s comments equally so.

TFC: Do you have any recourse after a rejection like this?

Ross Tucker: Not really after a straight rejection like we got.  If the reviewers accept the paper with MAJOR revisions, sometimes you find yourself in a bit of a battle to persuade them of the changes you’ve made, the changes you don’t want to make etc.  But normally you can discuss that one to the satisfaction and end up with the paper.

Here it was a straight rejection.  We are still, however, looking into this on the basis that the review violates the COPE guidelines for review that the journal says they comply with.  I can’t say too much about this, because it may even have some legal implications.  But we are certainly not going to let it go entirely, because we believe that the rejection we got here is a base ideological one, and we have been labeled transphobic, and had our protected views rejected.

At the time, we considered going to the parent group with a complaint (BMJ), but eventually decided that this would likely only cause a protracted argument, and the journal will always hide behind the statement “We are confident in the robustness of our review and stand by the rejection of the manuscript on grounds of its quality”.

It’s a no win situation, and generally, trying to challenge a rejection only causes frustration and a long delay.  They’ll portray the authors as disgruntled and unable to take the criticism.  How do you move on from that standoff?  And we were already in 2023, and felt we needed to move forward, not get stuck.  But we also decided not to let it go, and we’ll see what happens now that the paper is accepted after a fair review.