The End of a Top Science Journal’s Commitment to Pursuing Truth

A new article in Nature encourages researchers to incorporate transgender activism to influence how research is conducted.

Reality’s Last Stand is a reader-supported publication. Please consider becoming a paying subscriber or making a one-time or recurring donation to show your support.

About the Author

Christina Buttons is an independent journalist with a forthcoming report on the connection between autism and gender dysphoria, as well as a detransition survey awaiting publication. She is developing a website that will feature the latest data, studies, and fact-checks that will debunk activist arguments related to gender medicine. If you would like to support her work, please consider a paid subscription to her Substack or making a donation.

---

The prominent science journal Nature has launched a new opinion article series on sex and gender. One paper in this series explores research attempting to search for a biological basis for trans-identity, arguing that such research could “pathologize” and “harm” the trans community. The authors discourage “investigations into the underlying bases of transgender identity” and propose various steps for researchers to incorporate transgender activism into their work to influence research outcomes—signaling the end of Nature’s commitment to pursuing scientific truth over ideology.

The article starts by reviewing neuroscientific studies aimed at finding the cause of trans-identity in the brain, identifying 83 papers from 1991-2024. It highlights the transgender brain-sex hypothesis, which suggests that trans-identified people have brain regions resembling those of the opposite sex. However, it neglects to mention that this hypothesis falls apart because the studies did not control for confounding variables such as sexual orientation.

The article does acknowledge that “the results of these analyses have been inconsistent.” Yet, when the media covers these studies, the public is often informed by headlines such as “transgender people are born that way,” “science proves trans people aren’t making it up,” and “attacks on trans people are also attacks on science itself.” You can read a simplified explainer I wrote debunking the brain-sex studies here.

The authors then move on