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Careful careful careful oops

Again. Same problem. How is awareness of very basic facts “bias”? Surely the denial of very basic facts is a better candidate for accusations of bias.

A health official who reportedly intervened to pause a clinical trial on the use of puberty blockers has been removed from any further involvement due to accusations of bias.

Prof Jacob George, who was appointed chief medical and scientific officer at the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in January, raised concerns that led to the Pathways trial being put on hold by the government, according to the Sunday Times.

But the regulator announced on Saturday that George would recuse himself from involvement in the trial after gender-critical social media posts made

… Read the rest

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Careful careful careful oops
By Ophelia Benson, March 1, 2026

Again. Same problem. How is awareness of very basic facts “bias”? Surely the denial of very basic facts is a better candidate for accusations of bias.

A health official who reportedly intervened to pause a clinical trial on the use of puberty blockers has been removed from any further involvement due to accusations of bias.

Prof Jacob George, who was appointed chief medical and scientific officer at the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in January, raised concerns that led to the Pathways trial being put on hold by the government, according to the Sunday Times.

But the regulator announced on Saturday that George would recuse himself from involvement in the trial after gender-critical social media posts made

… Read the rest

Archives
Bad Moves
Articles
Flashback
In Focus
Latest News
Letters
Notes and Comment Blog

Careful careful careful oops 

Again. Same problem. How is awareness of very basic facts “bias”? Surely the denial of very basic facts is a better candidate for accusations of bias.

A health official who reportedly intervened to pause a clinical trial on the use of puberty blockers has been removed from any further involvement due to accusations of bias.

Prof Jacob George, who was appointed chief medical and scientific officer at the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in January, raised concerns that led to the Pathways trial being put on hold by the government, according to the Sunday Times.

But the regulator announced on Saturday that George would recuse himself from involvement in the trial after gender-critical social media posts made

… Read the rest
Irreversible 

Sonia Sodha writes

This row has emerged from one of the most contested issues in medical science today: whether gender-questioning children should be put on an irreversible medical pathway, taking drugs to block puberty and ultimately progressing onto cross-sex hormones. I’ve written about the background to this here: an independent review undertaken by the paediatrician Hilary Cass called an overdue halt to this practice in the NHS. But her review controversially left the door open for a clinical trial of puberty-blocking drugs.

That trial is controversial because many experts (in my view, rightly) think it is impossible to to run an ethical trial of puberty blockers on gender-questioning children. I highly recommend this post from Genspect, and this open

… Read the rest
Opinions v facts 

SEEN in journalism points out, and underlines, that what sex people are is not a belief or opinion.

For those catching up on the drama, here’s an overview of what happened last night and this morning (February 27 – 28) with Cathy Newman, Economist Health Editor Natasha Loder, and Professor Jacob George.

At tea-time yesterday Cathy Newman announced on X that she’d seen social media posts from Professor Jacob George, the recently appointed Chief Medical and Scientific Officer of the medical regulator the MHRA, and that after they were brought to the attention of the MHRA he was recused (according to Loder, by the MHRA, indicating it wasn’t voluntary) of oversight of the Pathways puberty blocker research.

…

… Read the rest
Guest post: He wants to be capo di tutti capi 

Originally a comment by Steven on A war of choice.

Iran responds by…attacking Saudi Arabia. Makes sense.

It does make sense.

Trump acts like a Mafia boss. He’s boss of the U.S.; now he wants to be capo di tutti capi (boss of all bosses). He is demonstrating his ability to remove other capos. He removed Maduro; now he is going after the Iranian leadership. Pick off the ones who defy you and the rest will fall in line. It is the same tactic that he uses to keep Republican legislators obedient to him: he primaries any who aren’t.

But Saudi Arabia is already obedient to Trump. They do him obeisance; they paid the $1B bribe to be on … Read the rest

Yesterday and today 

The pushback at last.

Yesterday this:

I made a complaint to the @metpoliceuk and today I was called back by one of their officers. Name: Pc/Officer Humphreys.Badge No. 2417.Based at Lewisham Police Station.

@MPSLewisham Officer Humphreys asked what had given rise to the doxing and I told him that I hold the position that men cannot

… Read the rest

A war of choice 

The AP’s live coverage of Trump’s attack on Iran is interesting.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says he supports the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent its government from further threatening international peace and security.

He says Canada is clear in its position that “the Islamic Republic of Iran is the principal source of instability and terror throughout the Middle East.”

Trump is kind of the Iran of this part of the globe.

Britain, France and Germany are calling for a resumption of U.S.-Iran negotiations and condemned Iranian attacks on countries in the region. They did not comment on the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran.

U.K. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer,

… Read the rest
A puzzle 

What’s the issue? The issue, or question, is whether or not there is a moral obligation to affirm, or at least not deny, people’s claims about themselves.

Put like that, it seems obvious that there can’t be such an obligation without a lot of stipulations and exceptions and so on. People can lie, people can cheat, people can forge – the list is long.

Ok but maybe trans people are exceptions. They’re not trying to empty your bank account or move into your house or turn your brother into a ballerina. At least, not all of them are. Probably not a large number of them are. Why not just give them what they want? Why not just go ahead and … Read the rest

Guest post: That’s the emergency backup system taking over 

Originally a comment by Artymorty on The belief is mandatory.

Fred Wallace is of course the man who sends unsolicited dick picks to women. He also sends unsolicited pics of himself in flagrante at men’s fetish dens. I still can’t wrap my head around people who insist this man is a woman even when they know that he knows he’s a fetishistic man, and that they know that he knows that they know he’s a fetishistic man — so much so that he blatantly publishes pornographic pictures of himself engaging in his fetish.

Everybody knows he’s a man, and everybody knows that everybody else knows he’s a man. And yet.

It’s that two-regions-of-the-brain thing: first-order belief (“I believe x … Read the rest

The belief is mandatory 

The police are telling us we are not allowed to say that men are not women.

Based at Lewisham Police Station.

@MPSLewisham Officer Humphreys asked what had given rise to the doxing and I told him that I hold the position that men cannot become women.

He immediately, without taking a breath said “well, that’s

… Read the rest

They’ve unearthed 

Well here’s a malevolent bit of “journalism” to put in the record books.

Brilliant. Just brilliant. Pitch a fit about a chief medical officer and get him recused from the nightmare superfluous “puberty blockers trial” so that more kids can have their lives blighted by the fad for magic gender. Pat yourself on the back Cathy Newman.… Read the rest

No not that kind of trust and openness 

Yikes. The Lancet on Bad Kennedy’s war on HHS:

10 days after his speech about trust and openness, HHS rescinded a 54-year-old policy of soliciting public comments for new rules and regulations, silencing the voices of many of the stakeholders he pledged to serve. Kennedy has summarily dismissed advisers and experts, communicated policy changes on pay-walled media, fired a whistleblower, and overseen the revisions of guidelines and recommendations, contradicting decades of established science, often to the benefit of industries he formerly condemned. Under Kennedy’s leadership, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) shuttered programmes studying the health effects of air pollution, HHS withheld a report linking alcohol consumption to cancer, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) withdrew warnings of

… Read the rest
IDs that reflect who they are (no not that kind) IDs that reflect who they are (no not that kind) 

But…

But what he means is IDs that don’t reflect who they are – or at least that don’t declare who they are. The whole point of IDs is to verify that the ID-haver is who she/he says she/he is. Because that’s the whole point, the information has to be accurate. The ID has to have the right date of birth, the right height and weight, the right citizenship – and the right sex. A driver’s license or … Read the rest

Pointed 

Meidas Touch:

BREAKING: As Hillary Clinton heads into a closed-door deposition related to the Epstein investigation, she released a pointed opening statement, making clear she knew nothing about Epstein and slamming the Republicans for not allowing her to testify in public.

Below is her full, unedited statement:

I’ll excerpt.

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, Members of the Committee… as a former Senator, I have respect for legislative oversight and I expect its exercise, as do the American people, to be principled and fearless in pursuit of truth and accountability.

As we all know, however, too often Congressional investigations are partisan political theater, which is an abdication of duty and an insult to the American people.

The Committee justified its subpoena

… Read the rest
We require that all members believe We require that all members believe 

How indeed?

Manchester Green Party:

In other words, we of Manchester Green Party require that all members affirm a conspicuous and absurd lie. We regard refusal to do so as irrational hatred. We affirm that such refuseniks are not welcome as members of Manchester Green Party.

It’s Trumpian. Why does Manchester Green Party want to be Trumpian?… Read the rest

Crook fires more cops 

When the crook is empowered to fire the cops.

At least 10 FBI employees who worked on former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into President Trump’s retention of classified records after he left the White House in 2021 were fired on Wednesday, multiple sources told CBS News.

The firings came after Reuters reported that the FBI had subpoenaed records of phone calls made by FBI Director Kash Patel and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles when they were still both private citizens as part of Smith’s probe into Trump.

The Reuters article quoted Patel, who alleged that the FBI had secretly subpoenaed his phone records “using flimsy pretexts and burying the entire process in prohibited case files designed

… Read the rest
The men’s team 

Sigh.

A “distasteful joke” by US President Donald Trump has overshadowed the achievement of female athletes at the Winter Olympics, says USA women’s ice hockey captain Hilary Knight.

USA won both men’s and women’s ice hockey gold for the first time at the Milan-Cortina Games this month.

The men’s team received a congratulatory call from Trump, who invited them to his State of the Union address and said he would have to ask their female counterparts as well or he “probably would be impeached”.

Sigh.

That’s not really a “joke” – not as normal people normally understand a joke. It might pass as a “quip” for people who like that sort of thing. A stupid gratuitous insulting “quip”.

It’s … Read the rest

It’s Brighton, Jake 

Women must not be allowed to meet without male supervision.

A row has broken out over an event’s single-sex attendance policy.

Rosie Hayes told the BBC multiple venues in Brighton had cancelled or stopped hosting trauma-healing classes organised by her group Sisters Heal for the victims of sexual assault, rape and domestic abuse, which were limited to “biological women only”.

Indeed. Women must be forced to talk about their sexual trauma in the presence of men. They have no right to keep such exciting chat to themselves.

Terf Watch Brighton, which describes itself as a grassroots collective of journalists reporting on “anti-trans efforts”, said it was not aware of any groups or networks coordinating opposition to Sisters Heal. It

… Read the rest
How pro-life 

Any opportunity to harm women is welcome.

Republicans in Tennessee have proposed a bill that would allow women who have had an abortion to be sentenced to death.

House Bill 570 allows for the death penalty to be imposed on women who have abortions, as well as charging women “involved in the homicide of her own unborn child” with homicide.

This is because love, you know. Tennessee Republicans love fertilized eggs so much they’re willing to kill adult humans for not allowing the fertilized eggs to take over their bodies.

The legislation would allow prosecutors to charge women who obtain abortions with fetal homicide. This crime is punishable by life imprisonment, life without parole, and in some

… Read the rest
The epic length 

Size is not everything.

Sometimes more is less.

Donald Trump himself forecast the epic length of the State of the Union address that he planned to deliver to Congress on Tuesday evening. “It’s gonna be a long speech because we have so much to talk about,” he had said beforehand.

No, it was gonna be long because he loves the sound of his own voice.

Trump is all about superlatives. Everything he does has to be the biggest, the strongest, the mostest. Who cares that he managed to say almost nothing with all those words?

Quantity over quality; that’s Trump in a nutshell. There’s lots of it and it’s all shit.

The problem for Trump at such a moment is

… Read the rest
Dig 

Banning transgender women from lesbian group could ‘undermine their dignity’, court hears

How fascinating. Now let’s think about the dignity of the women in the lesbian group.

Think think thinky think

Done that?

Here’s what I come up with: what about the dignity of the women in the lesbian group? Eh? What about them? Eh? Why is the “dignity” of men who want to force themselves on lesbian groups more important than the dignity of the women who don’t want them to?

Why is the purported dignity of men who pretend to be women so vastly more important than the dignity of actual women? Why do men get to hog the camera while women are pushed out into the shadows … Read the rest