In the wake of a Supreme Court judgement ruling that references to sex in the Equality Act, it’s worth remembering that, in February 2023 the Daily Telegraph published an article by Ellen Pasternack, an Evolutionary BiologyPhD student at Oxford, aggressively misrepresented the science and claimed that there were exactly two biological sexes. She used the reputation of #OxfordUniversity to make claims that inflame bigotry and which have no basis in science. Almost everything in her article was directly contradicted by this piece in Nature seven years earlier which, given it directly related to her field of study, she has no excuse for not reading.

At the time, I wrote to Tim Coulson, the head of the Biology department, to point out that the 20th century has a long history of people misrepresenting biology to push an agenda that marginalised or killed people. If they have learned anything from history, I asked that the department publish an official correction or ask the student to retract her article.

Professor Coulson argued that this was a free speech issue and refused to take any action.

With this in mind, I would urge anyone considering a PhD in #Biology, or attending any events to avoid #Oxford. They clearly value bigotry more than they value science and so do not deserve a place in the scientific community.

@david_chisnall Sex is explicitly defined as sex chromosome XX = female, and sex chromosome XY = male. I kind of get how people can get confused on the issue of "gender", but there being two biological sexes is settled science.