‘Biased’ research proposal rejected after professor called trans women ‘male’

A research proposal on transgender athletes has been rejected by an ethics panel after the lead professor called trans women ‘male.’

King’s College London (KCL) professor Dr John Armstrong’s research application into trans-feminine athletes was rejected last week after a bias was identified by officials.

An ethics panel told Armstrong in a rejection letter obtained by The Telegraph that the language used in his proposal showed an “obvious bias” towards rejecting trans women in female sports.

“The language is not sensitive and the misgendering of athletes is not appropriate,” it read.

“There is very little scientific reasoning underpinning the hypothesis.”

According to the rejection letter, Armstrong consistently referred to trans women as “male” throughout the proposal.

Additionally, it criticised the questions that could be asked during research, saying that “there is a risk that some participants might be unhappy or distressed”.

The board recommended that Armstrong “contact the Equality, Diversity & Inclusion team” in an effort to retract the anti-trans bias on display with the research.

In response, the KCL professor accused the university of preventing him from “using the concept of sex at all”.

He added: “I am not misgendering any individuals, I am just accurately using the terms male and female.

“I’m being blocked from conducting research and it’s impacting upon my academic freedom.”

He then claimed that KCL is undermining the “credibility of research in general” by rejecting his proposal to academically misgender athletes.

“No serious work has been done by the various federations to try and find out the opinions of people in athletics, both at the grassroots and elite athletes,” he said.

While it is true that no meaningful research is available to support the claim by ‘gender-critical’ pundits that trans women pose a threat to female sports, KCL has said that the inherent bias displayed in the proposal would mitigate the quality of any data produced. 

“We are strongly committed to ensuring that the research carried out by our staff and students is consistently of the highest quality and to the most rigorous standards,” a King’s College London spokesperson told The Telegraph.

Evidence of the professor’s bias towards ‘gender-critical’ rhetoric is clear to see on his social media, where he routinely interacts with anti-trans activists.

Most recently, he has retweeted several posts from the notorious trans-exclusionary pundit Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, known as Posie Parker, who recently gained attention for her tour across Australia.

A number of his interactions involve trans women participating in women’s sports, including a tweet in response to the LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall where he justifies the recent World Athletics trans ban by saying that trans women “can compete in the male category”.

PinkNews has contacted Dr John Armstrong and King’s College London for comment.