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University 'Turned Down Politically Incorrect Transgender Research'

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday October 10 2017, @06:16AM   
from the ethics-committee dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Bath Spa University is conducting an internal inquiry into claims that it turned down an application for research on gender reassignment reversal because it was "potentially politically incorrect" and would attract criticism on social media.

James Caspian, a psychotherapist who specialises in working with transgender people, proposed the research about "detransitioning" to the university in south-west England, which, he said, initially approved the application.

When he went back with his preliminary findings that suggested growing numbers of young people, particularly women, were regretting gender reassignment, Bath Spa said his proposal would have to be resubmitted to the ethics committee, which rejected it.

Caspian, who enrolled on an MA course at the university, said he was "astonished" by the decision and had sought legal advice.

"The fundamental reason given was that it might cause criticism of the research on social media, and criticism of the research would be criticism of the university. They also added it's better not to offend people," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Monday.

I was going to add some snark here but they pretty well covered making a mockery of academia for me.

Source: The Guardian

Also at: The Times

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Original Submission

• Re:Comments Re:Comments (Score: 5, Informative) by TheRaven on Tuesday October 10 2017, @01:56PM (1 child)

  by TheRaven (270) on Tuesday October 10 2017, @01:56PM (#579784) Journal

  First up: I don't know a study that lets the student choose a research topic upon enrolling

  I can only speak for the UK university system in this regard, but if it's Bath Spa then that's relevant here:

  Most masters and PhD applications require that you submit a research proposal as part of the application process. For a masters, it's quite unlikely that you'll actually do this research, but it's there for several reasons:

  • To ensure that you actually have an idea of what research is. It's surprisingly common that people apply for research degrees without any idea of what research entails. This is often a recipe for deep unhappiness and often for people to drop out, so it's good to filter them out early. Most people who haven't done a research degree don't have a very good idea of what research entails, which is one of the reasons that these proposals are, at best, the core of a real project and often disregarded entirely, but they should at least have some idea of what they're signing up for.
  • To check that there is some common interest between the faculty and the applicant. If they department has experts in X, Y, and Z, and the applicant is really really interested in A, then they're probably going to be unhappy when they arrive and find that there's no one who can / wants to supervise a project in their main area of interest. For example, in computer science, if you you submit an application saying that you want to look at a new idea for how to do branch prediction to a department that does no architecture research then you'll probably be encouraged to apply elsewhere (or, at least, told up-front that there's zero chance of doing this project).

  I don't get that. If he wants to do the research, go ahead. He can do the research. Not as part of a study at Bath University, but who cares whether or not you do your research as part of a university? If it's good research, we'll hear about it.

  That's not always true. Some forms of research require expensive equipment that is difficult for people who are not born rich to acquire on their own. Any studies involving humans (such as this) come with very large potential legal liabilities. This is why ethics committees exist: so that an institution can decide if they want to carry the legal responsibility for an action. An ethics committee decision doesn't say that the university thinks that an experiment is legal, it says that the university is willing to take responsibility if it isn't. If you don't have that, then all legal liability is yours and if someone claims that they were harmed by your experiment then that can be very expensive.

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  Parent

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• Re:Comments (Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Tuesday October 10 2017, @07:04PM

  by FakeBeldin (3360) on Tuesday October 10 2017, @07:04PM (#579975) Journal

  That's interesting!

  Most masters and PhD applications require that you submit a research proposal

  I've only seen that for PhD applications, not for masters.
  (And only rarely for PhD's, since most PhD funding that I encountered came from dedicated project funding, so the research was already outlined)

  Thanks for sharing that - I learned something.

  Parent