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11 Feb, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Letter in the Times today from quantitative social scientists. "We are on the brink of losing robust, high quality data on sex in the UK. Once gone, we may never get it back".
Story in the Times by @mikewadejourno "Plans to ignore biological sex when collecting census data in favour of self-defined gender threaten to undermine robust statistics in a move that is creating “deep-seated alarm” among leading academics." thetimes.co.uk/article/plan-t…
Longer version of our letter: "It is our strong view that the burden of proof remains with the respective Chief Statisticians to articulate why data on biological sex is no longer salient." ukdataexperts.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/open-l…
Call to action: the deadline to respond to Halliday's consultation is tomorrow. No format is specified. Email responses to statistics.enquiries@gov.scot gov.scot/groups/sex-and…

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More from @ProfAliceS

Professor Alice Sullivan Profile picture
24 Jan
1/ It is great news that ONS @ons appear to have moved away from a self-id approach for the Census thetimes.co.uk/article/sex-qu…
2/ Quantitative social scientists have discussed with ONS the importance of accurate sex-based data. As far as we are aware, the detail of the guidance is still under review, but I welcome this indication that ONS has moved away from framing sex in terms of gender id.
3/ As I said to the Times: “Sex is an important predictor of outcomes across all areas of life, including education, wages, crime, and physical and mental health. If we do not monitor sex differences, we cannot tackle sex discrimination."
Read 6 tweets
Professor Alice Sullivan Profile picture
20 Jan
1/ People often claim that the numbers of people identifying as the opposite sex are too small to make a difference statistically. This is a clear example showing why that is false. The proportion of child sexual abusers who are women is tiny. Therefore, stats can be...
2/ ...seriously distorted by including males who 'self-id' as women in the female category. In this case, it is reported that the number of female child sex abusers has rocketed by 80% in the last few years. As a researcher, I would ask "why has that happened?"
3/ And, if there's no plausible explanation of why such a change may actually have occurred, your thoughts turn to whether there is a problem with the data. Is this artefactual? Is there a disjunction in the time series, e.g. because a key variable is being collected differently?
Read 6 tweets
Professor Alice Sullivan Profile picture
14 Jan
1/ Thanks to @BBCr4today for having me on to discuss data collection on sex and why it matters. This follows the extraordinary claim by Scotland's Chief Statistician, Roger Halliday, that sex should typically not be asked unless there is a medical reason.
2/ In fact, those of us who use quantitative data overwhelmingly believe that sex is important. It matters across a wide range of domains: education, wages, crime, political attitudes, religion - you name it, sex is almost always a big predictor!
3/ Sex and gender identity are two different things, and gender identity is not a clarly defined concept. Ciaran McFadden Young (who is not a quantitative social scientist as far as I can see) claimed that sex doesn't matter, effectively it is always trumped by gender identity.
Read 11 tweets
Professor Alice Sullivan Profile picture
13 Jan
1/ As the Times reports sex is wiped from official data: our submission to @Commonswomequ on the availability of accurate sex-based data is now online. With @OxSoc @AmandaGosling3 @TaraniChandola @profnallum. committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidenc…
2/ tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…
3/ spectator.co.uk/article/Corona…
Read 5 tweets
Professor Alice Sullivan Profile picture
3 Aug 20
1/ I was pleased to see a prominent transactivist acknowledge recently that the slogan "trans women are women" leads to dogmatism rather than nuanced discussion, and interested by her claim that the slogan became "a thing" in 2016. Is that right? I ran an ngram.
2/ First use according to this dates from 2000, with an increase in usage from around 2012. The earliest book reference using the phrase that I could find is from 2006. But is this really the first key reference? Let me know in comments if you know an earlier one.
3/ Here's one from 2011, when the phrase is starting to take off.
Read 7 tweets
Professor Alice Sullivan Profile picture
24 Jul 20
1/ This article replies to the responses to my article on “Sex and the Census: Why surveys should not conflate sex and gender identity“.
2/ Fugard conflates sex itself with the characteristics associated with sex, such as finger length ratios, leading to the erroneous implication that binary sex is not a useful explanatory variable.
3/ Hines fundamentally misrepresents my article, claiming that I have argued against asking respondents to the 2021 Census about their gender identity. In fact I make clear that information on gender identity is useful, but cannot replace data on sex.
Read 6 tweets

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