¡°I tweeted because I was pissed off,¡± said Jo Phoenix, professor of criminology at the Open University.

¡°I¡¯m a senior professor, known across the world, well-published ¨C and it¡¯s the very first time I¡¯ve had a publication accepted and then rejected.¡± She was referring to a thread about correspondence she had had with?The Lancet Psychiatry?concerning??it published in May.

This was titled ¡°Associations between significant head injury and persisting disability and violent crime in women in prison in Scotland, UK¡±. The lead author was Tom McMillan, professor emeritus at the University of Glasgow¡¯s Institute of Health and Wellbeing. The study recruited 109 of the 355 women held in four Scottish prisons and carried out a statistical analysis indicating that suffering from a significant head injury was ¡°associated with violent crime but not other crimes¡±. Such a finding, argued the authors, was ¡°consistent with predicted behavioural effects of reduced emotional control and impulsive aggression¡± and now needed ¡°to be taken into account in rehabilitation programmes in the criminal justice system¡±.

¡°I haven¡¯t got a problem with the overall objective of the study,¡± Professor Phoenix told?Times Higher Education,?but she did feel that one statement raised significant methodological issues: ¡°Five of the individuals [in the sample] identified as transgender women.¡±

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¡°A sample has to be coherent,¡± she explained, ¡°and the inclusion of trans women adulterates the sample¡± ¨C in three separate ways. Most obviously, this was because ¡°biological sex is not just a strong independent variable but?the?strongest predictor of crime¡­Criminal statistics show us continuously that men are more violent than women.¡± Second, cis women were ¡°likely to have higher instances of head injuries than trans women because most of the women who end up in prison in this country are there because they¡¯ve had really complicated pasts which often involve domestic violence¡±. Finally, the study did not make clear whether the five women concerned were ¡°self-identifying as trans women or in possession of?a Gender Recognition Certificate¡­Those two categories are socially located in quite different ways.¡±

In order to raise such concerns, Professor Phoenix and others wrote a letter to?The Lancet Psychiatry?arguing that, ¡°in the analysis of phenomena where women¡¯s experiences are markedly different from men¡¯s, the inclusion of males in the female category has the potential to skew research findings significantly¡±. This was accepted for publication and later rejected on the grounds that the editorial team had decided that ¡°the points it makes do not add substantially to the scientific issues raised in the original paper¡±. A spokesperson for the Lancet journals declined to offer any further clarification and Professor McMillan did not respond to a request for a comment.

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This is not the first time that Professor Phoenix¡¯s views on transgender issues have attracted controversy. A seminar on ¡°trans rights, imprisonment and the criminal justice system¡± that Professor Phoenix was due to deliver at the University of Essex in December 2019 was?cancelled?after protesters described her as a ¡°transphobe¡±, although the university later?admitted?to ¡°serious mistakes¡± and apologised for ¡°infring[ing] your freedom of speech without justification¡±. How far was her response to the particular paper linked to her views on wider transgender issues?

¡°When people think I¡¯m just being trans-exclusionary,¡± she responded, ¡°I get a little frustrated because my starting point to all this is: how do we know? If we haven¡¯t got a decent database, all we are doing is reproducing this, that or the other political mantra¡­The ability to describe, in really simple but not transphobic terms, sameness and difference is absolutely the single foundation upon which any criminological research should be based.¡±

matthew.reisz@timeshighereducation.com