Fighting academia's feminist tentacles

I had a chat on video this week with James Nuzzo, talking not only about his Sports Medicine skirmish, but also all the other sacred cows he's been targeting in his published articles, blogs and podcasts.

This brave guy deserves a wider audience. Check out his Substack, The Nuzzo Letter. You'll also find him on X and LinkedIn, and his research is indexed in Google Scholar.

It's infuriating to read Nuzzo's research and discover how much we've been hoodwinked. How often do we hear complaints about the"underrepresentation" of female participants in research studies? Nuzzo points out that in America the Office for Research on Women's Health was established within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1990, predicated on allegations of the "widespread exclusion of women in clinical trials." This assertion was later debunked, and annual reports from the Office reveal that women constitute 55-60 percent of all participants in NIH-funded clinical trials each year.

Yet thirty years later, the Office is flourishing, pouring out funding for women only projects. Similarly, all the Australian governments fall over each other to prove their commitment to improving health outcomes for women and girls – as Nuzzo shows here.

Another of Nuzzo's published articles concerned bias against men's issues in the UN and WHO. He conducted a content analysis showing consistent promotion of women's issues whilst men are ignored. The UN's sustainable development goal on 'gender equality' is exclusive to females. The organisation observes nine International Days for women's issues/achievements and one day for men. They operate 69 Twitter accounts dedicated to women's issues and none for men. And so it goes on.

If this issue presses your buttons, perhaps you'd like to sign a petition to defund the UN? DAVIA (the Domestic Abuse and Violence International Alliance) has launched a petition that calls on groups to "suspend their funding of the United Nations until all UN agencies fulfill their pledge to respect the 'dignity and worth' of all persons and assure the 'equal rights of men and women. Surely that is a worthy goal.

It's encouraging to see these growing signs of rebellion. But, also, a pleasant change to find someone looking for the good in men. I loved Nuzzo's most recent blog on Men: The Martyrs of Medicine. He's unearthed a 1929 medical journal article listing the names of male doctors and researchers who died as a result of acquiring the disease they were studying or medical technology they were developing. Brave men who gave their lives trying to save others from yellow fever, typhus, bubonic plague, and other infectious diseases. It was quite a story and a welcome change to see the risk-taking now so often labelled as toxic being promoted as valuable, even inspiring.