KEY TAKEAWAYS

• A recent instruction from the Trump administration ordered CDC scientists to withdraw articles from scientific journals that include “forbidden terms” related to gender.
• BMJ editors urge other journals to maintain the integrity of scientific research by resisting “bow[ing] to political or ideological censorship”.

A recent instruction from the Trump administration directed US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) scientists to withdraw or retract any submitted (but not yet published) articles that include “forbidden terms” such as gender, transgender, LGBT, or transsexual. In an opinion article published in The BMJ, Jocalyn Clark (International Editor) and Kamran Abbasi (Editor-in-Chief) warn of the dangers of blocking important medical information from publication.

Censoring sex and gender in published research

Clark and Abbasi explain that sex and gender data are critical for understanding differences among populations and individuals from outcome and experience perspectives. The authors emphasise that blocking gender-related data is not only harmful for patients, but compromises the integrity of scientific research as a whole. They believe that attempting to censor these data is a political maneuver based on “anti-gender ideology” and “a return to fundamentalist values”, in line with the recent disappearance of other politically charged content on topics like immunisation and contraception from CDC websites and datasets.

“Blocking gender-related data is not only harmful for patients, but compromises the integrity of scientific research as a whole.”

Violation of publication ethics

Clark and Abbasi highlight several ways in which the instruction breaches publication ethics:

• Being at odds with the reporting standards adhered to by medical journals, such as the Sex and Gender Equity in Research (SAGER) guidelines.
• Conflicting with authorship criteria, which not only ensure that authors are credited for their work, but are accountable for it. Removing an author who qualifies for authorship, even at their own request, constitutes ghost writing.
• “Muzzling” important medical data. Although authors are within their rights to withdraw submitted papers from a given journal prior to publication, the data should still be published.

The authors call upon journal editors to resist the instruction on the grounds that they have a “duty to stand for integrity and equity”, which supersedes any “political or ideological censorship”.

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