There is so much wonderment to nature that wondering about the truth of the obvious, such as your sexual identity, distracts from appreciating what is naturally real. Alternatively, being required by “settled science” to stop asking “why” and “how,” stop testing hypothesis, and stop challenging predictions also withers wonderment.  The public knows that people who are not biologically female cannot get pregnant and that knowledge of future conditions of the climate are not settled. Maybe the scientific establishment will catch up with those mundane notions before it loses too much more of the public’s trust.  

A recent news article in one of the world’s most prestigious science journals, Nature, contained an editor’s statement that sadly apologized for being insensitive to a new unscientific norm. The article was titled, “COVID vaccines safely protect pregnant people: The data are in.” The journal editor thought it was necessary to assure readers that, “Nature recognizes that transgender men and non-binary people can become pregnant. We occasionally use ‘women’ in this story when discussing studies that used the same language.” Even if some of the editors and subscribers to Nature may not be sure of the reality of biological science, the public surely is.

The trend to render flaccid the biological sexual divide is seen throughout science publications. The April 23, 2022 edition of Science News, published by the Society for Science & the Public, shows that even the title of an article — for example, “The Pregnant Pause: Why excluding pregnant people from medical research is a problem” — can display an unabashed ignorance of reality.

In short, biological science is real. An admixture of biology and personal preferences is synthetic.

Unfortunately, the sciencey idea of the fluidity of the sexes is now reverberating throughout society, such as where required pronouns are popular and where Microsoft Word prompts you to use “identified as female at birth” rather than “biological female.”

Confusing the public with the idea that an individual who is not biologically female can get pregnant is just one instance of the undermining of true science to the detriment of society. Of course biological males competing in women’s sports is another obvious example. Confusion is never helpful to maintaining a healthy social structure.

Yet, another, possibly overarching, problem to be solved, is the imposition of reputed final-form science or “settled science” on the public sphere.

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