PEER COMMENTARY
Is This a Work of Science?
John H. Gagnon
Published online: 23 April 2008
Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2008
I have thought long, but perhaps not long enough, about
whether to contribute to this discussion about the conflict
between Bailey and his opponents in the transgendered move-
ment. Unlike Dreger, I do not have even the most minimal
belief that whatever is written about this conflict will not be
spun by one side or the other.
1
Social conflicts about meaning,
such as this one, often play themselves out without much
resolution. The sets of combatants are all usually left standing,
some more wounded than others, the on-lookers grow bored,
and nearly everyone (including most of the combatants) go on
to other matters. It is unfortunately true that some few com-
batants make their participation in such conflicts central to
their post-conflict identities, obsessing over the details of the
conflict in the same fashion as those with post traumatic
stress disorders.
Two phrases struck me when I read Dreger’s contem-
porary history of these events because they accorded with
my own first reactions when reading The Man Who Would
Be Queen (hereafter, TMWWBQ). The first was the phrase,
‘‘it seemed to me that Bailey had stuck his hand into a
buzzing hornet’s nest and he should have expected to be
stung…’’ and ‘‘I did read the book sometime around late
2003 or early 2004, and—judging by my marginalia—I
found it generally lively and well written, unnecessarily
snide or even contemptuous in places, lacking in evidentiary
support (the book has ‘‘further reading’’ suggestions but no
citations), and full of claims and ideas that I knew very little
about. I marked it up copiously and put it down.’’
This pretty much sums up my first reaction to Bailey’s
venture and his book, though my judgment of the literary
style was more severe and I made no notes because I was
reading a library copy. However, I was puzzled that a book
with this limited a scientific apparatus and with such a jacket
had been published by an imprint of the National Academy of
Sciences. I have been a member of scientific committees of
the Academy and contributed to official publications of those
committees and recalled the rigorous peer review process
that the scientific assertions in each of those publications
underwent. The imprint series in which TMWWBQ published
(The Joseph Henry Press) is described on the website of the
National Academies Press as ‘‘created with the goal of pub-
lishing well-crafted, authoritative books on science, tech-
nology, and health for the science-interested general public’’
(http://www.nap.edu/about.html). I wondered if books in
this series were vetted in their pre-publication form by mem-
bers of the Academy or other appropriate reviewers, but
thought no more about it.
As Dreger’s history recounts, matters deteriorated rapidly
after the publication of TMWWBQ as the blowback against
Bailey and his book was mobilized. In her judgment, these
attacks went beyond the limits of civilized debate in aca-
demic circles. That this blowback has come to include her
was apparently one of the stimuli that motivated her to write
her version of the events involved. That her ‘‘objectivity’’
might have been influenced by becoming collateral damage
in the conflict over Bailey and TMWWBQ is not addressed in
any detailed way. I believe that she could have expanded on
this question of motivation. In any case, the normative rules
of academic discourse are often the first victims of serious
conflicts, both those internal to the scientific enterprise and
those between scientists and their non-scientist adversaries.
J. H. Gagnon (&)
Eden Beach, Batiment C-2, 122 Blvd. Carnot, 06300 Nice,
France
e-mail: jhgagnon@gmail.com
1
This is in contrast to her stated hope that ‘‘I believe that this history
has the potential to calm and even quell some of the tensions that
persist.’’
123
Arch Sex Behav (2008) 37:444–447
DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9321-5