Puberty blockers researcher shortlisted for Maddox Prize

A UCL professor who has faced personal abuse and smear campaigns after she raised concerns over the impact of puberty blockers on young people’s brains has been shortlisted for the Maddox Prize for “standing up for science”.

Sallie Baxendale, a neuropsychologist at UCL specialising in epilepsy and adolescent brain development, is the only UK academic on the eight-person shortlist for this year’s award, organised by Sense about Science.

Named after the former editor-in-chief of Nature John Maddox, the prize has since 2012 recognised individuals who stand up for science and evidence, advancing public discussion around difficult topics despite challenges or hostility.

The winners will be announced at the Royal Society on 29 October.

Baxendale, a professor of clinical neuropsychology at UCL’s Institute of Neurology, came to prominence two years ago when she wrote an article for UnHerd describing how three separate journals had rejected a review of the potential impact of puberty blocker drugs on teenagers.

Her study highlighted cases in which young girls seemingly lost between 7 and 15 IQ points while taking the medications and called for “urgent” research into the impact of the drugs on brain function.

Speaking to The Times in 2024, Baxendale explained she was accused of bias on account of her findings, with anonymous reviewers questioning why she only cited negative studies, despite not being able to point to positive ones. Some claimed her findings would stigmatise transgender people and she has been labelled “anti-trans” by several activist websites.

“Working in this field has meant confronting considerable misrepresentation, with coordinated attempts to trash my professional reputation and personal abuse,” Baxendale told Times Higher Education, adding this “can have a real impact on how a scientist’s work is perceived, regardless of its quality”.

“Recognition from such a prestigious prize provides an important counterweight to that hostility. It is an immensely powerful affirmation of the value of asking difficult questions and following the evidence,” said Baxendale.

Baxendale said she was drawn to this controversial area of research after she “encountered confident claims that puberty blockers were completely safe and fully reversible when used in children with gender distress”.

“As a neuropsychologist, I found these assurances difficult to reconcile with what we know about brain development and the critical role that puberty plays in that process. So I looked for the evidence that people were using to back up these claims,” she added.

“I expected to find some ropey studies but was genuinely shocked to find that no one had actually bothered to look at this in any meaningful sense at all in people, despite some worrying results from animal studies,” continued Baxendale.

Instead claims for the safety of those drugs were based on the “absence of evidence, not the evidence of absence of harm”, she said.

This is a “critical distinction in science, especially in medicine, where assumptions presented as established facts can have profound consequences for patient care”, she said, adding: “These claims needed to be examined with the same scientific scrutiny we would expect in any other area of medicine.

“Asking difficult questions about the evidence should be an ordinary part of evidence-based practice, however contentious the subject.”

Other academics shortlisted for the Maddox Prize for “defending evidence-based thinking” include Samer Abuzerr, a public-health specialist with University College of Science and Technology Khan Yunis in Gaza, the “long Covid” researcher Cédric Lemogne, and Cyriac Abby Philips, a liver specialist in Kerala, India, who has drawn public attention to the harms he sees caused to patients by traditional medicines.

Mónica Guzmán-Rojo, a civil hydraulic engineer from Bolivia who investigates water supplies, Mexican science policy adviser Alma Cristal Hernández Mondragón, clinical psychologist Arna Mitchell who has challenged claims of systemic racism against people of Māori heritage in psychology, and Rutgers University scientist Siddhartha Roy, who has disputed official evidence that denied water contamination in Flint, Michigan, have also been shortlisted.

Baxendale told THE that being shortlisted for the Maddox Prize “isn’t just a personal vindication” given the standing of the prize in the scientific community.

“It sends a message that scientific scrutiny is something to be encouraged, rather than feared,” she said.

“I sincerely hope this recognition gives others the confidence to speak up, challenge unsupported claims and insist that evidence remains at the heart of decision-making, particularly in the field of gender medicine, but in all areas of medicine, where assumptions and misplaced certainty can have very real consequences for people’s lives.”

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com