Maya Forstater

Thanks to everyone who has signed up so far. And thanks for the patience of those we are still catching up with.

We are going to stratify the signatures as we port to a dedicated space. We have no intent to ‘overinflate’ and want complete transparency, so will be dividing signatures into categories such as ‘natural sciences’, ‘natural science-related’, social sciences’ and so on.

Our Google form will ask for a few more specifics. This will help our team identify and verify our signatories. Please do not let the (small amount of) added admin put you off. We want our record to be as accurate as possible, and to faithfully represent those who have signed.

Despite taking many days (weeks?) to formulate our statement, we have, via a troll submission, identified a section that could have been worded more fully. We have always been clear that we will not alter the statement after it was published, so will be adding a footnote.

The section to be addressed is sex determination in babies with DSDs, where we state the decision is one of cooperation between medics and parents. The footnote will explicate that the best interests of the child should be foremost in any clinical decisions.

But thank you to the person who brought this to our attention. We do not expect, from your comments, for you to sign the statement but you have nonetheless contributed to Project Nettie.

We learned this week that many commentators are happy to address the content of a statement without, well, actually reading it. Special thanks to the science historian who got very cross about us misrepresenting Nettie Stevens when we didn’t actually misrepresent her. Good work.

A second special thanks to those of you who dedicated time setting up email addresses in order to tell us how awful scientists are. Seriously?