Author Sex/Gender of the Worst Academic Papers in 2025
Graph of the Week
This week’s graph shows the sex/gender of the authors of the 24 Worst Academic Papers in 2025, as nominated by biologist Colin Wright, the editor of Reality’s Last Stand.
I determined sex/gender by conducting internet searches to identify the author (first author only) and identify the pronouns that the author or the author’s institution used to describe the author. For this analysis, I was interested to compare the number of authors of the 24 papers who used only he/him pronouns versus the number of authors who used all other pronoun combinations (i.e., she/her only, they/them only, she/they, he/they).
Key Points
Of the 24 academic papers nominated by Colin Wright as the worst in 2025, 4 (17%) had first authors whose pronouns were he/him only.
Twenty papers (83%) had first authors whose pronouns were something other than he/him only.
Bonus Commentary
Throughout 2025, biologist Colin Wright highlighted crazy academic papers. Some of those papers were published in peer-reviewed academic journals, while other papers were doctoral dissertations published by university libraries. Wright highlighted these papers to illustrate the significant intellectual rot that exists in academia. At The Nuzzo Letter, I also regularly highlighted such rot in 2025, regularly tossing crazy academics papers into the Rubbish Bin in the Weekly Roundups. In a recent essay at Reality’s Last Stand, I presented three broad reasons why highlighting and critiquing crazy academic papers is important: (1) to slow or stop the crazy idea; (2) to slow or stop the crazy academic; and (3) to slow or stop the funding that sustains the crazy academic and their ideas.
The types of papers that get classified as “crazy” or “worst papers of the year” are generally those that are informed by critical theory, queer theory, or feminist theory, which is to say that the papers are often incoherent or illogical, internally inconsistent, biased, and unscientific. For one example, see my essay at Reality’s Last Stand about the paper that proposed that “anticipating violence is violence” (this paper made Colin Wright’s 24 Worst Academic Papers in 2025; see: I’ve grown fearful of any rustle behind me).
The graph above reveals that the papers selected by Colin Wright were not being written by males who identify solely as male. They were written by individuals whose gender identity is something other than solely male. This result confirms my own anecdotal observations about authorship of crazy academic papers over the past couple years. If confirmed via a proper large-scale scientometric analysis, the results will suggest that preferential hiring practices, such as those purposely excluding qualified white male heterosexual applicants like Colin Wright, impact the quality of academic scholarship.
The limitation of the current analysis is investigator self-selection bias in terms of the papers assessed and chosen (i.e., the journals and topics Colin Wright searches). Thus, the analysis here is not a formal, rigorous scientometric examination of the topic. Instead, I am presenting this preliminary information for what it is, and I am suggesting that future research can explore the relationship between author sex/gender and the type and/or quality of academic working being published. For example, one previous study found that female academics are more likely than male academics to use qualitative rather than quantitative methods in their work.
Finally, I encourage all subscribers of The Nuzzo Letter to subscribe to Reality’s Last Stand and follow Colin Wright on X and Facebook. The work that he is doing is immensely important.
Colin Wright’s Top 24 Worst Academic Papers in 2025
NB. Wright has abbreviated the titles of the papers compared to their actual titles, and the papers are not presented in any particular order. Most of the links below go to Wright’s X posts about the papers. In the X posts, Wright overviews the papers and explains why they are crazy. Also, see my uploaded spreadsheet, which includes the list of the authors’ names, links to the authors’ profiles, links to the relevant papers, and links to any relevant essays that were published about the papers at Reality’s Last Stand.
A (m)Other’s work is becoming undone
Medical uncertainty and reproduction of the normal
Crip guts, stomas, and the violence of “returning to normal”
Decolonize scientific institutions
The Earth is a big badass butch dyke in menopause
I’ve grown fearful of any rustle behind me
A brief history of my gendered body
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Gracious. Reading those titles was painful! Academia is Lackademia.
Wow