Sophie K. Scott is a British neuroscientist and anti-transgender activist.
note: for the British trans ITV media figure, see Sophie Scott.
Background
Sophie Kerttu Scott was born November 16, 1966 in Blackburn, England.
Scott attended Westholme School and Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School, Blackburn. Scott earned a bachelor’s degree from Polytechnic of Central London (now the University of Westminster) in 1990, then earned a doctorate at University College London in 1994.
Anti-transgender activism
In 2016, Sarah Ditum featured Scott in a piece about “brain sex” for The New Statesman:
Many scientists have concerns about the brainsex theory. “My experience of science,” says Professor Sophie Scott, drily, “is that your threshold for accepting data can be really low if you say you’re looking at sex differences”. Scott works at University College London, where she researches the neurobiology of speech perception, and she’s scathing about the standard of evidence for congenital structural differences between male and female brains. “I think we have a cultural belief in – for want of a better phrase – fairy stories,” she says. “You’ll hear people say, it stands to reason that our bodies are different between men and women, therefore our brains must be different. Nobody’s saying that about the kidneys or the stomach or the skin, but somehow it’s such an easy and pleasing account. And scientists are not free from that.” Given the dedication with which researchers have hunted for brain difference, perhaps the most telling thing is how little they’ve found: “I’ve been doing functional imaging studies [of the brain] for nearly 20 years now and I never look at sex differences, because they’re not very interesting. All the other evidence seems to suggest from a brain perspective that, for language, there are no big differences between men and women.”
For Scott, gender isn’t something inside you, but something imposed on you. “Gender is the outcome of the way that we treat human beings from the minute they’re born and people are interested in knowing if they’re boys or girls,” she says. “We then start constructing a world round them.”
In 2020, the High Court of England and Wales ruled that children are not capable of giving informed consent to puberty blockers for the treatment of gender dysphoria. Scott gave testimony, per Emily Wheater and Ellen Pasternack in The Critic:
The judicial review found that these are life-changing consequences that under 16s are very unlikely to fully grasp. At the hearing Professor Sophie Scott, director of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, said “it is my view that even if the risks are well explained […] in the light of the scientific literature […] it is very possible for an adolescent to be unable to fully grasp the implications of puberty-blocking treatment.” The judges agree: “There is no age-appropriate way to explain to many of these children what losing their fertility or full sexual function may mean to them in later years.”
Scott testified in a 2023 deposition for the defendant in Dekker v. Weida. Plaintiffs argued:
Professor Scott is not qualified to offer the opinions stated in her report. She opines that puberty delaying medication administered to teenagers “may have” unknown, negative effects on brain development. Report, ¶ 15 (Exhibit A). She also believes without any scientific support that it is “very possible” that teenagers cannot “fully grasp the implications of puberty blocking treatment.” Id. ¶ 16. But Professor Scott is not qualified to give these opinions because she has never treated patients with gender dysphoria (at any age) given that she is not a medical provider of any kind, nor has she administered or studied the effects of puberty delaying treatment in any clinical or academic setting. She has never written on these subjects either— except on Twitter.
Scott contributed to the 2023 anti-trans book Sex and Gender: A Contemporary Reader with a chapter titled “Sex and the Brain: I Still Haven’t Found What I Wasn’t Looking For.”
References
Sullivan, Alice; Todd, Selina [Eds.] (2023). Sex and Gender: A Contemporary Reader. Taylor & Francis, ISBN 9781032261195
Jones, Zinnia (2024). Sophie K. Scott. Atomic Gender https://atomicgender.com/people/sophie-k-scott/
United States District Court, Northern District of Florida, Tallahassee Division (April 7, 2023). Plaintiffs’ Motion to Exclude Expert Testimony of Sophie Scott, Ph.D., And Supporting Memorandum of Law. in Dekker v. Weida, Case No. 4:22-cv-00325-RH-MAF
https://lambdalegal.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/2023-04-07-DKT-119-Motion-in-Limine-to-Exclude-Expert-Testimony-of-Sophie-Scott-Ph.D.-and-Supporting-Memorandum-of-Law.pdf
United States District Court, Northern District of Florida, Tallahassee Division (March 20, 2023). Deposition of Sophie Scott, Ph.D. in Dekker v. Weida, Case No. 4:22-cv-00325-RH-MAF (ECF no. 119-3) https://transgender.agency/files/dekker-v-weida/119-3.pdf
Wheater, Emily; Pasternack, Ellen (December 7, 2020). The child trans judgement is a step in the right direction. The Critic https://thecritic.co.uk/the-child-trans-judgement-is-a-step-in-the-right-direction/
Ditum, Sarah (May 2016). What is gender, anyway? The New Statesman https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2016/05/what-is-gender-anyway
Resources
Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)