Protecting research integrity from gender bias and political interference
- Mantoa Mokhachane
Why sex and gender cannot be ignored in research
Gender bias and the politicisation of science are undermining research integrity. A correspondence titled “Safeguarding research integrity: SAGER guidelines, research ethics, and the politics of evidence”, published in The Lancet, warns that excluding sex and gender from research compromises justice, beneficence and scientific rigour.
When women and gender?diverse people are overlooked, findings become biased, harms are missed, and evidence cannot be reliably applied across populations. Ethical and rigorous research must integrate sex and gender from design and sampling to analysis and reporting.
The overlooked responsibility of ethics committees
Research ethics committees (RECs) and institutional review boards (IRBs) are central to fairness in research, yet they often fail to require sex and gender considerations. Existing frameworks emphasise autonomy, consent and risk but do not position sex and gender as essential dimensions of justice or scientific quality. Legacy norms such as male?only study models and inconsistent institutional guidance worsen the gap. Misconceptions that gender issues relate only to women’s health further contribute to this oversight.
While the REC checklist focuses on consent, risk/benefit, privacy, vulnerable populations, sex and gender fall through the cracks. There are other reasons for this blind spot, such as legacy norms in research – predominantly male animal models, male human subjects, the average effect reporting, which masks sex difference and inconsistent guidance across institutions.
There are examples of stronger leadership. During South Africa’s HIV crisis, the Wits Research Ethics Committee, led by the late Professor Cleaton Jones, insisted that funders continue providing antiretrovirals to participants who were responding to treatment after studies ended. This collective decision by universities protected participants at a time when lifesaving medicines were not available through public systems.
Political interference
The authors of the correspondence, including researchers from the Wits Faculty of Health Sciences, warn that political ideologies, attempts to distort scientific evidence and the marginalisation of gender?responsive research are eroding public trust in science and weakening the integrity of health research. They point to historical examples where governments prioritised political narratives over scientific truth, with devastating consequences.
South Africa offers a stark reminder. Between 1997 and 2005, during the height of the HIV crisis, government denialism delayed access to life?saving antiretroviral therapy. Thousands died unnecessarily because political beliefs were allowed to supersede scientific evidence. This example illustrates the human cost of subordinating science to ideology.
Another example of this is the failure of the Abstinence, Be Faithful and Condom use (ABC) campaigns that did not draw upon gender responsive evidence to showcase that it was ineffective for many women. The ABC campaign ignored structural and social drivers of HIV infection – poverty, gender inequalities and violence that rendered women vulnerable.
Tools that strengthen equity and scientific rigour
The Sex and Gender Equity in Research (SAGER) guidelines is helping to address these gaps. SAGER promotes systematic inclusion of sex and gender across research design and reporting, reducing male?centric bias and improving scientific precision. Institutions such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) have adopted the framework, and its global reach is reflected in widespread training materials, translations and high citation rates.
The role of universities, journals and funders
What practical steps can universities, journals and funders take to safeguard research integrity and prevent ideological interference?
RECs in institutions should be the primary gatekeepers of ethical, fair, and inclusive research, ensuring that women and gender-diverse populations are not marginalised. To do this effectively, institutions should insist on SAGER implementation through their RECs, where applicable by:
- Mandating sex? and gender?relevant research questions
- Requiring sex?disaggregated data collection and gender identity data where appropriate
- Integrating SAGER checklists into ethics reviews, grants and publication processes
- Making SAGER-aligned training mandatory for researchers and students, use existing modules for training
- Embedding compliance indicators into institutional policies and monitoring progress annually.
A call for coordinated action
The message from The Lancet is clear. Gender bias and political interference threaten the foundations of ethical and reliable science. Coordination across the scientific ecosystem is needed to strengthen ethical standards and resist political interference. The research community must act collectively and decisively to protect the quality and credibility of science.