FSU Book Launch

SEX, LIES AND STATISTICS

Professor Alice Sullivan

Date: Thursday 12 November 2026

Time: Doors open 7pm; welcome drink; event 7.30pm to 9pm; followed by a social and book signing.

Venue: Central London. Full details will be emailed 24 hours before the event.

Online: Free Zoom registration for FSU members; details in the weekly newsletter.

Book: Special pre-order price of £15, for collection on the night. Purchase alongside your ticket.

Professor Alice Sullivan's latest book, Sex, Lies and Statistics: Why We Need Evidence-Based Policy on Sex and Gender, investigates one of the most contentious and puzzling social phenomena of our time: the removal of biological sex from data, social policy and public discourse. Clear, accessible and deeply researched, the book makes a powerful case for evidence-based policymaking and honest public discussion. At a time when trust in institutions is increasingly fragile, Sullivan argues that if we are to avoid a post-truth culture, we must reject tribalism and groupthink, welcome critical voices, and reclaim the virtue of tolerance.

Professor Sullivan has stood her ground against repeated cancellation attempts and sometimes violent protests, while also defending academic freedom and the free speech of others on multiple occasions.

She will be joined by speakers who know the importance of biological sex categories in key spheres of knowledge creation and policy, such as science and medicine, official statistics and prisons. They are former prison security chief and senior civil servant Professor Ian Acheson, neuroscientist Professor Sophie Scott and the stalwart defender of academic freedom and statistical integrity, Professor Michael Biggs of the University of Oxford.

About the author

Alice Sullivan is Professor of Sociology at UCL and an internationally known expert on data collection and quantitative data analysis. For ten years she was director of one of the UK's major surveys, the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70), and she is a highly cited expert on educational, social and health inequalities. In 2024 she was commissioned to lead a government review on sex, gender and data collection.

She has particular expertise in sex-based data collection, and led the quantitative social science community in opposing a reframing of the sex question in the 2021 Census of England and Wales. She has given evidence on proposed reforms to the Gender Recognition Act to both the parliamentary Women and Equalities Committee and the Scottish Parliament's Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee.

Sullivan has written peer-reviewed papers on these issues, as well as blog posts and articles for a wider audience. With Selina Todd, she co-edited the academic collection Sex and Gender: A Contemporary Reader (Routledge, 2023). Sex, Lies and Statistics is published by Polity in 2026.

Panellists

Michael Biggs is Professor of Sociology at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Cross College. His primary research is in social movements and political sociology. His publications on sex and gender include work on the evidence for puberty suppression in children experiencing gender dysphoria, and on the influence of queer theory on prison policy. He has acted as an expert witness in legal cases in England, Australia and the United States. Most recently, he discovered serious errors in the gender-identity question used in the 2021 Census of England and Wales.

Sophie Scott is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL and Director of its Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, where she heads the Speech Communication Group. Her research addresses the neurobiology of human vocal communication, from speech and sound processing to non-verbal emotional expressions such as laughter. She was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2012 and a Fellow of the British Academy in 2016, was appointed CBE in the 2020 Birthday Honours for services to neuroscience, and received the Royal Society’s Michael Faraday Prize and Lecture in 2021. A prominent communicator of science, she presented the 2017 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, and her book The Brain: 10 Things You Should Know was published by Orion in 2022. She has spoken and written critically about “brain sex” theories of differences between male and female brains, and contributed a chapter, “Sex and the Brain: I Still Haven’t Found What I Wasn’t Looking For”, to Sex and Gender: A Contemporary Reader (Routledge, 2023), co-edited by Alice Sullivan.

Ian Acheson has written extensively on prison reform, public safety and counter-terrorism, and appears regularly on television and in other media. His book Screwed: Britain's Prison Crisis and How to Escape It was published by Biteback in April 2024. Beginning his career in HM Prison Service, he rose rapidly from front-line prison officer to head of security at HMP Wandsworth, pioneering programmes to reduce prison violence and to reintegrate drug addicts. He went on to the Home Office, where as a senior civil servant he was responsible for community safety in South West England. He is a visiting professor at the University of Staffordshire and a senior adviser at the Counter Extremism Project, a high-profile US-based NGO that promotes effective practice and innovation in countering violent extremism worldwide.

Tickets

Discounted tickets are available for FSU members at £15; non-members are welcome at £20. If you are not yet a member, join today for access to discounted tickets and online events.

The Free Speech Union is a non-partisan, mass-membership public interest body that stands up for the speech rights of its members and campaigns for free speech more widely. We champion the right of people from all walks of life to express themselves without fear of punishment or persecution.