Michal Meyer is an Israel-born writer and anti-transgender activist. Meyer is known for a credulous 2015 profile of anti-trans activist Alice Dreger, later deleted.
Background
Michal Meyer was born in February 1969. Meyer earned a bachelor’s degree from Victoria University of Wellington in 1994. Meyer was a weather forecaster in New Zealand and Fiji, then edited the Jerusalem Post Magazine from 2001 to 2003. During graduate school, Meyer edited the History of Science Society newsletter from 2003 to 2009. Meyer earned a doctorate from University of Florida in 2009.
Meyer was editor of Distillations magazine from 2009 to 2022.
Promotion of Alice Dreger (2015)
While editor of Distillations, Meyer published a glowing review of Galileo’s Middle Finger by anti-trans activist Alice Dreger. Meyer represents Dreger’s core audience: mediocre academics of a certain age who see themselves in Dreger’s fabrications. Meyer wants to believe Dreger is a fearless teller of “the truth,” because it panders to all of Meyer’s biases and fantasies.
Meyer described the book as “a love letter to evidence-based research done well.” Meyer parrots Dreger’s attacks on pediatrician Maria New and dutifully summarizes Dreger’s support of unethical behavior scientists J. Michael Bailey and Napoleon Chagnon.
After Meyer left Science History Institute in 2022, the article was quietly removed.
References
Meyer, Michal (December 20, 2015). Identity Politics. Distillations https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/magazine/identity-politics [archive]
Resources
LinkedIn (linkedin.com)
Twitter (twitter.com)
Science History Institute (sciencehistory.org)