12 Comments

Another paper Lisa Selin Davis may want to investigate is "Race times for transgender athletes." by Joanna Harper, Journal of Sporting Cultures and Identities 6, no. 1 (2015): 1-9. The entire paper is built on a misinterpretation of a high p value. Here the high p value was treated as affirmative evidence of no difference between two groups which is an incorrect interpretation. A more accurate interpretation is that there were not enough subjects to come to any firm conclusions either way.

Still, this paper was hailed in Science etc. as a breakthrough and before you know it, Joanna Harper was sitting on Olympic advisory committees. It is the exact same type of phenomena you describe and high time someone looked into it.

Expand full comment

Great article, Ms. Davis. I am very sympathetic to the struggles transgender people face, but that doesn't mean society (including a publicly-funded health care system) should take shortcuts past the real science just because of people's feelings.

In too many cases, research in this area is outright manipulated (not even counting all the censorship going on). Jesse Singal did a great investigation in one of the papers which support the ideology rather than the science: https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/researchers-found-puberty-blockers?s=r

Expand full comment

"If we weren’t living in such polarized times, this might have been a moment to reassess whether gender-affirming care is actually the best way to treat todays’ gender dysphoric youth. Instead, it’s yet another missed opportunity. "

It is the moment, people just don't know it yet! Your great writing is going to help that happen! Thank you!

Expand full comment

Fabulous and tragic. I still cannot figure out the reasoning behind not looking critically at what's happening. I will never understand it. Anyone who spends five serious minutes considering the issue must see how insane it is to irreversibly damage children, but looking at the poor-quality support for these "treatments" makes it all the more dumbfounding. Thank you for writing so clearly about this. The moment is coming. It must come.

Expand full comment

Wait just one minute here, are you trying to say that sexuality in adolescence may be a complicated issue and perhaps not clearly understood, particularly with respect to those who may not have a traditional orientation? If yes, then shut-up racist!

Expand full comment

I started taking Sociology and Psychology classes at University decades ago and was horrified how small the samples were on tests which became widely assumed as fact. I switched to Marketing because the data studies were better. More recently, Nurture Shock by Po Bronson was published which goes further into how bad science becomes accepted as fact. Many reviews on the book but for convenience, Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/NurtureShock-New-Thinking-About-Children/dp/0446504130

Expand full comment

A brief twitter thread that will interest fellow readers. There is a link to an article by Dr. Kathleen Stock also in the tweet.

https://twitter.com/Docstockk/status/1522647497168064519

And also this thread:

https://twitter.com/genspect/status/1522644572316311556

Expand full comment

The left is attacking every aspect of childhood with grooming, masking and jabbing. Every dictatorship seeks to take children from their parents.

Expand full comment

The necessary rule is fairly simple. No chemical or physical intervention until age eighteen. That means no interference in puberty. After you are an adult you are free to do to your body whatsoever you choose.

Expand full comment

Great article. Anybody with an ounce of common sense knows this must be stopped. And yet the fad is growing. I know five young girls (all physically normal attractive girls) who now believe they are boys or identify as they or it, non-binary, pansexual and what not. It’s really disturbing and parents are told by the school just to go along with it. It makes my blood boil.

Expand full comment

there are also other point of view for criticizing the "Dutch model", please read also my work: https://riviste.unige.it/index.php/aboutgender/article/view/1169

Gender-affirming model still based on 2014 faulty Dutch study

Authors

Daniela Danna

Expand full comment