The entire Reddit post is absolutely worth reading. Unlike many "researchers" who allow themselves to be led by the dogma and then somehow twist the data to suit the preferred narrative (to the extent of blatantly misinterpreting the said data), the writer lets the evidence leads to the conclusions, wherever they might point to. It is al…
The entire Reddit post is absolutely worth reading. Unlike many "researchers" who allow themselves to be led by the dogma and then somehow twist the data to suit the preferred narrative (to the extent of blatantly misinterpreting the said data), the writer lets the evidence leads to the conclusions, wherever they might point to. It is also so refreshing to see a researcher who not only understands the research methods (statistics as applied to the biological sciences) but also their applicability to the specific discipline (psychology and psychiatry), with the discipline's own peculiarities and unknowns (see the very wise discussion on how a questionnaire in the "knowledge of Japanese" can lead to very misleading conclusions depending on the respondent's actual level and interest in Japanese).
Stated simply, the writer understands the subject deeply. And the depth of knowledge comes from not only writing a few papers fresh out of school by using "some data from somewhere" (more about it in the next paragraph) but also from the clinical experience that comes from treating a lot of patients in the specific subject area of GD. For example, see his later discussion refuting the "minority stress" hypothesis that he tackles in a separate post to answer a question from another poster (https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/15hhliu/the_chen_2023_paper_raises_serious_concerns_about/jur62be/). His takedown is simple and elegant: first, he argues the methodological issue - the unfalsifiability of the thesis, in that it "creates a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose dynamic where even negative results can be spun as positive." And second, from a practical point of view, it really does not matter if the depression from GD is now replaced by depression from being a member of a minority. (And finally, the writer makes sure that especially in the context of Chen et al. (2023), the minority stress is a moot point: "the parents in Chen 2023 were all supportive enough to consent to GAH in their kids, and Boston, LA, SF and Chicago are some of the most trans-friendly places you can hope to find in America." This is a comment that should be read in its entirety.
A final point I wished to make comes from another commenter (https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/15hhliu/the_chen_2023_paper_raises_serious_concerns_about/juq4fzv/), who conducts a knowledgeable overview of the entire "research" in the area, starting with the WPATH SOC. But more importantly, this commenter does a thorough takedown of the 2015 US Transgender Survey, whose responses have driven the overwhelming junk of "research" in the area, most famously by Jack Turban, who has wrung the data one way and another to create a series of research papers that are not worth the bits that they occupy on the internet servers they pollute: "This has been cited about 3500 times in the literature and has informed every single US policy impacting transgender life. If you look at the original article, it's a complete joke. They used a grab sampling method. Basically an internet survey with no verification, asking people to invite others to fill out the survey. So a snowball sampling methods, a non-probability sampling method that you can not use to infer conclusions from a wider population...some of the questions seemed almost designed to create demand bias (when the participants are aware of the researcher's aims and thus more likely to answer in a way that supports the investigator's goals). Not to mention, some of the findings are nonsensical. 73% of respondents said they started puberty blockers after the age of 18. Obviously, that's simply not true." Another comment that should be read in its entirety.
This is a serious attack on the discipline coming from the inside rather than from "transphobe parents." There are a lot of dissident voices within the discipline and it seems that they are no longer keeping their voices down. A revolution becomes successful only when people inside decide to join the dissidents. Socially and politically, too, the mood seems to have changed - see for example NYT's uncritical coverage of the critics in the article that covered the decision by the AAP to do a systematic review of the literature, or the sports bodies coming to their senses and making various women's sports for women only (thank you, Lia Thomas). Or the fact that politically, the issue is becoming a baggage for the Democrats as people increasingly see the egregious examples of this ideology (https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/the-democratic-party-left-vs-the). This is hopeful.
The entire Reddit post is absolutely worth reading. Unlike many "researchers" who allow themselves to be led by the dogma and then somehow twist the data to suit the preferred narrative (to the extent of blatantly misinterpreting the said data), the writer lets the evidence leads to the conclusions, wherever they might point to. It is also so refreshing to see a researcher who not only understands the research methods (statistics as applied to the biological sciences) but also their applicability to the specific discipline (psychology and psychiatry), with the discipline's own peculiarities and unknowns (see the very wise discussion on how a questionnaire in the "knowledge of Japanese" can lead to very misleading conclusions depending on the respondent's actual level and interest in Japanese).
Stated simply, the writer understands the subject deeply. And the depth of knowledge comes from not only writing a few papers fresh out of school by using "some data from somewhere" (more about it in the next paragraph) but also from the clinical experience that comes from treating a lot of patients in the specific subject area of GD. For example, see his later discussion refuting the "minority stress" hypothesis that he tackles in a separate post to answer a question from another poster (https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/15hhliu/the_chen_2023_paper_raises_serious_concerns_about/jur62be/). His takedown is simple and elegant: first, he argues the methodological issue - the unfalsifiability of the thesis, in that it "creates a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose dynamic where even negative results can be spun as positive." And second, from a practical point of view, it really does not matter if the depression from GD is now replaced by depression from being a member of a minority. (And finally, the writer makes sure that especially in the context of Chen et al. (2023), the minority stress is a moot point: "the parents in Chen 2023 were all supportive enough to consent to GAH in their kids, and Boston, LA, SF and Chicago are some of the most trans-friendly places you can hope to find in America." This is a comment that should be read in its entirety.
A final point I wished to make comes from another commenter (https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/15hhliu/the_chen_2023_paper_raises_serious_concerns_about/juq4fzv/), who conducts a knowledgeable overview of the entire "research" in the area, starting with the WPATH SOC. But more importantly, this commenter does a thorough takedown of the 2015 US Transgender Survey, whose responses have driven the overwhelming junk of "research" in the area, most famously by Jack Turban, who has wrung the data one way and another to create a series of research papers that are not worth the bits that they occupy on the internet servers they pollute: "This has been cited about 3500 times in the literature and has informed every single US policy impacting transgender life. If you look at the original article, it's a complete joke. They used a grab sampling method. Basically an internet survey with no verification, asking people to invite others to fill out the survey. So a snowball sampling methods, a non-probability sampling method that you can not use to infer conclusions from a wider population...some of the questions seemed almost designed to create demand bias (when the participants are aware of the researcher's aims and thus more likely to answer in a way that supports the investigator's goals). Not to mention, some of the findings are nonsensical. 73% of respondents said they started puberty blockers after the age of 18. Obviously, that's simply not true." Another comment that should be read in its entirety.
This is a serious attack on the discipline coming from the inside rather than from "transphobe parents." There are a lot of dissident voices within the discipline and it seems that they are no longer keeping their voices down. A revolution becomes successful only when people inside decide to join the dissidents. Socially and politically, too, the mood seems to have changed - see for example NYT's uncritical coverage of the critics in the article that covered the decision by the AAP to do a systematic review of the literature, or the sports bodies coming to their senses and making various women's sports for women only (thank you, Lia Thomas). Or the fact that politically, the issue is becoming a baggage for the Democrats as people increasingly see the egregious examples of this ideology (https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/the-democratic-party-left-vs-the). This is hopeful.