Under pressure, a journal once notable for its courage retracts a major paper on the social roots of gender-related distress—all over a minor, inconsistently applied technicality.
Jun 28, 2023·edited Jun 28, 2023Liked by Colin Wright
This is my favorite thing I have read all week--it reads almost like a true-crime piece, and I am all about those. Of course, the stakes are lower...or are they?
I move in some very leftie circles, and so I have gotten to know a number of activists. One thing I have learned about activists is that victory does not sate; it encourages. They won't say, "We got the Diaz/Bailey paper retracted, well done, all. Let's hit the pub." They will sharpen their daggers and go after the next paper whose conclusions do not match their ideological convictions, and the next one after that. Activists are also indefatigable, and will advocate long after normal people have throw up their hands because they want to, you know, sleep and eat and live a life. ASB may think it has dodged a bullet, but it has really just reloaded the gun that fired it. And that does not bode well for scientific publishing.
I'm not dumping on activists here, who often do good and necessary work. However, activists in a discussion should have a voice, not a veto.*
Jun 28, 2023·edited Jun 28, 2023Liked by Colin Wright
Thank you Colin for A superb article about an increasingly Important issue.. legitimate scientific debate and bona fide data regarding the Trans epidemic.. Jennifer Bilek has been researching the origins and various dimensions of this social contagion for about 4 years, well worth reading.. Not surprisingly Americas Big Pharma/Medical/ Industrial complex has been a key driver making over 11 Billion on Trans surgery/medicine last year alone.. truly ruthless Corporate predators feeding on our youth..
That’s a beautiful scientific paper, and a a great piece of sleuthing and reporting.
I’ve been familiar with Dr. Littman’s work and her RODG hypothesis since it first came out. I suspected foul play and pressure from the wealthy, powerful, and well connected trans lobby in trying to quash the study and its findings from the start. I no longer have to just suspect, I know about what went on behind the scenes, especially that Diaz and Bailey with their study arriving at a very similar conclusion with 6 times the sample size, and the publishers of Littman’s work refusing to publish D&B’s study for spurious reasons.
In a world of uncorrupted scientific inquiry this would not be happening. Unfortunately, this isn’t such a world, and we have to fight to get it back. I now feel that I‘ve been well supplied with ammo the next time someone flippantly flings that “But It’s been debunked” nonsense at me.
We have stacked up too many over-educated and unqualified (from a real life and real work experience perspective) from a too large and too well funded higher-learning industry. These new inserts into the high-status ranking pursuit game are finding a lot of competition for attention. And so they naturally drift to pathways that are less "science ethics" and more about likes, clicks and money.
This is the reason that most of our institutions run by the educated elite are no longer trusted. The people working and controlling those institutions are no longer calm public servants enjoying a good enough economic life and a feeling of smug elitism because they hold information nobody else has.
Then the Internet and masses of new college graduates that expect instant status and the gig is not longer calm. It is like a Rube Goldberg machine where there are too many marbles stacked in the hopper looking for path down to success, and the marbles are rebelling by building their own pathways that crash and wreck things on the way down.
The fix is to reform higher learning... the grants and student loans must go except for degrees that are connected with real job opportunities. Schools with lower tuition costs and better economic outcomes for their students should be subsidized to provide student aid to low income students. Those that teach victim studies and CRT should do it from their higher tuition and endowments.
We need to be sending more students to industrial arts schools, and even scientists should have a year or two working with their hands. Say building low income housing, or doing overseas work to help build clean water supplies etc. They can bank money/credits for their work that helps fund their education.
Dear Colin, thank you for such an insightful look into what fair-minded realistic scientists/researchers are running into. I am sitting here, astounded, realizing how far reaching the tentacles of censorship be. Being grateful for saving graces such as SEGM, and Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licenses, for through them the important work of Bailey and Diaz will continue. I am so grateful for them, and all the others (such as yourself) who refuse to capitulate to nonsense.
Wow! What a betrayal of the very idea of empirical science. It's both horrifying and deeply depressing. Ditto for "Nature" regarding Transgenderism and Ukraine.
So it is taboo to investigate the origins on the trans social contagion? Freud wrote a book about taboos and their origin: "Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics." He thought taboos originated in early sexual development with the projection of the inner mental life on to the external world, and their persistence past childhood caused obsessive and delusional thinking. It is hilarious that a journal dedicated to sexual development would become a poster child for the mental lives of savages and neurotics. Our society has become littered with taboo topics about race and sexuality. The solution is to dissolve all those magical taboos and return to honest assessments of the world around us. Otherwise we will have to continue living in a world run by savages and neurotics.
It is in the 12 Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky. Classic activist playbook tactic to attack the person, or exploit a technicality rather than debate the issue at hand.
Once again, I shall draw a distinction between the 'old-fashioned' gender dyphorics, who have complained about their sex/gender since early childhood, and those who constitute the 5,000% increase in referrals seen over the last few years: they are different populations. The old-fashioned kind may need to transition in some cases, but we know that most of them desist and become, usually, gay adults. The (mostly) female autistic teens who decide, out of the blue, in entire peer groups, to suddenly declare their dysphoria are sufficiently different that they require a different approach. I believe that most of them will not only desist, but regret hurried choices made during the maelstrom of puberty. They require more than watch and wait, they require therapy to understand what has suddenly happened to them. To immediately affirm and perform irreversible hormonal and surgical treatments will violate primum non nocere egregiously.
Activists are trying to prevent any study of this group, and even recognition of them as individuals with special requirements for treatment. The reasons for this are plain to everyone: it is to normalise a new paradigm of gender for political reasons. Whenever someone, and particularly someone with a political axe to grind, says something must not be studied or named, you know the issue is not a scientific one. This should be resisted.
This is my favorite thing I have read all week--it reads almost like a true-crime piece, and I am all about those. Of course, the stakes are lower...or are they?
I move in some very leftie circles, and so I have gotten to know a number of activists. One thing I have learned about activists is that victory does not sate; it encourages. They won't say, "We got the Diaz/Bailey paper retracted, well done, all. Let's hit the pub." They will sharpen their daggers and go after the next paper whose conclusions do not match their ideological convictions, and the next one after that. Activists are also indefatigable, and will advocate long after normal people have throw up their hands because they want to, you know, sleep and eat and live a life. ASB may think it has dodged a bullet, but it has really just reloaded the gun that fired it. And that does not bode well for scientific publishing.
I'm not dumping on activists here, who often do good and necessary work. However, activists in a discussion should have a voice, not a veto.*
*Stolen from some source I can't now recall.
Suppressing the evidence won't make it go away.
Thank you Colin for A superb article about an increasingly Important issue.. legitimate scientific debate and bona fide data regarding the Trans epidemic.. Jennifer Bilek has been researching the origins and various dimensions of this social contagion for about 4 years, well worth reading.. Not surprisingly Americas Big Pharma/Medical/ Industrial complex has been a key driver making over 11 Billion on Trans surgery/medicine last year alone.. truly ruthless Corporate predators feeding on our youth..
That’s a beautiful scientific paper, and a a great piece of sleuthing and reporting.
I’ve been familiar with Dr. Littman’s work and her RODG hypothesis since it first came out. I suspected foul play and pressure from the wealthy, powerful, and well connected trans lobby in trying to quash the study and its findings from the start. I no longer have to just suspect, I know about what went on behind the scenes, especially that Diaz and Bailey with their study arriving at a very similar conclusion with 6 times the sample size, and the publishers of Littman’s work refusing to publish D&B’s study for spurious reasons.
In a world of uncorrupted scientific inquiry this would not be happening. Unfortunately, this isn’t such a world, and we have to fight to get it back. I now feel that I‘ve been well supplied with ammo the next time someone flippantly flings that “But It’s been debunked” nonsense at me.
Scientific/medical/other professional journals should not succumb to any bullying. Period.
So let's take a page from the activist playbook. How do we organize the retraction of a few thousand scientific papers?
"Make the enemy play by his own set of rules" -- Saul Alinsky
I think the recent article from N.S. Lyons "The Change Merchants" https://substack.com/inbox/post/130539159 nails what is going on.
We have stacked up too many over-educated and unqualified (from a real life and real work experience perspective) from a too large and too well funded higher-learning industry. These new inserts into the high-status ranking pursuit game are finding a lot of competition for attention. And so they naturally drift to pathways that are less "science ethics" and more about likes, clicks and money.
This is the reason that most of our institutions run by the educated elite are no longer trusted. The people working and controlling those institutions are no longer calm public servants enjoying a good enough economic life and a feeling of smug elitism because they hold information nobody else has.
Then the Internet and masses of new college graduates that expect instant status and the gig is not longer calm. It is like a Rube Goldberg machine where there are too many marbles stacked in the hopper looking for path down to success, and the marbles are rebelling by building their own pathways that crash and wreck things on the way down.
The fix is to reform higher learning... the grants and student loans must go except for degrees that are connected with real job opportunities. Schools with lower tuition costs and better economic outcomes for their students should be subsidized to provide student aid to low income students. Those that teach victim studies and CRT should do it from their higher tuition and endowments.
We need to be sending more students to industrial arts schools, and even scientists should have a year or two working with their hands. Say building low income housing, or doing overseas work to help build clean water supplies etc. They can bank money/credits for their work that helps fund their education.
Dear Colin, thank you for such an insightful look into what fair-minded realistic scientists/researchers are running into. I am sitting here, astounded, realizing how far reaching the tentacles of censorship be. Being grateful for saving graces such as SEGM, and Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licenses, for through them the important work of Bailey and Diaz will continue. I am so grateful for them, and all the others (such as yourself) who refuse to capitulate to nonsense.
Love, Indio.
Wow! What a betrayal of the very idea of empirical science. It's both horrifying and deeply depressing. Ditto for "Nature" regarding Transgenderism and Ukraine.
"ASB is a primary target for activist researchers who will not tolerate dissent from their views"
A minor point, but do the activists deserve to be called researchers? One wants to be charitable but ...
Publication of the names of the individuals and entities pushing censorship is necessary to counter their efforts. Please list
So it is taboo to investigate the origins on the trans social contagion? Freud wrote a book about taboos and their origin: "Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics." He thought taboos originated in early sexual development with the projection of the inner mental life on to the external world, and their persistence past childhood caused obsessive and delusional thinking. It is hilarious that a journal dedicated to sexual development would become a poster child for the mental lives of savages and neurotics. Our society has become littered with taboo topics about race and sexuality. The solution is to dissolve all those magical taboos and return to honest assessments of the world around us. Otherwise we will have to continue living in a world run by savages and neurotics.
Excellent article, consider reading this alongside:
https://unherd.com/2023/06/is-liberal-society-making-us-ill/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups[0]=18743&tl_period_type=3&mc_cid=7c57172f68&mc_eid=9eb891c731
Here is an interesting and insightful article. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/billionaire-family-pushing-synthetic-sex-identities-ssi-pritzkers
It is in the 12 Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky. Classic activist playbook tactic to attack the person, or exploit a technicality rather than debate the issue at hand.
Once again, I shall draw a distinction between the 'old-fashioned' gender dyphorics, who have complained about their sex/gender since early childhood, and those who constitute the 5,000% increase in referrals seen over the last few years: they are different populations. The old-fashioned kind may need to transition in some cases, but we know that most of them desist and become, usually, gay adults. The (mostly) female autistic teens who decide, out of the blue, in entire peer groups, to suddenly declare their dysphoria are sufficiently different that they require a different approach. I believe that most of them will not only desist, but regret hurried choices made during the maelstrom of puberty. They require more than watch and wait, they require therapy to understand what has suddenly happened to them. To immediately affirm and perform irreversible hormonal and surgical treatments will violate primum non nocere egregiously.
Activists are trying to prevent any study of this group, and even recognition of them as individuals with special requirements for treatment. The reasons for this are plain to everyone: it is to normalise a new paradigm of gender for political reasons. Whenever someone, and particularly someone with a political axe to grind, says something must not be studied or named, you know the issue is not a scientific one. This should be resisted.