I blogged before about a study out of Brown University, which concluded that transgender behavior in children developed rapidly as a result of factors like peer pressures, social media, mental disorders, trauma, etc. I.e. – it’s not genetic. Brown University retracted it because some people complained. Well, it’s now been republished. Let’s see if there were any mistakes found.
Here’s how the study was first reported by Science Daily:
This month, a Brown University researcher published the first study to empirically describe teens and young adults who did not have symptoms of gender dysphoria during childhood but who were observed by their parents to rapidly develop gender dysphoria symptoms over days, weeks or months during or after puberty.
[…]The study was published on Aug. 16 in PLOS ONE.
Peer pressure / The Internet:
The pattern of clusters of teens in friend groups becoming transgender-identified, the group dynamics of these friend groups and the types of advice viewed online led her to the hypothesis that friends and online sources could spread certain beliefs.
[….]”Of the parents who provided information about their child’s friendship group, about a third responded that more than half of the kids in the friendship group became transgender-identified,” Littman said. “A group with 50 percent of its members becoming transgender-identified represents a rate that is more 70 times the expected prevalence for young adults.”
Mental disorders / traumatic events:
Additionally, 62 percent of parents reported their teen or young adult had one or more diagnoses of a psychiatric disorder or neurodevelopmental disability before the onset of gender dysphoria. Forty-eight percent reported that their child had experienced a traumatic or stressful event prior to the onset of their gender dysphoria, including being bullied, sexually assaulted or having their parents get divorced.
This article at The Federalist had a few examples to illustrate the conclusion of the study. I’ll pick two.
The study includes other eye-opening information, such as case studies of several children’s stories.
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“A 14-year-old natal female and three of her natal female friends were taking group lessons together with a very popular coach. The coach came out as transgender, and, within one year, all four students announced they were also transgender.”
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“A 14-year-old natal female and three of her natal female friends are part of a larger friend group that spends much of their time talking about gender and sexuality. The three natal female friends all announced they were trans boys and chose similar masculine names. After spending time with these three friends, the 14-year-old natal female announced that she was also a trans boy.”
I thought this quote from that article was interesting as well, given the culture’s obsession with “bullying”, which is a nebulous term that can mean actual bullying, or mere disagreement.
The study also may indicate that school “anti-bullying” programs typically created by LGBT activist organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign may help accelerate children identifying as transgender by pushing peers and authority figures to profusely express their support.
Coming out as transgender means instant fame and popularity, because you’re a victim, and everyone has to be nice to you… or else:
“Great increase in popularity among the student body at large. Being trans is a gold star in the eyes of other teens,” wrote one parent on the study response form. Another wrote, “not so much ‘popularity’ increasing as ‘status’ … also she became untouchable in terms of bullying in school as teachers who ignored homophobic bullying …are now all at pains to be hot on the heels of any trans bullying.”
Well, we’ve had a delay of 6 months for Littman to answer her critics and submit her work to even more extensive peer-review. And now the study has been re-published in PLOS One. So were there any mistakes in it? Does it still reach the same conclusions?
The College Fix reports:
Here’s what actually changed, according to PLOS One:
Other than the addition of a few missing values in Table 13, the Results section is unchanged in the updated version of the article.
So, the results didn’t change, and that means that the conclusions stand. So what was the problem originally? The problem originally was that the research didn’t confirm the biased politically correct views of the secular leftists.
She lost her consulting job anyway
However, that’s not the whole story. I looked up her interview from this week on Quillette, and she got to tell her side of the story.
Two parts stood out to me.
This part, where she contrasted the favoral response of research scientists and clinical scientists with the angry outbursts of a social worker:
The third presentation was the smallest and least research-oriented audience of the three. In contrast to the other presentations, the vast majority of the comments were made by one person who I later learned was a social worker. Again, I tried to answer politely with comments such as “Actually, the scientific literature says the following…”; “Actually, social media can be both a positive and a negative influence, not just positive…”; “Actually, this method of data collection has been used in many studies…” But because her interruptions were so frequent and argumentative in nature, it quickly created a tense and adversarial tone in the room.
This part, where she explains the mob that contacted her employers and got her fired:
The worst outcome for me personally was losing my consulting job over this issue. Shortly after my paper came out, some local clinicians who are opposed to my research wrote a letter of complaint about the work and demanded that I be fired immediately. It was an interesting demand, as my consulting work was unrelated to gender dysphoria. Nonetheless, I was called in to several meetings to answer questions about my research… After the meetings, the leadership explained to me that their decision not to renew my contract was not related to the quality of my work but rather that they, as an agency, needed to remain neutral and not take sides regarding the issues raised in the letter.
Do you know what this whole episode reminded me of? It reminded me of the stories of scientists who publish work critical of Darwinian evolution, and work critical of the man-made catastophic global warming hypothesis. It seems as if the viewpoints of secular leftists are decide by emotions, and then defended with rage, coercion and harassment. What does it say about secular leftism that they respond to scientific progress with rage and censorship?
