5 ms·

U.S. Study on Puberty Blockers Goes Unpublished Because of Politics, Doctor Says

45 points by 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

SanjayMehta 2y ago
https://archive.ph/2024.10.23-145513/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/science/puberty-blockers-olson-kennedy.html https://archive.ph/2024.10.23-145513/https://www.nytimes.com...
Bostonian 2y ago
Subtitle: "The leader of the long-running study said that the drugs did not improve mental health in children with gender distress and that the finding might be weaponized by opponents of the care." Here "weaponize" means use evidence to reach policy conclusions the author does not like.
- Spivak 2y ago
  No it doesn't, it means cited in a misleading manner to make marketing campaigns and drive policy counter to the actual take-aways of the study. Go look up the "trans women have a male-pattern of violence" study as a perfect example of weaponizing scientific results to the point where the author had to come out to correct folks that that isn't at all what the study said. If you want gross misinterpretation of scientific results in a different field go look up the "99% of people don't become addicted to oxy" study whose weaponization for policy outcomes is credited for starting the opioid crisis. Your priors for "how puberty blockers affect mental health outcomes" should be glued to "doesn't make it better (how could it), doesn't make it worse" and that's what they're claiming the study showed.
  - IIlIIllIIl 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - slater 2y ago
      If you have to keep making new accounts to spread your transphobia, at what point do you reconsider your positions?
      - IIlIIllIIl 2y ago
        [flagged]
        slater 2y ago
        Nice dodge.
    - Spivak 2y ago
      > their concept of women typically consists of a collection of sexist stereotypes Perhaps despite my better judgment, I'm willing to give this one good-faith reply. Your observation is correct, you're identifying something real but you have the explanation wrong. There is another group of women who also fit this description— children. Girls and teenagers also fall into a lot of sexist stereotypes. I certainly did when I was little playing house, dressing up as a princess. I wore way too much makeup when I was first allowed to. But that process is how we grow, and it's okay because we're kids and everyone else is going through it too. Trans women, whether they want to or not, go through the same phases except as adults. Only worse because after so long of denying themselves any kind of femininity they tend to overdo it a bit. And because newly out trans women are the most visible it becomes all people really know. And look, it's super cringe I agree with you, but they're learning how to be adult women just like we did, and they grow out of it and into their own just like we did.
      - blueflow 2y ago
        This was a good answer. I found the thinking lines of some of my MtF peers really apalling.
  - mapt 2y ago
    In science, you often find what you look for. "Are Jews more predisposed to financial fraud than non-Jews?" Do you want the answer to that question? How confident are you that you want it? What do you think are the odds that launching that study will benefit the world? What statistical test would you prefer, and what is the balance between type 1 and type 2 error rates? What sort of group is likely to want to fund that study? If you perform 30 of these studies and find that for P>0.05, 3 of them do show a statistically significant result, how do you think that is going to impact society? Do you think it will mean the same thing to scientists as to non-scientists? Acknowledging that society incorporates a longstanding war of dueling narratives, and that scientific studies are a part of that, becomes an unfortunate necessity. I have watched geeky friends go from "Science must prevail over politics" to alt-right eugenicists, and I have watched alt-right eugenicists weaponize "Science must prevail over politics" for the sake of promoting what looks more than a little bit like ethnic cleansing. It is often easier for a group to make obviously poor decisions due to internal conflict, than for an individual who can consolidate a worldview. As a collective group, we have gotten a lot dumber than we were in recent memory.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
robswc 2y ago
This is one of the problems I have with modern discourse. We're suppose to trust institutions based on the idea that institutions are inherently trustworthy. Having dealt with a few I honestly think they're marginally more trustworthy _but_ are better at hiding and obscuring their biases... which is worse in some ways. Best example in the article: > “They’re in really good shape when they come in, and they’re in really good shape after two years,” said Dr. Olson-Kennedy, who runs the country’s largest youth gender clinic at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. > That conclusion seemed to contradict an earlier description of the group, in which Dr. Olson-Kennedy and her colleagues noted that one quarter of the adolescents were depressed or suicidal before treatment. Also this study is funded by the government (our taxes) and has received almost $10 million. Not releasing the results is wild and the reasoning is worse. I have almost no faith that this team won't try some sort of p-hacking to get the results they wanted to see.
- Funes- 2y ago
  >We're suppose to trust institutions based on the idea that institutions are inherently trustworthy. Trust-based systems and their consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
- ruthmarx 2y ago
  That only works with a web of independent and constant verification. These days no one checks their sources, and whole networks of people make decision to benefit their views and wants, and not to disclose facts no matter the findings.
- naming_the_user 2y ago
  The issue is that none of this stuff is objective but everyone has to pretend that it is. You have to say that people are depressed because they can’t transition, because the alternative would be to say that people who are depressed or otherwise mentally ill are more likely to do crazy things, and that’s taboo, so instead you make up a series of bizarre non sequiturs because using logic would lead to saying “banned” things. It’s like some sort of weird Soviet Union joke, 2+3=6 because we have to report that we have made 6 units of grain, even if we only made 2 in one field and 3 in another, we made 6 units of grain, it doesn’t make sense because it can’t. Same as in COVID. Masks have an effect, but we originally said they didn’t because we wanted to avoid shortages. It wasn’t factual, it was a narrative with a goal, if you look at it like a logic problem and assume that every statement is truthful you’re going to have issues.
BurningFrog 2y ago
[flagged]
- stonethrowaway 2y ago
  [flagged]
- Ralfp 2y ago
  My problem with this discussion is that when research is published backing the affirming approach to gender dysphoria, it doesnt make it to the media. But when person who published 28 papers about safety and good results of puberty blockers in dysphoric kids withelds one piece because they are worried media will grab it and run with it, exactly this happens.
  - lostmsu 2y ago
    How's that a problem? Have they never heard about the Streisand effect? What were they thinking exactly?
  - BurningFrog 2y ago
    A scientist that only publishes results supporting a political agenda and keeps quiet about the the rest is obviously not doing science and should be ignored. That of course doesn't mean you invalidate the whole research field.
- jumping_frog 2y ago
  I think these "issues" have been discussed in Television shows. Ray Barone gets the hots for the mailman https://youtu.be/9TEjtdIbdCw?si=0CYvBLMLn4DSQH3F https://youtu.be/9TEjtdIbdCw?si=0CYvBLMLn4DSQH3F
hilux 2y ago
[flagged]
- mindslight 2y ago
  > In case anyone missed it, I'd like to point out the obvious: her professional reputation, and her paycheck (i.e. her grants), depend on a continued supply of unhappy gender-transitioning children. This kind of knee jerk conspiratorial nonsense is exactly why reactionaries share blame for making this into a needlessly politicized shit show. It is indeed anti-scientific to hold back the study, just like it's anti-scientific to latch on to one result and use it to support the reactionary panic narrative. Just like covid and climate change before it, once we're here we've all lost. Do better and maybe we can manage to walk the fine line of truth at the heart of the matter, because neither extremist camp has it right.
  - hilux 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - mindslight 2y ago
      Regardless of literal truth, it puts the focus in the wrong place. Your emphasis makes it so the only conclusion is that no experts can trusted. With the complexity and interconnectedness of modern society this is essentially untenable, but yet the simplicity appeals to people's gut feelings. Meanwhile compromise and middlegrounds are boring. This is the basic anti-intellectualism powering the cancer that devoured the republican party [0]. So despite your seemingly only trying to criticize the excesses of your closer camp, you've inadvertently added to the polarized environment. If we can no longer assume that people who have spent their careers studying things and developing nuanced opinions are closer to right than wrong, then for every question there is but two possible answers. [0] and one of the main reasons it's no longer appropriate to call them conservative so instead I use Moldbug's own word reactionary. Meanwhile the democratic party is checking most conservative boxes these days. This also trivially explains things like the "hyper liberalization" of college campuses and tone policing in general - it's actually a standard hallmark of conservatism.
0xdeadfa65 2y ago
[dead]
ttpphd 2y ago
Puberty blockers did not lead to mental health improvements, she said, most likely because the children were already doing well when the study began. “They’re in really good shape when they come in, and they’re in really good shape after two years,” said Dr. Olson-Kennedy, who runs the country’s largest youth gender clinic at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. Ok so there was no "improvement" because they were doing fine already. What's the problem here?
- TexanFeller 2y ago
  If they were doing fine before then why was a significant medical intervention with possibly irreversible effects warranted? I can't make sense of the premise.
  - kemotep 2y ago
    Puberty blockers are not irreversible. Children who experience precocious puberty have been going on puberty blockers for decades. They take them for a few years and then get off them to start puberty at a more appropriate age.
  - trescenzi 2y ago
    Puberty blockers are intended to be reversible. Their purpose is to defer puberty until the point that it would be more appropriate. They are commonly used with children who begin puberty too early, like single digit years. The child is then take off of the blocker and things proceed as normal. This has decades of study and use. In trans kids the purpose is to buy time in a way that is reversible. Reversibility is the point. If a child says “I might want to medically transition” they can defer their normal puberty think on if they want to make an irreversible decision and then if they don’t the blockers are ceased and they continue life as normal. Edit: I missed the point about the premise as well. We do this for the same reason we encourage self expression in all children. Expressing yourself and playing with that expression is an incredibly important part of childhood. Puberty blockers enable a child, an incredibly small number of them who’ve already shown a lot of interest in it, to explore a side of themselves that is potentially going to be erased without much risk at all.
Quarondeau 2y ago
Aren't puberty blockers primarily meant to prevent children with gender dysphoria from experiencing the physical disadvantages of going through the puberty of the wrong sex? Obviously a study where children are given the puberty blockers won't be able to measure the impact of all the harmful effects that were prevented (neither physical nor mental health-wise). The way the article is worded, it almost sounds like they were expecting them to work like mood enhancers. I mean, it's somewhat interesting that there were different outcomes in both studies, but it doesn't speak in any way against the use of puberty blockers.
- jadamson 2y ago
  The study that got published included children from 12 to 16 at time of starting on blockers. A child at 16 is going to have gone through a substantial portion of the 'wrong' puberty already. Are their outcomes better/worse than children who start them earlier? If this study found that it makes no difference, it would suggest that blockers are not achieving the very thing you say they're intended for.
locopati 2y ago
a fact check from Erin Reed https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/fact-check-new-york-times-publishes https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/fact-check-new-york-times...
- llollollol 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - locopati 2y ago
    her, asshole
    - llollollol 2y ago
      [flagged]
  - locopati 2y ago
    also go fuck yourself with your child mutilation bullshit
    - llollollol 2y ago
      [flagged]

45 points by 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

https://archive.ph/2024.10.23-145513/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/science/puberty-blockers-olson-kennedy.html https://archive.ph/2024.10.23-145513/https://www.nytimes.com...

Bostonian 2y ago

Subtitle: "The leader of the long-running study said that the drugs did not improve mental health in children with gender distress and that the finding might be weaponized by opponents of the care." Here "weaponize" means use evidence to reach policy conclusions the author does not like.

Spivak 2y ago
No it doesn't, it means cited in a misleading manner to make marketing campaigns and drive policy counter to the actual take-aways of the study. Go look up the "trans women have a male-pattern of violence" study as a perfect example of weaponizing scientific results to the point where the author had to come out to correct folks that that isn't at all what the study said. If you want gross misinterpretation of scientific results in a different field go look up the "99% of people don't become addicted to oxy" study whose weaponization for policy outcomes is credited for starting the opioid crisis. Your priors for "how puberty blockers affect mental health outcomes" should be glued to "doesn't make it better (how could it), doesn't make it worse" and that's what they're claiming the study showed.
- IIlIIllIIl 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - slater 2y ago
    If you have to keep making new accounts to spread your transphobia, at what point do you reconsider your positions?
    - IIlIIllIIl 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - slater 2y ago
        Nice dodge.
  - Spivak 2y ago
    > their concept of women typically consists of a collection of sexist stereotypes Perhaps despite my better judgment, I'm willing to give this one good-faith reply. Your observation is correct, you're identifying something real but you have the explanation wrong. There is another group of women who also fit this description— children. Girls and teenagers also fall into a lot of sexist stereotypes. I certainly did when I was little playing house, dressing up as a princess. I wore way too much makeup when I was first allowed to. But that process is how we grow, and it's okay because we're kids and everyone else is going through it too. Trans women, whether they want to or not, go through the same phases except as adults. Only worse because after so long of denying themselves any kind of femininity they tend to overdo it a bit. And because newly out trans women are the most visible it becomes all people really know. And look, it's super cringe I agree with you, but they're learning how to be adult women just like we did, and they grow out of it and into their own just like we did.
    - blueflow 2y ago
      This was a good answer. I found the thinking lines of some of my MtF peers really apalling.
- mapt 2y ago
  In science, you often find what you look for. "Are Jews more predisposed to financial fraud than non-Jews?" Do you want the answer to that question? How confident are you that you want it? What do you think are the odds that launching that study will benefit the world? What statistical test would you prefer, and what is the balance between type 1 and type 2 error rates? What sort of group is likely to want to fund that study? If you perform 30 of these studies and find that for P>0.05, 3 of them do show a statistically significant result, how do you think that is going to impact society? Do you think it will mean the same thing to scientists as to non-scientists? Acknowledging that society incorporates a longstanding war of dueling narratives, and that scientific studies are a part of that, becomes an unfortunate necessity. I have watched geeky friends go from "Science must prevail over politics" to alt-right eugenicists, and I have watched alt-right eugenicists weaponize "Science must prevail over politics" for the sake of promoting what looks more than a little bit like ethnic cleansing. It is often easier for a group to make obviously poor decisions due to internal conflict, than for an individual who can consolidate a worldview. As a collective group, we have gotten a lot dumber than we were in recent memory.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

robswc 2y ago

This is one of the problems I have with modern discourse. We're suppose to trust institutions based on the idea that institutions are inherently trustworthy. Having dealt with a few I honestly think they're marginally more trustworthy _but_ are better at hiding and obscuring their biases... which is worse in some ways. Best example in the article: > “They’re in really good shape when they come in, and they’re in really good shape after two years,” said Dr. Olson-Kennedy, who runs the country’s largest youth gender clinic at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. > That conclusion seemed to contradict an earlier description of the group, in which Dr. Olson-Kennedy and her colleagues noted that one quarter of the adolescents were depressed or suicidal before treatment. Also this study is funded by the government (our taxes) and has received almost $10 million. Not releasing the results is wild and the reasoning is worse. I have almost no faith that this team won't try some sort of p-hacking to get the results they wanted to see.

Funes- 2y ago
>We're suppose to trust institutions based on the idea that institutions are inherently trustworthy. Trust-based systems and their consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
ruthmarx 2y ago
That only works with a web of independent and constant verification. These days no one checks their sources, and whole networks of people make decision to benefit their views and wants, and not to disclose facts no matter the findings.
naming_the_user 2y ago
The issue is that none of this stuff is objective but everyone has to pretend that it is. You have to say that people are depressed because they can’t transition, because the alternative would be to say that people who are depressed or otherwise mentally ill are more likely to do crazy things, and that’s taboo, so instead you make up a series of bizarre non sequiturs because using logic would lead to saying “banned” things. It’s like some sort of weird Soviet Union joke, 2+3=6 because we have to report that we have made 6 units of grain, even if we only made 2 in one field and 3 in another, we made 6 units of grain, it doesn’t make sense because it can’t. Same as in COVID. Masks have an effect, but we originally said they didn’t because we wanted to avoid shortages. It wasn’t factual, it was a narrative with a goal, if you look at it like a logic problem and assume that every statement is truthful you’re going to have issues.

BurningFrog 2y ago

[flagged]

stonethrowaway 2y ago
[flagged]
Ralfp 2y ago
My problem with this discussion is that when research is published backing the affirming approach to gender dysphoria, it doesnt make it to the media. But when person who published 28 papers about safety and good results of puberty blockers in dysphoric kids withelds one piece because they are worried media will grab it and run with it, exactly this happens.
- lostmsu 2y ago
  How's that a problem? Have they never heard about the Streisand effect? What were they thinking exactly?
- BurningFrog 2y ago
  A scientist that only publishes results supporting a political agenda and keeps quiet about the the rest is obviously not doing science and should be ignored. That of course doesn't mean you invalidate the whole research field.
jumping_frog 2y ago
I think these "issues" have been discussed in Television shows. Ray Barone gets the hots for the mailman https://youtu.be/9TEjtdIbdCw?si=0CYvBLMLn4DSQH3F https://youtu.be/9TEjtdIbdCw?si=0CYvBLMLn4DSQH3F

hilux 2y ago

[flagged]

mindslight 2y ago
> In case anyone missed it, I'd like to point out the obvious: her professional reputation, and her paycheck (i.e. her grants), depend on a continued supply of unhappy gender-transitioning children. This kind of knee jerk conspiratorial nonsense is exactly why reactionaries share blame for making this into a needlessly politicized shit show. It is indeed anti-scientific to hold back the study, just like it's anti-scientific to latch on to one result and use it to support the reactionary panic narrative. Just like covid and climate change before it, once we're here we've all lost. Do better and maybe we can manage to walk the fine line of truth at the heart of the matter, because neither extremist camp has it right.
- hilux 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - mindslight 2y ago
    Regardless of literal truth, it puts the focus in the wrong place. Your emphasis makes it so the only conclusion is that no experts can trusted. With the complexity and interconnectedness of modern society this is essentially untenable, but yet the simplicity appeals to people's gut feelings. Meanwhile compromise and middlegrounds are boring. This is the basic anti-intellectualism powering the cancer that devoured the republican party [0]. So despite your seemingly only trying to criticize the excesses of your closer camp, you've inadvertently added to the polarized environment. If we can no longer assume that people who have spent their careers studying things and developing nuanced opinions are closer to right than wrong, then for every question there is but two possible answers. [0] and one of the main reasons it's no longer appropriate to call them conservative so instead I use Moldbug's own word reactionary. Meanwhile the democratic party is checking most conservative boxes these days. This also trivially explains things like the "hyper liberalization" of college campuses and tone policing in general - it's actually a standard hallmark of conservatism.

0xdeadfa65 2y ago

[dead]

ttpphd 2y ago

Puberty blockers did not lead to mental health improvements, she said, most likely because the children were already doing well when the study began. “They’re in really good shape when they come in, and they’re in really good shape after two years,” said Dr. Olson-Kennedy, who runs the country’s largest youth gender clinic at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. Ok so there was no "improvement" because they were doing fine already. What's the problem here?

TexanFeller 2y ago
If they were doing fine before then why was a significant medical intervention with possibly irreversible effects warranted? I can't make sense of the premise.
- kemotep 2y ago
  Puberty blockers are not irreversible. Children who experience precocious puberty have been going on puberty blockers for decades. They take them for a few years and then get off them to start puberty at a more appropriate age.
- trescenzi 2y ago
  Puberty blockers are intended to be reversible. Their purpose is to defer puberty until the point that it would be more appropriate. They are commonly used with children who begin puberty too early, like single digit years. The child is then take off of the blocker and things proceed as normal. This has decades of study and use. In trans kids the purpose is to buy time in a way that is reversible. Reversibility is the point. If a child says “I might want to medically transition” they can defer their normal puberty think on if they want to make an irreversible decision and then if they don’t the blockers are ceased and they continue life as normal. Edit: I missed the point about the premise as well. We do this for the same reason we encourage self expression in all children. Expressing yourself and playing with that expression is an incredibly important part of childhood. Puberty blockers enable a child, an incredibly small number of them who’ve already shown a lot of interest in it, to explore a side of themselves that is potentially going to be erased without much risk at all.

Quarondeau 2y ago

Aren't puberty blockers primarily meant to prevent children with gender dysphoria from experiencing the physical disadvantages of going through the puberty of the wrong sex? Obviously a study where children are given the puberty blockers won't be able to measure the impact of all the harmful effects that were prevented (neither physical nor mental health-wise). The way the article is worded, it almost sounds like they were expecting them to work like mood enhancers. I mean, it's somewhat interesting that there were different outcomes in both studies, but it doesn't speak in any way against the use of puberty blockers.

jadamson 2y ago
The study that got published included children from 12 to 16 at time of starting on blockers. A child at 16 is going to have gone through a substantial portion of the 'wrong' puberty already. Are their outcomes better/worse than children who start them earlier? If this study found that it makes no difference, it would suggest that blockers are not achieving the very thing you say they're intended for.

locopati 2y ago

a fact check from Erin Reed https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/fact-check-new-york-times-publishes https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/fact-check-new-york-times...

llollollol 2y ago
[flagged]
- locopati 2y ago
  her, asshole
  - llollollol 2y ago
    [flagged]
- locopati 2y ago
  also go fuck yourself with your child mutilation bullshit
  - llollollol 2y ago
    [flagged]