I need an academic-to-layperson translation. It seems like the basis of the critique is that the Cass report is highly biased... but it looks like it's coming to that conclusion because the underlying studies that Cass reviewed were biased? It seems to imply that Cass directed the studies, rather than just evaluated existing studies done by other people. I'm not sure I'm reading it right though.
I think its more like "the Cass report didn't follow the gold standard for the type of review they were performing", while ignoring that there are reasons in the underlying studies that made it impossible to do that.
Children don't have full bodily autonomy, and I don't think they should - it would be insane to do so. Children aren't exactly known for good decision making, and someone somewhere will absolutely decide that they think skeletons are super cool, so they want to have their nose, their ears, and their lips removed so they look like a skull. Kids are frequently very dumb.
That's the thing isn't it. Even young adults are known for their bad decision making more than their good decisions. I do have a great deal of empathy for folks experiencing gender dysphoria but in what other context does anyone think children should be making permanent life altering decisions about anything.
www.voidifremoved.co.uk
The authors believe this, because to them the purpose of allegedly “life-saving” interventions is not to improve mental wellbeing, but to fulfil cosmetic goals - and it is this fulfilment that will then consequentially improve mental health through realising one’s authentic self:
This is somewhat contradictory, in that mental health improvements are promoted as a “logical consequence” but attempting to evaluate whether this is actually true by checking to see if there are actually any mental health benefits is “misguided”.
That would be worth doing in order to document their response, or more likely, lack thereof.We could email SBM and suggest they do a piece on it. It's possible they just aren't aware.
"Mental health benefits are a logical consequence of living authentically."Embodiment Goals
Ideological attacks on the Cass Review finally find a publisher
Meh. Don't worry about it. All it means is that you're on the same side as people who recognize that the earth is not flat, even if some of those people happen to hold other views that you disagree with.
Thank you for the summary.Embodiment Goals
Ideological attacks on the Cass Review finally find a publisher
The real starting point of the critique is that, whatever methodology was used, the Cass Review and the York University team proceeded from a faulty perspective.
That is, they approached this by thinking about children and young people in distress, and investigated whether treatments provided to them did actually improve their mental health and wellbeing. This, according to the critique, is the wrong thing to do:
The authors believe this, because to them the purpose of allegedly “life-saving” interventions is not to improve mental wellbeing, but to fulfil cosmetic goals - and it is this fulfilment that will then consequentially improve mental health through realising one’s authentic self:
This is somewhat contradictory, in that mental health improvements are promoted as a “logical consequence” but attempting to evaluate whether this is actually true by checking to see if there are actually any mental health benefits is “misguided”.
But in any case the reasoning here is that what is important is how the child or young person is approached. Providing treatment to alleviate distress is wrong, pathologising and paternalistic and will harm mental wellbeing, while offering children unfettered access to cosmetic alterations to achieve their embodiment goals is right and guaranteed to improve wellbeing.
(More at the link.)
thedispatch.com
ai;dr
Just recently read Singal's critique of the preprint. They pointed out the discrepancy between the registered pre-research study design, including the hypotheses that were going to be tested, and the reported results that ended up completely dropping almost all of the intended hypotheses and introducing different ones that weren't part of the study design. Singal noted that there are situations where the registered design has to be altered during the research for legitimate reasons, but that it's usually expected that those reasons and the way in which the design was altered are provided as explanations for the deviation. Otherwise, it ends up being a case of throwing thousands of darts at the board, then removing 99% of them, then calling in all your friends to show off how accurate you are at darts...
For the curious lurkers, here is the link: https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/a-critique-of-mental-and-emotional
IMO the preprint probably suffers from this problem twice—at the hypothesis selection level and then once again when the subjects with less desirable outcomes select themselves out of the process. With over one-third of participants lost to follow-up, this is a strong possibility.
Yep. Singal devoted a portion of their critique to the high likelihood of selection bias from that loss, and the lack of any metrics to support the assumption that those who persisted throughout the longitudinal study were representative of the population.
Doesn’t sound like something Singal would do. A lot of doctoral theses may indeed seem ridiculous and journal papers may seem “inarguably inane” according to a quick scan of the title, but that doesn’t always mean the research wasn’t well done and/or that the researcher hasn’t cut their teeth doing the research itself.
