Marcus Evans - psychiatry sits on a knife edge

[NeurotrashWarrior]

Fabulous new interview by KJK.

It sounds like a desperate state of affairs at the Tavistock and has been for a while.

He mentions how much the trans charities influence them.

This is very useful and clarifies so much.

The problem with all this is the quality of Marcus Evans’ writing on trans youth issues:

www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/political-minds/202007/jk-rowling-and-the-chamber-trans-youth-misinformation?fbclid=IwAR07KGTHXOdZyHg2Uj4O__F_xVWyoik28Hb8-lROcQluBH09bZnomsBM_5I

I finally got it to work (weird, I never have issues with YouTube videos).

Gosh. Thanks for posting this Neuro.
I didn't realise Sue Evans first raised her concerns 15 years ago.
Marcus Evans speaks with such clarity. What a contrast to Polly Carmichael's woeful performance on Newsnight. I know it's not a fair comparison, but the director of GIDS should be able to explain clearly and confidently what they are doing and why!

I agree that the paper you've linked to is poorly written and researched, Robin, but it's not written by Marcus Evans, it's by someone called Jack Turban, who appears to be a TRA.

Place marking to watch later

@OldCrone

I agree that the paper you've linked to is poorly written and researched, Robin, but it's not written by Marcus Evans, it's by someone called Jack Turban, who appears to be a TRA.

Disappointing but, of course, its a matter for you. You can either LOOK at the Evans paper and form a view on the effectiveness of the take-down by Turban, or continue to make such rhetorical but ultimately sterile quips. For me its about the quality of the science.

In what way is the Turban paper 'poorly written and researched'?

Robin:

That article is written by a us commentator. In the pockets of the drug companies. You can't compare US to the U.K. We have an nhs for a reason.

Re ROGD it's documented in a number of concerned countries eg Sweden.

But Marcus answers it best himself with help:

twitter.com/xxjanedoexxxx/status/1288775422814101504?s=21

.

The quality of the science Turban quotes is biased.

In what way is the Turban paper 'poorly written and researched'?

It will take some time to get through all the problems with it, but thanks to Neurotrash for posting the link to twitter, where Marcus Evans himself as well as a few other people have commented on some of them.

I think there was a typo in Marcus Evans's tweet - I think it's actually a 4000% rise in children being referred to gender clinics over the last 10 years, and the vast majority of those aged 11-17 are girls, when previously boys had outnumbered girls at all ages.

gids.nhs.uk/number-referrals

These data only go back to 2015, but you can still see a doubling in that time period. The numbers and the switch in the majority of those who are referred from boys to girls needs an explanation. One such explanation is ROGD with a component of social contagion.

Jack Turban challenges the 'rapid onset' component of of ROGD, but he doesn't offer any explanation for the enormous increase in the numbers of teenage girls identifying as transgender, with a much smaller increase in teenage boys. In older age groups it is mainly men who transition, with only a minuscule number of older women identifying as transgender. If these teenage girls represented a true picture of people who are genuinely transgender (whatever that might mean), then one would expect to see similarly large numbers of older women 'realising' in middle age that they were transgender. Where are these older women?

There is evidence of the social contagion aspect in the observation that groups of girls suddenly all identify as transgender within a friendship group or within a school. He doesn't offer any alternative explanation for this phenomenon.

I chose one link that was referenced in the Psychology Today article linked upthread. (Hilariously, I saw TRAs on Twitter gloating that "no less a publication than Psychology Today" (exact wording) had refuted the article, and mocking JKR's knowledge of science. )

The link I checked was this one - because I couldn't figure out where the lie was at first glance.

First of all, existing research suggests that early social transition does not make youth identify more strongly as transgender.

This seems to contract everything the GIDs clinicians observed about social transition locking kids into their medicalised path.

You will not be surprised to learn that the original source that No Less a Publication than Psychology Today links to directly confirms that social transition locks kids in, rather than refuting it.

A quote: One previous study examined the relation between early social transitions and later transgender identity (Steensma et al., 2013). All four children in that study who had socially transitioned in childhood identified as transgender in adolescence, while only 35% of the 123 children who did not completely socially transition (i.e., children who did not change pronouns) in childhood identified as transgender later.

(The sleight of hand is that the study NLAPTPT linked does not test whether early social transition leads to children persisting - it just tests some nonsensical faff about "gender identity" which is only meaningful to people who believe gender identity is a valid construct. But the "previous study" it references has got data relevant to the actual point at issue. )

More comments on the Turban paper.

Turban writes of Evans's paper:
The paper also states that most kids with gender dysphoria "desist" in their transgender identity if not treated with gender-affirming medical interventions. The author again cites papers that examined prepubertal children. Since medical interventions are not offered until puberty, the relevant question is how common "desistence" is after pubertal onset.

One of the papers cited is this one: Wallien, MSC, Cohen-Kettenis, PT. Psychosexual outcome of gender-dysphoric children.

This is a small study of 77 children who were aged between 5 and 12 at the start of the study and were all aged at least 16 by the end of the study, so Turban is incorrect that the papers cited by Evans only examine prepubertal children.

I am quite sure that Turban knows he's dissembling in that article, by the way.
The aim of these articles is to create just enough controversy and doubt that you can confuse people into thinking this stuff is too complicated to understand - that way they'll default to believing in
whatever orthodoxies hold in their social environment, instead of seeing the massive medical scandal unfolding in front of their eyes.

You only have to spend ten minutes on the Reddit detrans sub (currently 15.2k members) to see how many people feel they got swept along as teenagers by the thought that transitioning was the right path for them, the only path. And how many of them now bitterly regret it.

They may not specifically cite ROGD but that's possibly in part because everyone on that sub now has to be ultra careful with their wording, for fear they (or indeed the whole sub) will be banned.

Robin, you say 'For me its about the quality of the science.'

Whereas for me it's about the sadness and pain and despair felt by all these scores and scores of (mostly) young women who are left devastated by the permanent changes this 'science' has allowed them, encouraged them, to make to their developing bodies.

More and more clinicians are beginning to speak up in the US:

twitter.com/zaneemma/status/1290022714040651776?s=21

Reading Irreversible Damage, I was appalled at what seems to be the next opioid crisis for the US. Here in the UK, we are actively listening to the desisters and to the clinicians saying affirmation is not working more positively that the US - so it seems.
It feels the NHS is still not responding quickly enough but at least it seems like the brakes are coming on and that the government is interested.

That there is a plethora of papers questioning the practices adopted based on affirming treatment doesn’t surprise me. That they are ignored is concerning. That they are not used as the impetus to now conduct deep research into the efficacy of the treatment is scandalous.

Thanks for sharing them neuro. Looks like some good reading there.

And it seems the ‘hack’ mentioned works btw.

@undergroundoverit

Robin, you say 'For me its about the quality of the science.'

Whereas for me it's about the sadness and pain and despair felt by all these scores and scores of (mostly) young women who are left devastated by the permanent changes this 'science' has allowed them, encouraged them, to make to their developing bodies.

Trying to discredit these tragedies on a parenting site where posters are experiencing this with their own children is appalling.

So it seems one of the letters neurotrash warrier points out that the Swedish study into mental health improving with surgery did not follow up on those no longer alive amongst other things, including sadly suicides. (obviously would have needed additional data for that) so that may well have significant impact on their conclusions regarding mental health obviously.

A pretty big factor to miss unless I have misinterpreted the letter pointing this out.

Did anyone else spot this on the zaneemma Twitter thread?

twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1290122158786502657

The American Journal of Psychiatry published an article by Branstrom and Pachinkis which 'showed' that surgical transition led to better mental health outcomes. Their methodology was challenged, they went through the data again and now it's concluded that actually, surgery doesn't improve mental health outcomes.

I imagine this is quite a big thing particularly in the US, where that admission might support a class action of those who regret surgery.

Thank you Shedbuilder for that link. It still horrifies me that the "science" on this issue for children has been so dreadfully manipulated by those with personal / political investment in it to the detriment of children's long term mental and physical health.
Every single piece of the limited amount of research that's been allowed is eventually proved to be found wanting. No other aspect of children's mental / physical health has ever been captured like this by adult groups with an agenda. It's unethical and immoral.

shedbuilder.

I did. But in reading most of the letters they published it was more a decision about the methodology to come to that conclusion. Therefore, I would be hugely interested to know if they redid the study including suicides and clarity around medication etc what would be the result. I don’t know that the group did actually redo the study for a definitive result to be stated. If you get my meaning.

I would rather know that was absolutely no correlation rather than the fact that it was merely inconclusive.

Either way, it was incredibly irresponsible to release a study like this stating that it was conclusive when it was effectively a defective study methodology being used. Very dangerous.

Very worrying interview.

Don't they realise that they are their own worse enemy? If someones so sure of what they are saying /teaching etc then they wouldn't be afraid of peope discussing it. False information would he quickly identifiable and and evidence easily providable.

The fact that professionals need to be blackmailed with their jobs into towing the line speaks volumes.