Scientific American "Trans girls belong on girls' sports teams"

[andyoldlabour]

I shall now refer to them as "Unscientific American". The following article was written by Jack Turban, a phsychologist who researches the mental health of transgender youth. It also appears that Jack Turban has received $15,000 from Arbor Pharmaceuticals, a company which produces puberty blockers - Triptodur. He also maintains that there is no scientific reason to exclude trans girls from girl's sport.
Unscientific American is a previously respected publication, with articles by Einstein etc.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/trans-girls-belong-on-girls-sports-teams/?fbclid=IwAR3I0sWYSpM6hA_ubWXen2MltFTdhnq-JQCqSr2UMOXL3EyWPJj8JGabYhM

uncommongroundmedia.com/jack-turban-investigated-americal-medical-association/?fbclid=IwAR0Yog-UuSyO96YV2EsIWY02VyVnGxA76jeh3XN0tgySFJwxabAH9qKF34w

www.jackturban.com/

This guy pops up on Twitter so often and with the same shtick, but as you've pointed out, follow the money!

So there's no money in researching girls' mental health then?
Sport take up amongst teenage girls is already in a crisis. This generation is the first generation whose lifespan is projected to be less than their parents due to increasingly inactive lifestyles and poor diet. Girls need this like a hole in the head.

Today they have also published this article.
www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-antiscience-movement-is-escalating-going-global-and-killing-thousands/

I'm afraid Scientific American has been shit for a while, as has National Geographic. Their articles on gender are indicative of a larger problem.

What's worst IMO is that for many, these are seen as reliable guides to the science for laypeople.

What's worst IMO is that for many, these are seen as reliable guides to the science for laypeople.

Yes. There was an excellent article a while back on how complex and especially scientific subjects are often ones we have little hope of understanding unless we are experts - therefore we almost always defer to those with convincing credentials. I can't remember where I read it, now ...

@SmokedDuck

I'm afraid Scientific American has been shit for a while, as has National Geographic. Their articles on gender are indicative of a larger problem.

What's worst IMO is that for many, these are seen as reliable guides to the science for laypeople.

Absolutely. Just recently Nat Geo published a book about "natural foods and medicinal herbs" that had a lot of unscientific bs in it (reflexology for arthritis?) Both magazines are these days more like something nice for the coffee table, nothing to do with actual natural sciences.

This article would be much clearer if they used language which correctly describes the sex of the children involved. Here are the first three paragraphs with this change made.

In February 2020, the families of three girls filed a federal lawsuit against the Connecticut Association of Schools, the nonprofit Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference and several boards of education in the state. The families were upset that boys were competing against the girls in high school track leagues. They argued that boys have an unfair advantage in high school sports and should be forced to play on boys’ teams.

Conservatives around the country have jumped on the question. Attorney General Merrick Garland was pressed on the issue during his confirmation hearing last month. State legislators around the country are pushing bills that would force boys to compete on boys’ teams. In describing the Connecticut case in the Wall Street Journal, opinion writer Abigail Shrier expressed a representative argument: when boys compete on girls’ sports teams, she wrote, “girls can’t win.”

The opinion piece left out the fact that two days after the Connecticut lawsuit was filed by the girls’ families, one of those girls beat one of the boys named in the lawsuit in a Connecticut state championship. It turns out that when boys play on girls’ sports teams, girls can win. In fact, the vast majority of female athletes are cisgender, as are the vast majority of winners. There is no epidemic of boys dominating female sports. Attempts to force boys to play on the boys’ teams are unconscionable attacks on already marginalized transgender children, and they don’t address a real problem. They’re unscientific, and they would cause serious mental health damage to both cisgender and transgender youth.

This makes it clearer that Turban appears to be arguing for all sports to be mixed sex. Also, Turban is a psychiatrist, not an endocrinologist or a sports scientist, so hardly an expert in this area. This is just an opinion piece with no scientific substance.

I've just been trying to find news articles on something completely unrelated, the ongoing situation in Mozambique. The first two items that came up were from the BBC and CNN and I didn't click on them because I no longer trust their impartiality or intelligence. (I went with Reuters, in the hope of plain old news-gathering.) The trans issue has opened my eyes to the agenda of so many organisations and institutions. They'd have to do a lot of work to get me back.

Incidentally, when I was looking at Reuters, there is a story about a mass-stabbing in a Canadian library in which a woman was killed. I wanted to see if Meghan Murphy had any comment or information on this but, of course, she is banned from Twitter. Information is getting to be such a massive problem for feminists.

It's much more important to make male children happy by giving them all the choices than treating female children as equally human. While using language that creates the illusion that there is no sex, and acting in a totally sexist, sex based way.

We live in insane times. Where its really bad luck to have been born female.

@LitCritChick

So there's no money in researching girls' mental health then? Sport take up amongst teenage girls is already in a crisis. This generation is the first generation whose lifespan is projected to be less than their parents due to increasingly inactive lifestyles and poor diet. Girls need this like a hole in the head.

See your mistake here is thinking girls are people with inner lives, feelings and ambitions. The sooner we go back to being service units the better

Follow the money the old man cried

A great poem to make this point. Thanks, Notoutjustyet

Other than the testosterone issue which I still can't get my head around (I keep reading conflicting things) this really is just "sport is good for their mental health, please let them do it".

And yet, still, no consideration for trans boys...

InsideNumberNine

There aren't really any conflicting views on Testosterone, from sports scientists, physiologists and anatomists. Testosterone on its own is a bit of a "red herring", because the people who wish to see male bodied people in female sport, will insist that lowering Testosterone, taking hormones, will make a male incredibly weak, which is totally untrue.
A female is not simply a weaker version of a male, her anatomy is totally different.
Males have longer/stronger/denser bones, larger heart and lungs, more muscle mass/less body fat, more oxygen carrying red cells, thus resulting in a more efficient cardio/vascular system.

Created by the satirical website Butterflies and Wheels: www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2022/at-a-library-near-you/

She is back on twitter. Her very first tweet upon return was the original one that got her banned.

Andyoldlabour yep, absolutely re testosterone. Shoulder and pelvic geometry is different between men and women. Transwomen cannot simply identify out of the physical advantages which that gives them - on top of the list you have given

www.realityslaststand.com/p/jack-turbans-research-is-incapable

This is so depressing. Science magazines serve such a valuable purpose as others have said, and there’s no science here- only wishy washy bullshit that throws girls under the bus.

Well, as he's not an expert in biology he has no say in the matter.
Biology trumps "feelings".
Every.
Single.
Time.

Various journalists and scientists have done deep dives on Jack Turban's prolific and seemingly very dubious output.
Michael Biggs, Jesse Signal, and Leor Sapir.
Turban recently put out research supposedly disproving ROGD that Michael Biggs tore to shreds. Even scientists on sympathetic to Turban's own stance criticized his poor methodology apparently.
Haven't got all the links but should be easy to find.
Did a quick looksy and just have this for now:

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1555597985379221505.html

Another

www.realityslaststand.com/p/the-distortions-in-jack-turbans-psychology

Maud, is Turban’s research peer reviewed or not? Might need to make a list of academics who will happily ignore reality for this religion!

waterwitch

Unfortunately peer review is no longer an indicator of academic rigor. Three academics did an experiment a few years ago where they wrote several made up papers in academic fields they had no expertise in and submitted them to well respected peer reviewed journals in order to find out just how far the rot had gone. Some of the papers were accepted and published, including one where they claimed to have inspected the genitals of 10,000 dogs in a dog park whilst questioning the owners about their sexual orientation!

Generally known as "The Grievance Studies" affair it cased quite a stir. You might think I would have been a wake up call for academia but it was the author's of the paper who were demonised.

Leor Sapir (City Journal) (www.city-journal.org/major-flaws-in-new-study-on-pediatric-gender-transition):

In a field known for its weak methodologies and even weaker scientific conclusions, Turban’s study sets a new low. Even trans activists in the academy who detest the ROGD hypothesis wrote a letter in which they take Turban to task. While the Turban study’s intentions are “admirable,” these authors write, its “results were overinterpreted and . . . the theoretical and methodological shortcomings of the article run the risk of being more harmful than supportive.”

That a study like this can pass the peer-review process unscathed, especially at a time when European countries are shutting down or putting severe restrictions on pediatric transition, is a sorry statement about the quality of knowledge gatekeeping in the medical research community. American journalists tout its findings without giving readers relevant information about its flaws, while left-of-center journalists in Britain have been busy blowing the whistle on the pediatric gender-medicine scandal. The U.S. has a long way to go to bring medical practice in line with scientific knowledge and common sense.

Jesse Signal deep dive (with lots of other links):

jessesingal.substack.com/p/the-new-study-on-rapid-onset-gender

Turban may be peer reviewed, but (wish I could find it!), but here's something around a small group of activist researchers - like Turban- all self referencing' writing prolifically, and giving the false impression of quality peer review. He seems very connected with the questionable Diane Ehrensaft for example.
im not an academic s someone else might be able to explain better.
It's like the recent (critical) submission to the interim NHS spec posted on MN from someone quoting multiple reasearch sources from their own work And from Turban and Ehrensaft interestingly)

It's as if they are just taking a 'flood the field' approach. Quantity over quality.

All I know is, I take anything quoting his research with a giant pinch of salt.