Scientific American on puberty blockers.

[ArabeIIaScott]

Garbled propaganda piece presents blockers as a way to avoid suicide, via thinly veiled ominous threat.

'...patients and their families have to weigh the risk of having lower bone density versus a gender issue that’s not properly treated'

Actually, it's not even veiled.

'Caregivers must weigh any concerns against the lifelong risks of not receiving the care, such as depression and suicidality, and the need for future surgeries, she says.'

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-are-puberty-blockers-and-how-do-they-work/

This sentence below, in particular, doesn't cite any references or evidence to support the assertion. Does anyone know what they mean? :

'Teens who had access to puberty blockers and hormone therapy require fewer gender-affirming surgeries as adults'

Finally, it's not going down well on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/sciam/status/1653775493550813184?cxt=HHwWgMC99ZODsvMtAAAA

The Twitter comments are heartening.
The editorial board of the journal is completely responsible for the quality of what they publish, not the author.
Any quality publications have expert editors and peer reviewers to filter out dross from authors.
Sadly as captured institutions will realise it’s their own good reputation, staff and sponsors that they will lose.

If the author is on staff in some way then there is a severe management issue to be dealt with if the same rigour has not been applied to all authors. If the issue is that the bar is simply set extremely low for all authors, then that’s the end of confidence in that journal.

https://askforevidence.org/articles/ask-for-evidence-animations There are various useful social media short videos about how to ask for evidence when claims are made…

This was my experience too. I'd read that people diagnosed with gender dysphoria had what was essentially a 'brain sex' that was the opposite to the rest of their body, and that there was a body of neuroimaging research that backed this up. And that once diagnosed they'd go through the process of hormones and surgery to change appearance until they resembled the opposite sex and could feel comfortable in their bodies.

However, my surprise when someone kindly informed me that actually, this was about simply identifying as the opposite sex and gender dysphoria is not a requisite, jolted me into actually looking at this critically - and finding that the whole 'trans' belief system doesn't stand up to scrutiny, and that the scientific research doesn't conclude what adherents to this ideology claim it does.

So in that sense it was quite helpful that they'd built their arguments upon some dubious claims about the how 'the science' supports all this.

https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/05/18/once-again-ideology-distorts-science-the-editor-in-chief-of-scientific-american-flubs-big-time-wrongly-asserting-that-sparrows-have-four-sexes/

'Helmuth is tweeting wrong things about biology in the service of her ideology, an ideology that she doesn’t just embrace, but has infused into the magazine she runs. Perhaps Scientific American wants to become Ideological American, but I’m hoping things will turn around. They would if Helmuth could simply adopt the idea that she shouldn’t use the magazine as a mouthpiece for her politics, but she won’t do that. Also, she refuses to engage with scientific criticism, not a good look for an editor.'

Haha, excellent article!

It's a popular sciencificatory complicmacatedly nuancified wibbly wobbly trope amongst The Right Side of History - as soon as I see the phrase "chromosomal sex" in somebody's writing, I know they're full of righteous shit