Publisher to retract paper on ‘Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria’

[IwantToRetire]

The grounds for its retrospective rejection have been described as 'flimsy'
https://unherd.com/thepost/publisher-to-retract-paper-on-rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria/

After backlash, publisher to retract article that surveyed parents of children with gender dysphoria, says co-author
https://retractionwatch.com/2023/05/24/after-backlash-publisher-to-retract-article-that-surveyed-parents-of-children-with-gender-dysphoria-says-co-author/

Discussion about implications of this on Student Doctor Net (US?)
https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria-parent-reports-on-1655-possible-cases-paper-retracted.1481697/

There are slightly different versions of this story so have posted links to some of them.

I think the retraction has now happened as the deadline was 31 May 2023.

I wonder how many other studies based on survey data will be subjected to retraction because of ethical
consent? This is another worrying example of research that doesn’t fit the narrative being silenced.

It would be interesting to know how many of the trans suicide statistics publications meet this standard. But yes, informed data consent is absolutely important.

In the Student Doctor forum discussion it is pointed out that the type of survey carried out is not one that normally requires specific consent. And if this was to be the rule many papers would have to be retracted. (I am assuming because these are collecting personal contributions rather than actual medical research where data is collected and consent has to be given for the data to be made public.)

Unfortunately after an interesting start the Student Doctor forum is then taken over from talking about good practice to whether the intent of the paper had been transphobic.

Sorry meant to add this.

It could also be because of this:

assistant health secretary Dr Rachel Levine rejected the idea that peer pressure explains the long-term increase in children identifying as trans, calling the supposed evidence "flawed".

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/no-evidence-social-contagion-is-making-children-think-they-are-transgender-says-biden-s-top-trans-official/ar-AA1c0LNw

Dr Levine has a conflict of interest.

You can still download and read the full paper here

link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-023-02576-9

I don’t understand why people are doing surveys without consent procedures related to publishing based on the data collected at all.

It’s been standard research practice to ask for consent at the beginning of surveys and ethics committees at UK universities will insist on this.

Some critics of transition healthcare for under-18s have claimed that young people are being deluded into believing they are trans by social media and influence from their friendship groups, often citing a 2018 study into so-called "rapid onset gender dysphoria" (ROGD).

But trans advocates and major medical groups have said the concept has no clinical basis, noting that the study was based entirely on the perception of parents, many of whom were recruited through anti-trans websites.

Can these people supply clinical evidence for their belief that people are born 'trans'? What do they actually mean by 'trans'?

"I do not accept the idea of social contagion, and I don't feel that the evidence for it is good, and I think the article is flawed," said Dr Levine, a physician who specialises in paediatrics and psychiatrics.

Does Dr Levine have any evidence that people are born in the wrong body and need to have their bodies modified to match their self-identified gender?

If these people are so insistent on there being evidence, they could start by providing a definition of what they mean by 'trans' and evidence that this occurs naturally in children.

Rachel Levine is far from neutral on this issue.

My understanding is that the co-author of the paper (I think the name is a pseudonym but, just in case, I am not going to quote it here) is a mum of a kid with ROGD and a non academic who conducted an informal survey in one of the online parent groups set up as a response to when kids suddenly come up with a trans identity and parents think WTH - why did this come from out of nowhere?

As a non academic, she was not required to get ethics approval nor explicit consent to publish.

Understandably, there is some vetting that goes on of parents/carers beforehand to join the parent of ROGD kid groups because the admins are fearful that TRAs will try to disrupt if they gain access but, generally, they are full of (sometimes distressed) anonymous people around the world who are needing peer support in dealing with a very difficult shared experience.

Occasionally, someone like a journalist will have a question and the admins will flag it up and people are able to respond if they wish to. Otherwise there are boards and threads as on mumsnet so you contribute/lurk as much as you like and are reminded not to post any overly identifying information, bearing in mind that the boards might be infiltrated.

Michael Bailey talks about the paper in the latest Gender A Wider lens podcast and how he came alongside his co author to get her data published and that his review board said that data could be used so long as anonymised which was done.

From first hand experience as a member of a couple of these groups, parents are desperate to get more research out there to work out what the heck is going on and what they can do to help their kids come through this really distressing experience, so I can be 100% certain it would not be the parents of ROGD kids complaining that their anonymised responses are used in a study.

Rather it's going to be Activists who deny the inconvenient existence of ROGD because it messes with the 'I've always felt like this' narrative and who want to shut down any discussion - cf their identical response to Lisa Littman's first paper on the topic - faux-complaining 'on their behalf'.

So many people have pointed out that any number of "papers" get published based on evidence collected online and are as much about personal experience, rather than say scientific / lab based piece of research.

So it does raise the issue of why some, not all, people are saying it should be retracted.

Quote from the medical forum:

My thoughts exactly. If we retract papers for the reasons cited, there are countless other articles that also need to be retracted. I also agree that the methodology is not strong, but I can find similar issues in dozens of papers in a quick perusal of some recent journals. This is dangerous precedent to set, and, if anything, just adds legitimate fuel to some of the crazy conspiracy theories of the right when it comes to academia.

It might be justified to retract it if where it was originally published was presented as a source of fact based research. And that this didn't meet that criteria.

Its probably being criticsed because as also mentioned there is so little proper research.

So that should really be the focus. Not whether a paper reflecting the experiences of people who are interested parties, but why no one is conducting properly surpervised research.

After the impact of this paper compared say to the basis on which the Tavistock actually provide medical care, which seem to be based on belief sets, is insignificant.

And its being tragetted is, I think, political.

One if the reads why there's no real evidenced research into therapies for children with autism is because they can't consent. There's observational studies but it's not the same.

Why can't their parents consent on their behalf?

Colin Wright has written a new piece about this retraction: https://archive.ph/tDcFi

The thing to note is that Springer will potentially need to apply the same standards to thousands of papers they’ve published, including Jack Turban’s “study” that was often quoted in the news. So it may come back to bite the TRAs who have targeted this particular paper.

Thanks for the link.

I hope it gets picked up by the MSM who were happy to publicise the paper being retracted, an as the article says, implying it was invalid, rather than what seems to be the accepted use of anecdotal evidence. Which is often the firt step towards a more traditional large scale research project.