No more puberty blockers for children from the NHS - reported in the Times!

[MrsOvertonsWindow]

This is massive - and long overdue

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/97ce2e81-2884-42f5-bb82-2a2778f2cc91?shareToken=9568e79f0683beea68ffe5e978b05a29

http://uncommon-scents.blogspot.com/2024/04/letter-from-academics-concerned-about.html
Letter from academics concerned about The Cass Review

Unsound methodology, unacceptable bias, problematic and unsupported conclusions. As academics we regard The Cass Review as dangerous and potentially harmful to trans children.
As academics with decades of research experience between us we can confidently say that The Cass Review would fail if it were submitted as an undergraduate dissertation. Its methodology is shoddy in the extreme and it is clearly biased throughout.

One of the signatories?
Andrew Wakefield Strategic Autism Initiative

I shit you not.

Oh, Jesus 🙄

I was listening to this, because I’m interested in the pain relief provided by TENS machines (I got one for pain from a trapped nerve, and found it did help).
The thing that struck me was the discussion about the evidence that the devices work, the number of studies, their validity, the soundness of the conclusions drawn. And this is for therapies that are really very safe. What a contrast with the unexamined and unevidenced use of puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries dished out with little thought to vulnerable children.

Anyway, it’s worth a listen, especially if you’re considering buying such a machine.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001x538

Andrew Wakefield. What an endorsement! 😬

Sure it's not someone trolling them?

Wakefield's got a finger in gender medicine? Somehow, I'm not surprised.

Looking at some of those names, they're evidently scraping the barrel to find people with academic credibility. So Wakefield probably seemed like quite a catch 😆

Do they not know Wakefields reputation in the UK? Seriously, I'm almost embarrassed for them

Kathleen Stock AT Docstockk
I see the first signatory on this list of fanatics and simpletons is Natacha Kennedy of Goldsmiths. Name was familiar.

Helen Lewis AT helenlewis
If we’re going to talk about questionable academic practices, let’s maybe start with “authoring a paper with your own alter ego”. Nowhere in this paper is it made clear that Natacha Kennedy and Mark Hellen are the same person.

Lachlan Stuart AT Lachlan_Edi
So, there's a gang of academics signing a petition to denounce The Cass Report. They make all sorts of assertions about its methodology, bias and so on. All bollocks, as far as I can judge, but these are academics, with Docorates and what not. So I took a look.

To limit the exercise, and make it easier for me to contextualise, I thought I'd see who from my own alma mater had signed the petition. That's UCL, University College London, one of the world's elite research universities, often ranked top 10, always top 20.

Usually 3rd or 4th in Britain, behind Oxford, Cambridge and, sometimes, London's Imperial College of Science and Technology. So you can expect a level of confidence in the quality of output from its post-Doctoral research staff. And this is what I found:

Xine Yao, from Toronto, Canada, a lecturer in American Literature in the Department of English, with primary research in early and 19th century with focus through affect, critical race, feminist and queer of colour theories.

Lovely, I'm sure. Clever, beyond doubt. Qualified to critique Hilary Cass method in paediatric review? Doubtful.

Rosie McGuire, research fellow with interests in clinical and health psychology, allied health and rehabilitation science on the Adapt project at the Anna Freud Centre. ADaPT is a pilot project for implementation of treatments for children in/from care with PTSD.

Lovely, I'm sure. Clever, beyond doubt. Dr. McGuire is the weightiest signature from UCL I have seen. Is she the sort of clinical academic, working in the discipline that Hilary Cass has found wanting? Well, maybe. Maybe she is.

Next up, Lo Marshall (they/them) Dr Marshall is Research Fellow at the Bartlett School if Architecture, focused on EDI in the built environment, with particular focus on "LGBTQIA+ club nightlife" with their teaching focused on "queer nightlife" and other "community spaces".

Lovely? I have my doubts tbh Clever? Well someone's funding the crap they teach, so I guess they must be. Qualified to critique Hilary Cass' methodology or assess bias on her paediatric care review? Unquestionably not.

And, er, as far as I can see, that's it. From UCL, anyway. I'm going to hazard a guess that the rest of the signatories, from other academic institutions with which I am less familiar, are almost as convincing.

Cambridge is a top university I’m sure you’ll agree.

Their signatory seems to be a computing expert.

https://www.cst.cam.ac.uk/people/dra27

Oxford has someone from the English department signing it.

https://www.english.ox.ac.uk/people/eleri-anona-watson

Edinburgh Uni, signatory from the School of Literatures Languages and Cultures

https://www.ed.ac.uk/profile/gina-gwenffrewi

Also school of History Classics and Archaeology

https://www.ed.ac.uk/profile/Kate-Davison

Another Edinburgh historian signatory

https://www.ed.ac.uk/profile/jo-edge

Those academics ought to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for commenting on a medical review when none of them will have actually read it for one and as pointed out, none are are actually qualified to comment for two. However, do they have the slightest twinge of doubt? No. Despicable.

Why is the name Jo Edge familiar to me? Is she the teary UCU bod?

The City, Uni of London signatory is from the International Politics department and an expert in “white women’s tears” in the historical construction of the rapist, the paedophile and the terrorist, and how tropes of vulnerability link to Kant’s writings and the kink concept of “topping from the bottom”. Apparently.

https://www.city.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/2021/04/topping-from-the-bottom-the-weaponisation-of-white-women-tears

With that research expertise, I’m sure any right-minded parent would want to take Taylor’s advice on whether their child should be given drugs which will render them infertile.

The Warwick signatory’s expertise seems to be film studies.

Yup.

Brilliant research everyone. I knew as soon as I saw Kennedy's name at the top that this would be the quality of "academics with decades of research between them"

#OperationLetThemSpeak" indeed. 🙄😂

Their audacity is embarrassing but also dangerous in that they prioritise their egos and spread misinformation over protecting children

The Uni of Manchester signatory, Sociology lecturer, research interest: older gay male sexuality (unless the signatory is the accounting and finance lecturer with the same name, but that seems unlikely)

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Paul-Simpson-17

The Uni of Nottingham signatory

https://cdt.horizon.ac.uk/2023/04/19/rachel-saunders-has-book-chapter-published/

The Uni of Stirling signatory

“I am currently a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Stirling for a project entitled "Fragile Knowledge: Dehumanisation and Interpretation Bias in Autism Research". In this project I will use computational textual analysis to examine the overall field of autism research, what topics are published about, and how autistic peope are constructed within the literature.”

The Uni of Lancaster signatory has an interest in childlessness and climate change.

https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/future-families/2023/10/25/new-research-project-future-families/

The Uni of Leeds signatory’s interest is the politics of music in public places and the workplace.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kai-Wikeley

Going through the list of signatories’ research specialisms makes for an entertaining Sunday evening, to be fair.

More laughs than an Employment Tribunal judgment.

So far the only signatories I’ve found with anything even tangentially related to health was the Bristol Uni signatory who has one paper on something to do with GPs (commissioning I think), and Cardiff met, with workplace burnout.

what was that quote about institutions protecting lies because they are invested in their own survival

I saw it on here once and it stuck with me

People who have livelihoods or reputation staked on gender will feel threatened

The reasonable and evidenced Cass review clearly threatens their standing. Look at Dr Hilary Cass’ credentials they don’t stand a chance beyond this pathetic attenot

People who have livelihoods or reputation staked on gender will feel threatened

Clearly that will be true for those that are trans activists which some of the signatories are. Such as Grace Lavery. And presumably they are the organisers of the letter.

For the majority, my guess is that they haven’t actually read the Cass review, and have signed the letter because they’ve bought into the ‘evil TERF bigots/protect trans kids’ Mermaids public narrative without ever questioning or thinking about it.

In other words they are researchers who (unlike the women on this board) haven’t bothered to do any research.

Here’s one (no doubt, well meaning) example, her “expertise” seems to be single mothers.

https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/en/persons/charlotte-morris/publications/

Interestingly Sally Hines name isn’t on the list. Perhaps she isn’t a member of the Feminist Gender Equality Network.

Anyway, that’s as much googling as I can be bothered with for today.

Excellent work Loobijee.

Once again the staggering level of narcassism going on with most of those signatories leaves my jaw on the floor. In what world do these Arts Academics think they live where they are qualified to question the credentials and methods of Hilary Cass?

And they are all happy to have their names associated with Andrew Wakefield of all people in this context.

Its mind blowing.

Sally Hines is #93. Letter from academics concerned about The Cass Review | UnCommon Sense (uncommon-scents.blogspot.com)

It's rather reminiscent of an experience I had many years ago when I was the administrator for a very specialist postgraduate course which was only open to people with a strong background in psychology or a relevant health care discipline. Most of our students had years of clinical experience. I took a call from a final year English student who wanted to know if she would be eligible to do the course, in spite of not having any of our published entry criteria. She thought the work she had done on her dissertation, discussing a classic Gothic novel, would do instead. Well, we disagreed.

Thanks, Gaspode. For some reason my brain decided Paul Simpson was last on the list when I was looking. Too much scrolling up and down searching for the “quality” institutions! lol