Letter from academics concerned about the Cass Review

[MidsomerMurmurs]

Sally Hines et al have written a letter…
https://uncommon-scents.blogspot.com/2024/04/letter-from-academics-concerned-about.html?m=1

Worth a read, both for the quality of its argument and for the list of signatories.

https://twitter.com/lecanardnoir/status/1779535066944634919
When your letter against the Cass Review is signed by Andrew Wakefield, then some alarm bells ought to go off that you are on the wrong side

Pretty much the argument of the OU academics who were asked why they'd signed the anti-Jo Phoenix letter during the employment tribunal:

• I don't recall
• I didn't agree with all of it and wanted to be an ally and this was the only way I could express that in the face of colleagues' distress that I assumed to be well-founded
• I don't remember this and certainly couldn't say who drafted or circulated the letter because we all bought new phones and not one of us had our WhatsApp backed up to the cloud.

I agree and I think there are people who know this too but can't say this out loud. It has to go to the ethics committee and for them to say it because they have the authority. If the authority says this it gets, once again, harder to push back and complain.

I believe we have a number of steps to go through on this but I also believe that there are people who are trying to end this who are very aware of this too and are playing the long game. Because they have to.

@RethinkingLife thank you for that information about the proposed Siminov study. Of course exactly what's needed.

I am wary of the anti-anti-cass backlash - broadly an unscientific interpretation that the review shows early hormonal intervention is harmful and not helpful. The review shows that there is no robust evidence that it is helpful, and is definitely harmful in some ways. Absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.

Arguing that Cass has said definitively that no children could or would benefit from puberty blockers is not accurate.

Yes this is true.
One of the York University crack medical statistics team is my dh(mathematician)’s ex student. She went on to do a Health Sciences PhD, so not a medical doctor, but clearly has a vast amount of expertise in clinical trials after 20 years and now a professorship in the subject. An epic amount of specialist knowledge compared to these utter twunts who think they can pronounce on the quality of her work.

I couldn’t help noticing that nobody from York University has signed the letter. It’s a lot easier to slag off someone’s work when you’re not going to be sitting next to them in Library Committee, or indeed, come up before them in a promotions panel…

Bollocks.

In a purely demotic and not cis/trans sense.

@RedToothBrush has already given a great comment on this, but with regard to Social Sciences or anything else outside the core subject(s), it might not necessarily be the subject that's wrong but how scientifically it is being applied (or that critical thought is not applied at all).

Often other sciences can be a corrective to the own one, for example at some universities, engineering students need to take addictional classes in history of technology or technology ethics/philosophy. That could help prevent technocratic thinking and the assumption that technology can solve anything, without checking whether a certain problem could be approached from different angles at all.

History of clothing and textiles is also very informative, as it shows that the high heel has developed from a riding boot and originally was a male item of clothing and is just one of many examples that clothing changes its meaning and doesn't determine biology.

@WhatsTheUseOfWorrying could you expand? Do you think the Cass report says it's proven that puberty blockers do more harm than good?

A bunch of TRAs angry that they’re losing their grip in academic circles to police other people’s language and thoughts, tell people what to think and use children as their Guinea pigs for some weird experiment.

No thank you.

Very odd, I can't see the signatories at all (my devices are telling me it's unsafe) but when I do get through it invites me to sign. I'm an academic in a totally unrelated field so it must be specially programmed to let us in.

RethinkingLife · Yesterday 16:04

This is an area known as epistemic trespass.

That's very interesting, thanks. There's also a name for the pub bore types, who wang on endlessly about subjects they have no understanding of:

Ultracrepidarian

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/ultracrepidarian

noting or pertaining to a person who criticizes, judges, or gives advice outside their area of expertise

There's an article in the Critic that dismantles this letter quite thoroughly

https://thecritic.co.uk/correcting-casss-critics/

There's also a link to the form if anyone wants to sign it🙄