Article Discussing Source Laundering re Conversion Practices

[UtopiaPlanitia]

Article by Dave Hewitt discussing an important subject post-Cass Report findings. Thought I’d post it here for others who might be interested.

'the phrase “gender exploratory therapy” has become a flashpoint in the debate over conversion therapy, subject to a similar chain of source laundering to give baseless opinion an authoritative gloss. Gossip has been spread as fact, and within activist circles, the notion that exploratory therapy is really conversion is simply a given, circulated and amplified endlessly within echo chambers until we reach the point where the actual basis for the claims is all but forgotten.'

Source Laundering - How a handful of activists convinced themselves and the world that therapy was bigotry
https://www.voidifremoved.co.uk/p/source-laundering-2

It's an excellent article and a great example of source archaeology. When you dig into where ideas, arguments or claims come from and you find this kind of trail, it becomes obvious how many people are just spreading the same lines or lies and how few people are actually thinking for themselves.

Thanks so much for sharing this detailed and thorough piece @UtopiaPlanitia

It would be extremely useful reading for MPs in the conversion therapy debate!

I see ‘Dopesick’ is on iPlayer at the moment. If you haven’t watched it or Netflix version, then I recommend it. It shows how the marketing of a drug (OxyContin) that was in large part responsible for the huge opioid epidemic in the states, was based on a three sentence letter in a journal being misrepresented through various subsequent publications and professional bodies. Definite parallels.

I had to read some parts of the article twice to fully understand the audacity of some of this publishing by these people. It looks very much like some of it was got in place in order to give activists something to use to spout rubbish about the Cass Report and that is mind boggling behaviour - deliberately setting out, ahead of time, to undermine evidence-based medicine.

You’re welcome, I’m glad you found it interesting. And I had the exact same thought: MPs need to know about this!

Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll try to watch it.

It’s frightening to think that this is an established way for pushing medicine or medical procedures that have serious side effects/consequences - I always thought that all medicine or medical procedures had to go through randomised blind testing in order to be accepted - learning otherwise has been an unpleasant shock.

This sounds like a very interesting read, thanks OK.

Have bookmarked it for later.

Mentions on Twitter of source laundering with regards to activists trying to discredit the Cass Review:

https://x.com/benryanwriter/status/1785647373852565956
Benjamin Ryan: Here are all seven of the systematic literature reviews about pediatric gender-transition treatment, which have all been published within the past 5 years:
1. Finland: ^app.box.com/s/y9u791np8v9gsunwgpr2kqn8swd9vdtx^
2. Endocrine Society/WPATH: ^academic.oup.com/jes/article/5/4/bvab011/6126016^
3. England (NICE): ^cass.independent-review.uk/nice-evidence-reviews/^
4. McMaster University (for DeSantis admin): ^ahca.myflorida.com/content/download/4864/file/AHCA_GAPMS_June_2022_Attachment_C.pdf^
5. Sweden: ^pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37069492/^
6. Germany: ^econtent.hogrefe.com/doi/suppl/10.1024/1422-4917/a000972/suppl_file/1422-4917_a000972_esm1.pdf^
7. England (Univesity of York): ^adc.bmj.com/pages/gender-identity-service-series^
What Jack Turban neglected to mention in his attacks on the Cass Review and the systematic literature reviews that fed into it is that they deemed a few of his own studies on pediatric gender transition treatment to be low quality, meaning their findings are unreliable.