from The Epoch Times:
An academic journal has retracted an article on young people whose parents believe they have developed gender dysphoria because of social contagion. The theory is known as rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD).
“It’s easy to study things that make people happy. It’s much harder to study things that are bound to make at least some people unhappy,” one of the study’s authors, Northwestern University Professor J. Michael Bailey, told The Epoch Times in a June 16 interview.
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“Academia is in a really bad state right now with respect to what we should be doing, which is pursuing knowledge,” he said.
The article can be read here. The June 14 retraction notice can be read here. Bailey’s website can be found here.
The study’s first author, Suzanna Diaz, is pseudonymous.
“That is not her real name. Suzanna Diaz is the mother of a child who she believes has rapid-onset gender dysphoria,” Bailey said.
Controversial Paper
The peer-reviewed publication that retracted the paper, Archives of Sexual Behavior, is associated with the International Academy of Sex Research. It’s published by Springer.
A group called the Center for Applied Transgender Studies wrote to Springer in May 2023 boycotting Archives over its current editor, University of Toronto Professor Kenneth Zucker.
“With this letter, we are informing you that we will no longer submit to the journal, act as peer reviewers, or serve in an editorial capacity until Dr. Zucker is replaced with an editor who has a demonstrated record of integrity on LGBTQ+ matters and, especially, trans matters,” their open letter states.
They cite his approval of Bailey’s recent article, saying that the paper “raises serious concerns over research ethics and intellectual integrity.”
The letter questioned that the study was not approved by an Institutional Review Board (IRB).
Bailey said that’s partly because Diaz, though a concerned parent, has no institutional affiliation.
The paper itself notes that Bailey’s own IRB “advised that publishing the results was likely ethical, provided data were deidentified.” The body did not certify the study because Diaz had already gathered the data.
“The decision to publish threatens the foundations of research ethics, as it could effectively allow researchers to circumvent IRBs by having an unaffiliated layperson collect data prior to the researcher’s involvement,” the open letter from the Center for Applied Transgender Studies states.
“There is no dispute that academics in the free world do not have to get permission of an IRB in order to conduct and publish a study,” Bailey said.
The retraction did not mention IRB approval. Instead, it questioned whether participants had been made aware of how their responses would be used.
“The participants of the survey have not provided written informed consent to participate in scholarly research or to have their responses published in a peer reviewed article. Additionally, they have not provided consent to publish to have their data included in this article,” the retraction notice states.
Bailey disagrees. He elaborated on his objections in an appeal to top names at the publisher about the decision.
“Informed consent means that you’re supposed to inform participants what it is that you’re studying, and get their consent,” Bailey said.
“These participants were parents who were concerned that their children have ROGD, and they were recruited through this website, Parents of ROGD Kids, with a survey that explained it was for parents who were worried about their kids. The last line of the survey said, ‘if we get enough data, we’ll publish the results on our website,’” he said.
The retraction hinges on the fine distinction between consent to publish on a website and consent to publish in an academic journal.
“That’s just ridiculous,” Bailey said.
What They Found
The research was partly motivated by a strange trend—an explosion in cases of gender dysphoria among adolescent girls.
Could social contagion be at play?
If so, it could mean the fast-growing transgender movement is, in Bailey’s words, “a house of cards.”
Diaz’s and Bailey’s study drew on more than 1,600 survey responses obtained between 2017 and 2021.
The survey found that three-quarters of those whose gender dysphoria began at a young age were female.
“Pre-existing mental health issues were common, and youths with these issues were more likely than those without them to have socially and medically transitioned,” the study’s abstract states.
On average, gender dysphoric youth were also unusually intelligent and closer to their mothers than their fathers.
The paper looked into both social transitioning—acting to live one’s life as a different gender—and medical transitioning, which is taking hormones or undergoing surgery.
“The biggest predictor of both kinds of transition was if the parents had received a referral to a gender specialist,” Bailey told The Epoch Times.
Ongoing Research
Despite the retraction and attendant controversy, Bailey is still hard at work.
He and other researchers are conducting a multi-year study of teenagers with gender dysphoria.
