alt Hacker NewsThe data is poor quality. It's not like you can randomize who gets a sex change operation. And there are major issues with even knowing who to count when people can just decide they're not trans any more. All the research on this is riven with such unhandled problems.
The research is also highly motivated. A researcher who found that sex change operations were harmful would be targeted for endless harassment by gender activists, if they could get published at all.
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The effect sizes here are huge and seemingly hold when controlling for the typical factors such as socioeconomic status. They appear to hold both across groups that did not seek treatment and those that did AND in follow up studies checking the rates of how feelings (e.g. ideation) evolve over time for each group. It’s ok to raise concerns about confounding variables but the hypotheses here for such a huge effect size seem limited.
The fact that people can decide they’re not trans is not particularly material. This is very uncommon.
The conspiracy that such research must be politically motivated is a contrived argument and also falsely paints a dichotomy of saying that it must either help or harm. My assumption before doing the research was that they would find no effect.
> The research is also highly motivated. A researcher who found that sex change operations were harmful would be targeted for endless harassment by gender activists, if they could get published at all.
A researcher who found this would be feted by the conservative/evangelical wing of the US political spectrum. They would stand to make a ton of money in the book and personal appearance circuit.