Such treatment for adolescents with gender dysphoria was also not linked to lower psychiatric treatment needs, according to preliminary findings from an analysis of Finnish health data.
This reads like the cliff notes of pediatric gender affirming care of a very difficult college course, called “What’s Does the Science Say? : A takedown of pediatric gender medicine”. You brought up my top favorite worst studies EVER:
Tordoff study with a control group of ...7!
NEJM leaves out two scales AND has 2 completed suicides, they still have the audacity to publish they found mental improvement!
Benjamin you are a investigative reporter...where in the world are the 6 missing scale results?” You’d win a Pulitzer if you find them...find them. Don’t you know some people in high places? I want to see you on 60 Minutes discussing this scandal with the Coop.
How did you manage to report on this conference, make it coherent, add links from studies and write such a concise synopsis in a way that that readers will certainly learn some or many new insights on this topic?...well this deserves to be published the NYTS or the Atlantic.
Other than leaving out the ketchup placebo idea...you nailed it.
I have a question for you. Why do you think SEGM is considered to be a controversial organization, and do you have an opinion on SEGM?
The notion of putting people on a waiting list for ketchup was quite the hypothetical flourish, a memorable moment in the conference indeed.
Thanks for the kind words. My computer actually ate my draft of this piece this morning and I had to write it again to my exasperation. For me, writing an article about a single study is usually pretty easy, because the outline of the piece has already been laid out for you. I've covered a lot of conferences in my day.
SEGM is considered controversial by the transgender activists who patrol Wikipedia. Their opinions are just propaganda, and count for nothing. Anyone who takes a closer look will see the SEGM are the adults in the room.
The editors at the NEJM who allowed the Chen paper to be published is proof of the deep rot in academic medicine, and medical ethics all together. These were psychologically well young people as young as 12 years of age…and one was dead after 6 months of ‘treatment’; right away that should have shut down the ‘study’ but no, they kept at it and another young person lost to suicide at 12 months. The only reference to their deaths was a ‘refer to table 2’ without any further explanation of how old they were, their sex, their ‘gender affirming’ hormonal intervention…nothing. This is a government funded (NIH) multi-center study on a novel approach to ‘gender affirmation’ in 315 young people, and two are now dead. The raw data for this study should be accessible because it is taxpayer funded. My guess is once these data are obtained, along with the missing scales, the entire field of ‘pediatric gender transition’ will be shuttered.
I know. I can’t believe the most prestigious medical journal in the world, NEJM, allowed that study to be published.
I’ll say this on that NEJM government grant funded “study”, I forced a lot of physicians to read that and they all said “man what happened to the NEJM”? Or “this makes me feel like I need to start reading studies again, not just the abstracts”. Or “this would NEVER pass in cardiology”.
I’m looking forward to this and other misleading “studies” to be called out for purposely misleading the public and scaring the shizz out of parents.
Imagine the amount of shame one must feel knowing they might have been part of a cover up and be hiding information on suicide safety risks, possible mental health decline, post treatment with cross sex hormones...do you think Joanna Olsen-Kennedy has remorse and lie awake at night hoping the public doesn’t find out ....OR does she just go home and pour herself a cold one, watch Yellowstone and chill in her Ugg slippers?
My impression is that JOK and her cohort are not capable of remorse, but only care about their reputations. One cannot be active in this ‘field’, after everything has been revealed about its shoddy foundation and current BS, without either some incredible hubris or a personality disorder.
So how do you intend to conduct this randomized study while hiding from the control group that they aren't being given gender affirming care? Additionally will anyone in the control group be removed from the study if they do get referred to by their correct pronouns? Also will you be taking any effort to prevent outside factors like a concerned parent discovering their teenager mid suicide attempt and giving them life saving care? obviously that externality will impact the deaths from the control group and may make it look like more people are surviving being unaffirmed when they might otherwise have died. Might I suggest we go further and we completely isolate the control group from any loving or supporting family member?
“ was not associated with any difference in psychiatric outcomes, including the chance of death by suicide”
This is statistically incorrect. The number of suicides is too low to perform any statistical test as the sampling distribution is so far from normal that statistical tests shouldn’t be applied. The correct statement would be “No statistical test could be performed on deaths from suicide due to statistical limitation”
I have doubts about these results if basic statistical concepts are not understood by this presenter.
They did perform a statistical analysis. The way the study author described their findings was this: For gender-reassignment treatment, there was no statistically significant hazard ratio for suicide mortality as compared with the controls when birth year, sex and psychiatric morbidity were controlled for. (I try to avoid such wonky ways of describing such analyses in my reporting, because readers find them alienating.) All this said, while the suicide death outcomes were rare and they couldn't detect a significant association with gender-reassignment treatment, they were able to detect a signifiant association with previous psychiatric illness. “The predictor of death by suicide is psychiatric comorbidity, which is very common," the study author said. She and her coauthors had what is apparently over 13,000 person-years of follow-up data on the gender dysphoric children, having data on just about every adolescent with such a diagnosis in Finland since about the mid-1990s. That's as comprehensive a data set anyone could hope to get. But there is no way to properly assess her analysis until they publish their paper in the coming months.
They should not have performed a statistical analysis on suicide data. They did because they didn't understand the statistics. Firstly, the limiting factor is not the sample size but the amount of outcome values for each binary set(so in this case, the number of suicides in this group). Not finding a statistically significant association is not the correct statement here-with proper statistical analysis the result should have been "No statistical test could be performed due to the size of the binary outcome groups."
I suggest that you consult with statisticians in the future-do you have any statistical training? It's your job to properly report statistical results.
This reads like the cliff notes of pediatric gender affirming care of a very difficult college course, called “What’s Does the Science Say? : A takedown of pediatric gender medicine”. You brought up my top favorite worst studies EVER:
Tordoff study with a control group of ...7!
NEJM leaves out two scales AND has 2 completed suicides, they still have the audacity to publish they found mental improvement!
Benjamin you are a investigative reporter...where in the world are the 6 missing scale results?” You’d win a Pulitzer if you find them...find them. Don’t you know some people in high places? I want to see you on 60 Minutes discussing this scandal with the Coop.
How did you manage to report on this conference, make it coherent, add links from studies and write such a concise synopsis in a way that that readers will certainly learn some or many new insights on this topic?...well this deserves to be published the NYTS or the Atlantic.
Other than leaving out the ketchup placebo idea...you nailed it.
I have a question for you. Why do you think SEGM is considered to be a controversial organization, and do you have an opinion on SEGM?
The notion of putting people on a waiting list for ketchup was quite the hypothetical flourish, a memorable moment in the conference indeed.
Thanks for the kind words. My computer actually ate my draft of this piece this morning and I had to write it again to my exasperation. For me, writing an article about a single study is usually pretty easy, because the outline of the piece has already been laid out for you. I've covered a lot of conferences in my day.
You had to write this twice? 😂
I have no choice but to subscribe
SEGM is considered controversial by the transgender activists who patrol Wikipedia. Their opinions are just propaganda, and count for nothing. Anyone who takes a closer look will see the SEGM are the adults in the room.
You know that Jesse Singal did a fantastic analysis of the NEJM paper? and Tordoff...
https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/researchers-found-puberty-blockers
Yep, his analysis was very helpful.
thank you for your analysis and clear writing.
See this article by Jesse Singal for a more detailed critique of the Tordoff study.
https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/researchers-found-puberty-blockers
The editors at the NEJM who allowed the Chen paper to be published is proof of the deep rot in academic medicine, and medical ethics all together. These were psychologically well young people as young as 12 years of age…and one was dead after 6 months of ‘treatment’; right away that should have shut down the ‘study’ but no, they kept at it and another young person lost to suicide at 12 months. The only reference to their deaths was a ‘refer to table 2’ without any further explanation of how old they were, their sex, their ‘gender affirming’ hormonal intervention…nothing. This is a government funded (NIH) multi-center study on a novel approach to ‘gender affirmation’ in 315 young people, and two are now dead. The raw data for this study should be accessible because it is taxpayer funded. My guess is once these data are obtained, along with the missing scales, the entire field of ‘pediatric gender transition’ will be shuttered.
How do we get these sham studies and criminals brought to light?
You mean the one that Ben cited in this that he wasn’t even able to show the slides because they know it would be torn apart and debunked.
I know. I can’t believe the most prestigious medical journal in the world, NEJM, allowed that study to be published.
I’ll say this on that NEJM government grant funded “study”, I forced a lot of physicians to read that and they all said “man what happened to the NEJM”? Or “this makes me feel like I need to start reading studies again, not just the abstracts”. Or “this would NEVER pass in cardiology”.
I’m looking forward to this and other misleading “studies” to be called out for purposely misleading the public and scaring the shizz out of parents.
Imagine the amount of shame one must feel knowing they might have been part of a cover up and be hiding information on suicide safety risks, possible mental health decline, post treatment with cross sex hormones...do you think Joanna Olsen-Kennedy has remorse and lie awake at night hoping the public doesn’t find out ....OR does she just go home and pour herself a cold one, watch Yellowstone and chill in her Ugg slippers?
My impression is that JOK and her cohort are not capable of remorse, but only care about their reputations. One cannot be active in this ‘field’, after everything has been revealed about its shoddy foundation and current BS, without either some incredible hubris or a personality disorder.
For the NEJM, this will eventually go down like the Lancet publishing the 'MMR vaccine causes autism' retracted Wakefield paper.
Thank you so much for this clear, intelligent reporting.
Thank you!
So how do you intend to conduct this randomized study while hiding from the control group that they aren't being given gender affirming care? Additionally will anyone in the control group be removed from the study if they do get referred to by their correct pronouns? Also will you be taking any effort to prevent outside factors like a concerned parent discovering their teenager mid suicide attempt and giving them life saving care? obviously that externality will impact the deaths from the control group and may make it look like more people are surviving being unaffirmed when they might otherwise have died. Might I suggest we go further and we completely isolate the control group from any loving or supporting family member?
“ was not associated with any difference in psychiatric outcomes, including the chance of death by suicide”
This is statistically incorrect. The number of suicides is too low to perform any statistical test as the sampling distribution is so far from normal that statistical tests shouldn’t be applied. The correct statement would be “No statistical test could be performed on deaths from suicide due to statistical limitation”
I have doubts about these results if basic statistical concepts are not understood by this presenter.
They did perform a statistical analysis. The way the study author described their findings was this: For gender-reassignment treatment, there was no statistically significant hazard ratio for suicide mortality as compared with the controls when birth year, sex and psychiatric morbidity were controlled for. (I try to avoid such wonky ways of describing such analyses in my reporting, because readers find them alienating.) All this said, while the suicide death outcomes were rare and they couldn't detect a significant association with gender-reassignment treatment, they were able to detect a signifiant association with previous psychiatric illness. “The predictor of death by suicide is psychiatric comorbidity, which is very common," the study author said. She and her coauthors had what is apparently over 13,000 person-years of follow-up data on the gender dysphoric children, having data on just about every adolescent with such a diagnosis in Finland since about the mid-1990s. That's as comprehensive a data set anyone could hope to get. But there is no way to properly assess her analysis until they publish their paper in the coming months.
They should not have performed a statistical analysis on suicide data. They did because they didn't understand the statistics. Firstly, the limiting factor is not the sample size but the amount of outcome values for each binary set(so in this case, the number of suicides in this group). Not finding a statistically significant association is not the correct statement here-with proper statistical analysis the result should have been "No statistical test could be performed due to the size of the binary outcome groups."
I suggest that you consult with statisticians in the future-do you have any statistical training? It's your job to properly report statistical results.