#also the way people use the word media literacy makes me furious

[famouswolflamppaper]

I am so tired of checking the Gale tag on Tumblr and stumbling over some comments demeaning Gale and long-ass rehashed rants about whether Mystra groomed Gale. I don't want these. I just want to see Gale kissing other people's beautiful tavs and origin characters.

[potaosoup]

Alright, so I think this might be the next misinformation/anti-trans talking point and it's got me furious, cause it's just blatant misinterpretation of science.

So the BBC just published this article, with similar headlines echoed by several explicitly right-wing news outlets, including The Daily Signal, The Telegraph, and Hot Air (Red flag #1: absolutely no coverage from any scientific media orgs. or typically reputable sources). In it, Hannah Barnes, who - it should be noted - has based her entire recent career on peddling transphobic gender-critical rhetoric, writes:

"The original study of 44 children, who all took the controversial drugs for a year or more, found no mental health impact - neither benefits nor harm. But a re-analysis of that data now suggests 34% saw their mental health deteriorate, while 29% improved."

(Red flag #2: note the use of the word controversial, framing puberty blockers as a fairly debated topic when, in reality, are widely accepted by scientific and medical groups as a way to help trans youth work through the extremely hard time that is puberty along with proper medical treatment.)

The article continues by casting further doubt on the safety, usefulness, and necessity of puberty blockers, really nothing new as far as what we've seen before.

But if I know anything, it's that bigots of any kind just love having a little number that they can brandish, which makes sense, given that they almost never have any actual facts in their favour. So let's take a quick look at this groundbreaking new analysis they're referring to.

First and foremost, this analysis is not peer reviewed, and the disclaimer at the very top even says the following:

This article is a preprint and has not been peer-reviewed [what does this mean?]. It reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice.

So any claims that this could directly cause serious reconsideration of well-established clinical guidelines are false. (People are making up untrue science to back anti-trans policies, yes, but medical organizations are absolutely not going to see this as a reason to change practices.)

Now, I am not in a position to make any substantive judgments on the numbers or how they were analyzed, but I would like to demonstrate how it is completely feasible to, with a basic level of scientific literacy, to just read the works that these people cite and actually understand what's being said here. All the following stuff is what I took straight from this analysis and the authors' own conclusions.

This is not a study casting doubt on the effects of puberty blockers.

What it is, is a look at some faulty data and possibly sloppy analysis. It's basically saying that when the original study used the average of all their results as their main conclusion from the data, they failed to highlight the range of both positive and negative experiences reported by participants (yes, think Spiders Georg)

The original study had an extremely small sample group of only 44, and by the end, only had 15 respondents. They also didn't have any control group, adding to the limited scope of the study. The 2023 re-analysis specifically says that these flaws in the methods are exactly why it shouldn't be used to draw broad conclusions about the effectiveness or safety of puberty blockers, and that we should really be looking at the different factors that could lead to either improvement or deterioration of trans kids' mental health.

Given the relatively low proportion of the sample in the clinical or borderline range, the rates of clinically significant change should be treated with caution. [...] Using the reliable and clinically significant change approach to analysis of clinical study data provides an opportunity for research teams in this field to conduct fuller analysis of their data to ascertain whether there are any variables which might predict which children with GD are most likely to benefit psychologically and which are most likely to deteriorate, rather than considering the group as uniform in likely response to treatment.

So, no, this isn't some earth-shattering evidence that puberty blockers are actually making kids more depressed. I don't think that we should be surprised that transphobes will try to twist the narrative in their favour - it's what they've always done. But I'd rather treat this as a moment to show how scientific literacy and the ability to spend even a few minutes digging into the headlines you see is one of the best ways to counter misinformation and to see the ways that the people trying to strip us of our rights use the articles and studies that people won't actually read to bolster their bigotry.

Of course, simply pointing out the flaws of their logic or misinterpretations of fact will not stop them from pursuing their hateful ideology, but it can equip you to see the rhetoric they're using and possibly keep yourself and others from falling down pipelines of disinformation in good faith.

Science and solidarity,

-Your local trans nerd