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Freelance Scientist

@docjon.bsky.social

Scientist 🏳️‍🌈

45 Posts424 Follower666 Folgt
Erin Reed@erininthemorning.com · 4mo ago

Dr. Kaltiala has now responded to our criticisms of her study through Gender Clinic News, an anti-trans blog whose author describes transgender healthcare as "gender ideology." Her response is notable less for what it addresses than for what it avoids entirely. My counter-response:

Dr. Kaltiala has now responded to our criticisms of her study through Gender Clinic News, an anti-trans blog whose author describes transgender healthcare as "gender ideology" and refers to advocates of gender-affirming care as "gender ideologues.” Her response is notable less for what it addresses than for what it avoids entirely. Of the major methodological flaws identified in this fact check—surveillance bias, the misanchored index date, immortal time bias, the binary outcome measure, and the abusive clinic practices—she engages with almost none of them. She does not address surveillance bias at all. She does not address the fact that her study pegged its before-and-after comparison to the date (+2 years) a patient first walked into the clinic—not to when treatment actually began, and how this creates an immortal time bias. She does not explain why, despite having access to Social Insurance Institution records showing when each patient first filled a hormone prescription, she chose not to anchor the comparison to treatment. She does not address the fact that for many patients, the two-year gap after the index date expires while they are still mid-assessment. She does not address how the binary outcome measure—any visit, yes or no—means a single downstream referral from a routine monitoring check-in is enough to be counted as evidence of “psychiatric treatment needs.” She does not address the abusive clinic practices documented by former patients at her own facility, or the patient accounts collected by Kehrääjä describing invasive sexual prodding of minors, systematic deadnaming, reporting of trans youth to CPS, and abuse. These are fundamental design choices and contextual realities that predetermined the study’s outcome, and her response is silent on all of them.To the one substantive rebuttal she does make: she claims that Finland’s specialist psychiatric services are reserved for those with “severe disorders” and that patients would not reach specialist-level care without genuine need. But this misses the point of the surveillance bias critique entirely. The study claims to exclude appointments with the gender identity assessment team itself—but it cannot exclude what those appointments produce. The Finnish Medical Journal documented that hormone therapy patients were monitored every 3-6 months “in close cooperation with the adolescent psychiatry unit.” At each of these regular check-ins, clinicians are actively screening for psychiatric concerns. If anything is flagged, and notably this team had a hair trigger for flagging concerns, the patient is referred to separate specialist psychiatric services for evaluation. If a referral is made during assessment for any problem at all, the patient may continue to require visits long after, even for conditions entirely unrelated to gender dysphoria, such as ADHD or unrelated trauma. Those downstream referrals are not excluded from the study’s outcome variable. Damningly, even if that psychiatrist determined there are no issues and cleared the patient, it still would be registered as a negative impact of trans care, as the visit would be logged. This is textbook surveillance bias: when you screen a population every three months for psychiatric issues, you will find and refer more people than in a population that is never screened. The general population controls in this study had no equivalent system watching them. The “dramatic increase” is not evidence of deterioration—it is what happens when you take a group selected for having almost no prior psychiatric contact and place them inside a system that screens them every three months and refers them onward routinely. Dr. Kaltiala’s own study concedes the point that defeats her rebuttal. Her study states: “A limitation of this stu…
Erin Reed@erininthemorning.com · 4mo ago

1. A new study claims trans care worsens mental health. It is fatally flawed. It didn't measure mental health—it measured psych visits. Even visits that stemmed from mandatory checkins, surgical pre-psych evals, or pre-treatment that was classified as post. Subscribe to support our journalism.

Alejandra Caraballo@esqueer.net · 5mo ago

It's really funny how Maya Forstater and Julie Bindel spend all their time online fearmongering about how trans people are dangers to women and children yet they went to a stadium full of 10k trans people and nothing at all happened to them. Thanks for the donation, hope you enjoyed the show!

A screenshot of a post by Maya Forstater on X (formerly Twitter). The main image is a dark, blue-tinted selfie of Forstater in the foreground, wearing glasses and a patterned scarf. Behind her is a large, crowded concert arena with a brightly lit stage in the distance. Below the photo is a quote-repost from "The Lies They Tell" (@sarahstuartxx) which reads: ​"Join me tonight as I cover live the thrills and spills of the Trans Mission Live concert. Turns include Zack Polanski, Beth Ditto and a bunch of people you’ve never heard of. Literally hundreds of people attending the #FoxKillersVanityProject"A screenshot of a post by Julie Bindel on X featuring the hashtag #TransMission. The image shows a candid, side-profile photo of a woman with short dark hair wearing a long-sleeved green shirt. She is leaning against a black metal railing in what appears to be a dimly lit venue with purple ambient lighting.
Sooz Kempner@soozuk.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Graham Linehan gets refused entry back in to the US where he now lives so he just has to live in the airport like Tom Hanks in that movie except instead of making friends and getting off with Catherine Zeta Jones he just gets arrested several times a day.

flyingrodent@flyingrodent.bsky.social · last yr.

If these people were ever reasonable, you would expect this to now ratchet down and get less intense. The opposite is going to happen, because these are not reasonable people, and having stepped on the accelerator this hard, all they can ever do is keep going faster until they smash into a wall.

David Timoney@fromarsetoelbow.bsky.social · last yr.

Freeman is famously obtuse, not realising that she was shunned for being obnoxious, but casting herself as the victim of a witch-hunt, when the toilet police are gathering with pitchforks, is just epic-level obtuseness.

Lee Hurley@hleehurley.com · last yr.

Cass report - Sex Matters etc consulted, trans participation refused. FWS Supreme Court case - Sex Matters etc consulted, trans participation refused. Puberty blocker ban - Sex Matters etc consulted, trans input ignored. That should be everything you need to know.

George Takei@georgetakei.bsky.social · last yr.

I know this first hand. When I was a child, my entire community was branded as spies and sabateurs, justifying our internment inside barbed wire camps for years without due process, trial or charge.

X post by Timothy Snyder (@TimothyD ...), posted 6 hours ago. The post reads, "The people Attorney General Bondi is calling 'terrorists' have had no trial and no chance to defend them. We do not know they are. Ignoring the Constitution does not make us safe. It puts us all in peril."
cait (and adonis)@cait.bsky.social · last yr.

having a pet is so fucking stupid. you're just pre-purchasing yourself the worst pain you'll ever feel in your life and we just keep doing it, like idiots, because the only thing worse than losing them is never having them at all

Bron 🩷💜💙@bronwen.bsky.social · 2y ago

Centrists, No, I will not be making any compromises on trans rights to stop Nazis because 1) they aren't my fucking rights to compromise on 2) giving the Nazis exactly what they want is no way to fucking get rid of them, is it you twats and 3) fuck you for even asking

Mallory Moore@sexabolition.blog · 2y ago

The failure to reckon with transphobia as a currently central motivation of the far right will continue to plague those disturbed by its rise for a decade or more Rather than standing with trans people many liberals have pursued appeasement and helped the wider shift to the far right in the process

Katy Montgomerie 🦗@katymontgomerie.com · 2y ago

The GC movement has morphed, but not from nice to vile. Just from vile with a mask on to vile with a megaphone Jeni herself was actually one of the first GCs that made me realise that, ironically, when she said trans people get praised for nothing and cis people have to work for it

Aidan Comerford@aidancomerford.bsky.social · 2y ago

"I've watched as the gender critical movement morphed into everything the trans rights activists said it was." (except, it didn't morph, it was always a movement that was fine with dangerous men, as long as they were on their side.)

Tweet by Harvey Jeni I was one of those women. Who could not see women's rights undermined, our scant resources taken, our feminist movement turned inside out. I risked and lost a lot. And I've watched as the GC movement morphed into everything the TRA's said it was. As women champion rapists
UnicornsRockUK@unicornsrockuk.bsky.social · 2y ago

It's 1935 all over again, just reversed. Hang on, I guess we could start an old time song? "Elon, has only got one ball, Trump's got two but they're very small, DeSantis thinks he's lost his, and poor Pence has no balls at all.

The Transfeminine Review@thetransfemininereview.com · 2y ago

Okay, here’s the deal: RIGHT NOW is the time for concrete, direct action. If you’re following me, it’s probably because you care about trans art and trans literature. The article below lays out my suggestions for dozens of concrete actions you can take to preemptively combat literary censorship.

The Trans Literature Preservation Project: A Practical Guide to Resisting Censorship

Project 2025 wants to criminalize trans literature. Here’s a game plan for keeping our stories alive.

thetransfemininereview.com