TERFs and the religious right cannot seem to grasp why transgender people, and even other academics, have called out Lisa Littman’s study on “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria” (ROGD) as junk science that proves nothing. I’d like to illustrate why with a series of ihypothetical conversations that show why any study with just ONE of the problems Littman’s has would be laughable. In reality, her “study” has all of these issues. This post is meant to show in layman’s terms why these flaws are so severe, and then explain how Littman’s “study” deliberately falls into all of these methodological issues and logical fallacies.
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Bad Scientist: I’ve proved bigfoot exists!
Me: How?
Bad Scientist: By interviewing the people who first made the claim that bigfoot exists.
(Littman attempted to prove that ROGD exists, by interviewing the people who made up the term in the first place).
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Bad Scientist: bigfoot is real!
Me: Do you have proof?
Bad Scientist: I interviewed members of three zoological organizations, and they all agreed that bigfoot is real.
Me: Which zoological organizations specifically?
Bad Scientist: The Bigfoot Believers Society, The Bigfoot Cryptozoology Club, and the American Bigfoot Association.
Me: This is a very biased sample. Did you consider the effects of a biased sample on your results?
Bad Scientist: No.
(Littman only sampled from non-supportive parents who already believe in ROGD. Her study made no efforts to account or compensate for this bias.)
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Bad Scientist: My study shows that puppies are sad animals.
Me: How did your study show this?
Bad Scientist: Well, I interviewed people who drop kicked their puppies, and they told me their puppies were sad animals
Me: Did your study ever consider the alternative explanation that the puppies were sad because they were being drop-kicked, and not because puppies are inherently sad animals?
Bad Scientist: No.
(Littman’s only sought responses from non-supportive parents. Despite that fact that all the available evidence from higher quality studies shows that transgender youth in supportive homes have better outcomes, Littman’s study never considers the Occam’s razor explanation that what parents reported was simply the already well understood effects of living in an unsupportive home)
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Bad Scientist: My study showed that puppies are sad animals.
Me: How did your study show this?
Bad Scientist: Well, I interviewed people who drop kicked their puppies, and they told me their puppies were sad animals
Me: Did you have a control group of puppies that weren’t being drop kicked by their owners?
Bad Scientist: No.
(This is a corollary to the last analogy. Because she didn’t take in any data on children who were supported by their families, there is no way to prove that her observations were because of “ROGD” and not because of being in unsupportive families. In all likelihood, she deliberately left out a control group because she knew it would undercut her thesis.)
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Me: If puppies who are drop-kicked are sad animals, what is your hypothesized solution?
Bad Scientist: More drop-kicking.
Me: Why on earth would you think that?
Bad Scientist: Only through suffering and rejection can puppies realize their full potential as dogs, and be less sad.
(Littman’s partner in producing this paper is a Catholic Jungian analyst who believes that only through suffering can people truly be human.)
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Me: You seem to have something against puppies.
Bad Scientist: No I don’t. They chose to be puppies, and all the drop-kicking that brings with it.
Me: Why on earth would they choose that?
Bad Scientist: Because getting drop-kicked is trendy.
(Littman’s study ignores that data that 75% of transgender youth do not feel safe expressing themselves at their schools, and instead insists that they’re just doing it to be trendy.)
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Bad Scientist: Bigfoot is real.
Me: Great. Did you actually capture one?
Bad Scientist: No.
Me: Did you observe one in the wild?
Bad Scientist: No.
Me: Did you directly collect and data on bigfoot?
Bad Scientist: No.
Me: Did you collect any data that wasn’t provided by the bigfoot believer’s clubs?
Bad Scientist: No.
Me: … And you probably believe that Kavanaugh didn’t rape anyone because it wasn’t on his calendar.
(Littman has never worked with transgender youth, and never interacted with any. All of the data she collected was second hand, and provided by non-supportive parents)
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Bad Scientist: My study shows that we can solve all the world’s energy problems with a porcupine, a treadmill, and two boxes of Raisin Bran.
Me: <Looks at the data> No. This goes against all the previous research, and the study is riddled with methodological problems. Biased samples. No control groups. Unsupported conclusions. It ignores simpler alternative explanations for the data as well.
Bad Scientist: You’re biased because you’re one of those porcupine activists who hates science!
Me: Nope. You’re just can’t take the criticism that comes with producing really bad research.
(Criticism of Littman’s work is well within the normal bounds of academic criticism, especially when adopting poor science into policy can harm vulnerable communities.)
The SCOTUS Event Horizon for the LGBT Movement
Stop for a moment. Imagine how bad it will be…