When the taxpayers pay for something, it stands to reason (barring anything like national security considerations) that we should get a good look at what we're paying for. That includes such things as taxpayer-funded research into the use of puberty blockers for "transgender" youths, a highly controversial practice. There have been states that banned the practice, and it's being debated in other states and probably will be for some time, so some research isn't out of line.
Even so: Here's the funny thing about research and the scientific method. When one sets out to prove a hypothesis, the results aren't always what you expect.
When that happens, the correct response is to adjust your hypothesis and re-do your experiments. But it seems, all too often, when one is a taxpayer-funded researcher with an axe to grind, the result is to try to keep the data out of the eyes of the public.
That's what is happening, right now, with a long-term study on the use of puberty blockers in transgender children.
An influential doctor and advocate of adolescent gender treatments said she had not published a long-awaited study of puberty-blocking drugs because of the charged American political environment.
The doctor, Johanna Olson-Kennedy, began the study in 2015 as part of a broader, multimillion-dollar federal project on transgender youth. She and colleagues recruited 95 children from across the country and gave them puberty blockers, which stave off the permanent physical changes — like breasts or a deepening voice — that could exacerbate their gender distress, known as dysphoria.
Take a good hard look at that first quoted sentence: "An influential doctor and advocate" of these treatments. Did the study include any researcher who didn't already have a bias toward a specific outcome?
The study only evaluated the mental, not physical, effects of the treatments.
The researchers followed the children for two years to see if the treatments improved their mental health. An older Dutch study had found that puberty blockers improved well-being, results that inspired clinics around the world to regularly prescribe the medications as part of what is now called gender-affirming care.
But the American trial did not find a similar trend, Dr. Olson-Kennedy said in a wide-ranging interview. Puberty blockers did not lead to mental health improvements, she said, most likely because the children were already doing well when the study began.
Were they, though?
That conclusion seemed to contradict an earlier description of the group, in which Dr. Olson-Kennedy and her colleagues noted that one quarter of the adolescents were depressed or suicidal before treatment.
What about the physical effects? Bear in mind that there are few hard dividers in biology; the physical can affect the mental, and vice versa. Also, hormones, or the lack of them, can have a profound effect on mental health and stability. Anyone who has ever had a kid going through puberty can attest to that. It's suspicious, to say the least, to restrict such a study to only encompass mental health - especially given the irreversible physical effects of these treatments.
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Now the team that did this work is hesitant to publish their data. Why? Because they are afraid it could be "weaponized."
The only way this data could be used against the transgender agenda, of course, is if it contains indications that these treatments are harmful.
In the nine years since the study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, and as medical care for this small group of adolescents became a searing issue in American politics, Dr. Olson-Kennedy’s team has not published the data. Asked why, she said the findings might fuel the kind of political attacks that have led to bans of the youth gender treatments in more than 20 states, one of which will soon be considered by the Supreme Court.
“I do not want our work to be weaponized,” she said. “It has to be exactly on point, clear and concise. And that takes time.”
It takes time to do what? The data is the data. If the work is sound, reproducibility applies; anyone should be able to duplicate their results, examine those results, and arrive at the same conclusions. There's no good reason to fear "weaponization" of the data unless it proves as we suspect: That these treatments are harmful and ill-advised.
I don't like to critique a study I haven't examined myself. But the reluctance on the part of the researcher - who is, again, an advocate - to release the results of his study is telling. This isn't how science works. Transparency is essential in science; and even more so when the American taxpayers are picking up the tab.
These researchers should be given a choice: Release your data or have any and all taxpayer grants rescinded. We have a right to see what the real results are.
