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But just pointing to a completely different false statistic + your intimate conviction is not the way. What is the rule being applied here? All statistics are false if I feel like it?
Your ‘deboonking’ quip is invalid, it’s supposed to make fun of people’s tendency to falsely claim they have debunked their opponent’s statistics. But on the literacy numbers, it would be hard to find a halfway reasonable ‘antiracist progressive’ who would still support the original claim after the debunking. Ergo, it’s a true debunking, not a ‘deboonking’.
Who is ‘they’? To make the “282 teenage mastectomies” claim false here, one researcher has to lie, and then all the other researchers have to support it by not publishing any contradictory evidence (since you haven’t found it). And that group includes a lot of people who think it’s a very good thing that those surgeries are being performed, so the dubious claim can be attacked both from a pro-trans and anti-trans perspective. The ‘they’ obscures the difference between a few liars within a broadly sympathetic group and an extremely well-coordinated conspiracy, requiring all to act as one.
I'm not invested in any particular form of pushback, just in there being some response available, when people do the equivalent of newspapers publishing bullshit on the frontpage, and a correction notice in tiny print, on page 19.
More like: just because it's a officially published statistic, doesn't mean it's true. If you expect people to change their mind based on the statistic you're citing, but it turns out to be false, you should be willing to suffer reputational damage if it turns out to be false, going forward people should have a right to be skeptical of any statistics posted in favor of the idea you're arguing for.
"They" is people arguing in favor of transgender care. It was an extremely popular at the time, including from researchers albeit not ex-cathedra. It was based on the assumption that the WPATH standards of care were being followed to the letter, and anyone disputing the assumption had the burden of proof shifted onto them.
This is dishonest. I have not not found it, I have not gone looking for it. I don't think anyone should have to go looking for a refutation of any numbers, unless the person making the original claim vouches with their reputation for the statistics used to that back it.
No. All the other researchers have to do, is need a few years to try an replicate the original finding.
People who think it's a good thing those surgeries are being performed are still aware of their political environment, and the backlash that will come if the awareness of high numbers spreads to the public.
Ok, so someone does a study estimating the number of gender-affirming surgery in the US, but they aggregate the youngest age group into 12-18 year olds, so you don't actually know how many have been done on minors, and when a journalist asks them "hey can you sand me the raw disaggregated data", they answer with "all of the analysis we did was based on the age groups that we specified, we haven’t done analyses with other age groups", and refuse to send the data. Nothing comes out of it in the months that follow, is that an "extremely well-coordinated conspiracy"?
Do you need an official “I vouch for those numbers on my children’s children lives” ? Rae and I will suffer some reputational damage for defending those numbers if you find contradicting ones, and that is usually enough of a motivation for others.
I did find them suspiciously low myself, did a quick search, saw no contradicting statistic. This is the point where your priors should move somewhat (since, as in the literacy numbers, there is an alternate universe where they are easily debunked by the quick search), not where you double down on your intuition. And please don’t call me dishonest lightly. Whether you went looking for them or not, you haven’t found them. I am not trying to deceive anyone.
Then why haven’t they lied on the 42k diagnoses ?
The study said “3678 (7.7%) were aged 12 to 18 years“ (gender-affirming surgeries over 4 years). That’s in the same ballpark as “282 mastectomies per year on minors”, no matter how they choose to massage the disaggregated data.
I don't actually think you should suffer reputational damage since you're just trying to get to the real numbers, rather than throwing a wet blanket on the conversation. So from Rae I'll either need an official statement, or a rephrasing of their post in a way that doesn't imply my loicence to care will be taken away if I don't prove the number of surgeries exceed a certain threshold (which, I will notice, is not even specified).
I don't know if I agree. Like I said, for some time I have been frustrated at the "posting bullshit on the front page - posting a retraction on page 19" dynamic, and I'm not in the mood to keep letting it happen. I did move my priors somewhat, back when people were posting WPATH guidelines to tell me surgeries on minors don't happen at all. My reward for that is people telling me to stop caring, because even though surgeries on minors absolutely are happening, it's not a lot. If I am to give this argument any credence, it needs to come with pre-declared costs to the people putting it forward, if the statistics they're using turn out to be wrong. Either that or I feel entitled to reject the argument in it's entirety.
The implication seems to have been (and apparently still is) that since I was unable to provide any contradicting numbers, I should move my priors as you said. That would be a good argument, but I think there's a massive difference between "unable" and "haven't even attempted", and it's not right to conflate the two in this type of argument.
A diagnosis says nothing about the interventions that will take place, you can always say keep repeating the old "reversible interventions only" line that used be popular. We also don't know whether these are undercounted or not.
I haven't posted this study as an example of contradicting numbers, I've posted this study as an example of how they can hide inconvenient data without an "extremely well-coordinated conspiracy" (alternatively, as proof that one exists), so I'm rather miffed this is precisely the point you chose to not answer.
If you want to know why I'm so skeptical of the numbers, one of the reasons is that Kaiser Permanente was doing 40-50 mastectomies on minors per year by 2020 (it being the year of COVID the numbers actually went down somewhat). Now sure, it's a big clinic, it's a progressive state, so probably they'll be doing more of them than the national average, but there's a couple hundred pediatric gender clinics in the US. Maybe they don't all have surgeons, or there are none around to refer to, but it just doesn't pass the sniff test at first glance. Then, even if the mastectomies are in the right ballpark, is opening a new clinic worth it for an average of 5-ish or so blocker prescriptions? I only know of one American whistleblower from a clinic so far, but she reported it being overwhelmed.
Maybe my various inferences about the numbers are wrong, and maybe Rae's numbers do pan out, but given how the goalposts have shifted in the broader debate, I feel entitled to strong skepticism unless overwhelming evidence is provided.
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