Figures Don't Lie But Liars Can Figure.

How many times have we heard that in our lives, but there is a corollary to that saying, it is researchers can research but not all researches are valid.

A number of years back in 2021 there was a researcher from Brown University that was discredited for her research on us.

Evidence Undermines ‘Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria’ Claims
Fears of “social contagion,” used to support anti-transgender legislation, are not supported by science
Scientific America
BY TIMMY BRODERICK
August 24, 2023

A recent study claiming to describe more than 1,600 possible cases of a “socially contagious syndrome” was retracted in June for failing to obtain ethics approval from an institutional review board. The survey examined “rapid-onset gender dysphoria,” a proposed condition that attributes adolescent gender distress to exposure to transgender people through friends or social media. The existence of such a syndrome has been the subject of intense debate for the past several years and has fueled arguments against transgender rights reforms, despite being widely criticized by medical experts.

The American Psychological Association and 61 other health care providers’ organizations signed a letter in 2021 denouncing the validity of rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) as a clinical diagnosis. And a steadily growing body of scientific evidence demonstrates that it does not reflect transgender adolescents’ experiences and that “social contagion” is not causing more young people to seek gender-affirming care. Still, the concept continues to be used to justify anti-trans legislation across the U.S.

This is the Cinderella of the conservatives and they keep on bring it in hearings and testimony say that the study was discredited because of pressure from the trans community.

When I was taking a class in research for my MSW we went over the aspects of a good research study. Since my was over ten years ago I asked Google Gemini (What are some of the important steps in a research when doing a study?) and the AI answer in part was…

Research, regardless of the specific study type, often follows a general framework consisting of crucial steps. Here are some of the important ones:

1. Identify the Problem or Question:
    Start by pinpointing a specific issue, area of interest, or question you want to explore. This guides the entire research process and ensures focus.

2. Conduct a Literature Review:
    Dive into existing research on your topic. This helps understand previous findings, methodologies used, and potential gaps in knowledge.

3. Develop a Research Design:
    Based on your question and review, choose a suitable research approach (e.g., experiment, survey, observation). Define variables, methodologies, and data collection methods.

4. Collect Data:
    Implement your chosen methodology to gather data from relevant sources. Ensure ethical considerations and quality control measures are in place.

I’ll stop there because I think those are the most important steps in a study. When trying to get subjects for a study there are a number of ways to do it but it is broken down into two types… Probability Sampling, and Non-Probability Sampling.

When you have a large source of subjects the Probability sampling of the best way. Suppose you want to find what percentage of people brush their teeth before or after eating? You would have a data base to draw from. But if you are going to have to use a Non-Probability sampling technique such as: Convenience Sampling where you interview every tenth person leaving a store, Purposive Sampling where you interview every mother leaving a store with a child, and a Snowball Sampling.

When I was part of a group of researchers studying AIDS/HIV in the trans community we used a snowball sampling technique. The technique starts with a person who was in the trans community (We call them the seed.), we made sure that we had broad cross-section of the community as our seeds (Race, gender, income levels, national origin, etc.). Because of the size of our community we could not use Probability sampling.

So lets got back to the Scientific America article, so how did the researcher gather her survey subjects?

Many transgender people experience gender dysphoria, meaning that the gender that was assigned to them at birth and their gender identity don’t align, causing distress. ROGD was proposed as a gender dysphoria subtype in a 2018 paper by physician and researcher Lisa Littman, then at Brown University.* Littman’s survey asked parents of transgender adolescents—recruited predominantly from anti-transgender websites and forums—to describe their child’s “sudden or rapid onset of gender dysphoria” and to state if it coincided with increased social media usage or the child’s friends coming out as transgender.

Littman later issued a correction that updated the methodology, including a brief description of the websites and forums, and noted that ROGD is not a formal diagnosis. But the concept had already been taken upin books and podcasts—and by politicians—to promulgate the idea that peer pressure and social media are making kids transgender or that being transgender is a form of mental illness. As legislation targeting trans people has reached an all-time high in the U.S., ROGD’s alleged social contagion has been invoked by lawmakers in states such as Missouri, Utah and Arkansas to justify banning or restricting gender-affirming care for young people.

In the The Journal of Pediatrics they have an article about ROGD but they used the children and not the parents...

Although emergence of gender dysphoria at puberty is long established, a distinct pathway of rapid onset gender dysphoria was recently hypothesized based on parental data. Using adolescent clinical data, we tested a series of associations that would be consistent with this pathway, however, our results did not support the rapid onset gender dysphoria hypothesis.

[…]

Discussion
We did not find support within a clinical population for a new etiologic phenomenon of rapid onset gender dysphoria during adolescence. Among adolescents under age 16 years seen in specialized gender clinics, associations between more recent gender knowledge and factors hypothesized to be involved in rapid onset gender dysphoria were either not statistically significant, or were in the opposite direction to what would be hypothesized. This putative phenomenon was posited based on survey data from a convenience sample of parents recruited from websites,10 and may represent the perceptions or experiences of those parents, rather than of adolescents, particularly those who may enter into clinical care. Similar analyses should be replicated using additional clinical and community data sources. Our finding of lower anxiety severity/impairment scores in adolescents with more recent gender knowledge suggests the potential for longstanding experiences of gender dysphoria (or their social complications) playing a role in development of anxiety, which could also be explored in future research.

Okay the study was about how the gender dysphoria appears suddenly in children so who were her test subjects and did she get them?

• The test subject were the parents of the trans children.
• It was a Convenience Sample recruited from right-wing website.
• The parents said that their children we always on line talking to friends.
• The conclusion that was drawn from the parents was that right out of the blue their sons or daughters came out as trans therefore it was ROGD.

As anyone who is trans or lesbians or gay knows we knew we were trans or gay long before we told anyone.

I hope that this will give you a greater understanding what the opposing is quoting from because the Republican legislators often cite this survey in their anti-trans laws. You should know what to look for in establishing reliable research.

Garbage In Garbage Out.