On J. Michael Bailey, (Andrew Wakefield), John Money and ethics in gender research

 I shall take a sabbatical from my Phobia Indoctrination series this morning to write about the latest and most interesting dust-up in academia.  Let's delve into the dangerous world of gender.  Consider, if you will, the story of one, Professor J. Michael Bailey.  For those who do not follow retractions in scholarly research, the name of J. Michael Bailey may be an unfamiliar one.  I teach about science, pseudo-science and the problems in peer review, so these matters are on my radar, and no topic is more dangerous than gender because no one has more power in academia than gender activists.  There.  I said it.  Go through this blog, and anything I have written.  I was ahead of the curve, and I stood against the hypocritical, left-wing gender activists when they went after Isabel Fall because I stand on principle, not bullshit.  I stood against them when they bullied a trans woman to the point that she self-institutionalized for suicidal ideation, all because their self-righteous drive to conflagration made them too fucking lazy to read a short story rather than merely the title.  I stand on principle, not bullshit.  Yes, I said it.  The gender activists are powerful.  If you look at capacity to make demands and force those demands to be met, nobody has more power in academia than gender activists.  Nobody.  (Hi.  I have tenure.)  So let us take a moment to consider J. Michael Bailey.  Earlier this year, he published an article called "Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria: Parent Reports on 1655 Possible Cases," with an anonymous parent going by "Suzanna Diaz," in Archives of Sexual Behavior Vol 52 (2023): 1031-1043.  It is an Open Access article, so you can follow that link and download the paper yourself.  Do so.

What is Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD)?  The term comes from one previously published paper by Lisa Littman for cases in which an adolescent with no previous history of gender nonconforming behavior announces a new gender identity and a desire to transition.  Littman's paper drew a firestorm of criticism from activists because ROGD cases are at least potentially "social contagion" rather than an underlying dysphoria present but unobserved from birth.  The possibility of ROGD fundamentally challenges the "affirmation model" of treatment, and since the activists are fully committed to the affirmation model, they vehemently attack any argument, data or claim that might call the affirmation model into question.  [Cough, cough... Tavistock...]

How much published, peer-reviewed research is there on ROGD?  Very little.

I wonder what would happen if someone tried to do more, with a larger sample.

Enter Michael Bailey, and "Suzanna Diaz."  Diaz is an anonymous parent, who compiled a survey of parents, and then took her survey to Bailey.  They worked together, the result of which was the paper linked above, with a much larger sample and more extensive results than Littman.

Given how little research there is on "ROGD," from a scientific perspective, a dispassionate observer might say, let's bring as much data as possible to bear on this question.  Bailey and "Diaz" essentially do replicate Littman's previous results, with some new findings.  In earlier generations, most transitions were M-to-F, but among ROGD adolescents, there was a strong skew towards natal females, for example.  Parents also-- and this gets controversial, obviously-- said that they felt pressured to affirm by clinicians, even without a history of gender nonconforming behavior among the adolescents.  For the rest, go read the paper.  Don't mind me, I'm just some blatherer.

What happened?  Remember that the very idea of ROGD is verboten to activists, so they demanded a retraction of the paper from the publishing company, Springer.

A retraction is a serious thing.  Consider how retractions work.  I study and teach about this, so let me walk you through some of the canonical examples.  Consider Andrew Wakefield.  Wakefield is the fraud behind the false belief that the MMR vaccine causes autism.  In 1998, he published a paper in Lancet called, "Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children."  Catchy title, right?  The point was to sound scientific, and bury you in bullshit.  Wakefield falsified data on twelve cases in which parents reported that they believed that their children's autism symptoms developed after they received their MMR vaccines.  There was a bunch of gobbledygook beyond that, but if this weren't enough, Wakefield was trying to sell his own snake oil, meaning he'd turn a profit by convincing gullible parents that the MMR vaccine was bad and scary.

From the perspective of the initial reviewers, the damned thing never should have been published in the first place.  There is a place for a case study or a small-N study, but some of the flaws in Wakefield's analysis were too obvious from the beginning.  One of the questions raised was about parents' memory of the development of symptoms, and we'll return to this in the case of ROGD!  You bet your bippy, we will, but more importantly, for a question like this, you really do need more than 12 to have anything.  Why?  Because, as Carl Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.  More, even if the data hadn't been faked, the whole thing read like a bad demonstration of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

So after the publication of that paper, the scientific community didn't just demand retraction on some minute and highly questionable technicality.  They found actual fraud, tried to replicate the result, failed, found his profit motive, and that is why Andrew Wakefield's paper on autism and the MMR vaccine was retracted.  You can go search for it, and download it, and you'll see in big, bold, red letters, "RETRACTED," on every page.

Fraud.  Actual, for fucking real, fraud, by a liar who made up his data to sell his own competing product.  That was how Wakefield's critics got that shit retracted.

OK, now keep that in mind.

And let's turn back to Bailey & Diaz.  Archives of Sexual Behavior retracted Bailey & Diaz's article, against the consent of the authors.  Why?  Did they falsify data?  Are they selling some product and hiding a financial conflict of interest?  How does this stack up against the Wakefield retraction?  I mean, a retraction is serious business!  The journal stamped in big letters, "RETRACTED ARTICLE," across the pages just to make sure any reader didn't get the impression that there is knowledge contained in these pages!  What crime against science or humanity happened here?

Is it the fact that this is a survey of parents, whose memories or assessments might not be correct?  This was a primary critique of Littman's method.  She asked parents, not the kids.  Here's the challenge.  If you are studying a phenomenon like ROGD, whom do you ask?  If it is ROGD, will the adolescent say "I've always felt this way," or acknowledge that there were no behavioral precursors and that it is a new thing?  That's the methodological concern.  If ROGD is a real phenomenon, it can only be studied by asking outside observers.  Does that mean parents' assessments are necessarily correct, though?  No!

The methodological concern about asking parents is a real one.  You cannot study the phenomenon by asking the kids, but asking the parents is not without problems.  What, then, does a researcher do in order to measure ROGD with any accuracy?

I haven't the foggiest clue.  We know from detransitioners that ROGD is a real phenomenon, but if we cannot ask the kids, and the parents' assessments have potential biases, then what is the best measurement?

That's a hard problem that nobody has solved.  Measurement dilemmas are actually quite common in social science.

In Wakefield's case, it wasn't a dilemma.  There was never a need to go by parents' memories, as diagnoses have dates, but the point was that he faked his data, so never mind.

Anyway, a sticking point for the Littman method, and for Bailey & Diaz was about the use of parent surveys.  Was this why the paper was retracted?

Nope.  That was merely a methodological consideration cutting both ways for the peer reviewers to evaluate.  So what happened?

OK, here's the deal.  Any time we, professors, conduct research involving human subjects, those of us who are... [cough, cough] ethical... go to our IRBs and have our proposals reviewed to ensure that no human will be harmed, physically or psychologically.  Even a survey must be evaluated.  [Cough, cough... Cough, cough...]  Does every professor follow the rules?  [Cough, cough...]  Does every university act ethically, or might shit get covered up?  [Cough, cough...]

Anywho, that's what we are supposed to do.  [Cough, cough...]  Diaz, however, is not a professor.  She is just a parent, so when she put together her survey, she didn't have an IRB to consult.  What happened when she went to Bailey?

There's actually a process.  You can get ex post facto approval, under extraordinary cases.  Such as, a data set drops into your lap, from someone outside academia, no harm was done, the participants knew the purpose, and so forth.  What was Bailey supposed to do?  He was supposed to say, now wait a minute.  Before I do anything, I need to take this to my IRB and get approval.  Had he just taken that survey, conducted without IRB approval, and published, he would have been in the wrong, and bluntly speaking, I am a total, fucking hardass on IRB/human subjects research.  [Cough, cough... Cough, cough...]

And funny story-- ha, ha-- that's exactly what Bailey did.

If you would like a point of reference here, consider Peter Boghossian.  Generally speaking, I recommend his work.  He got canceled from Portland State for the "Grievance Studies" hoax, much of which addressed [drum roll...] gender.  Portland State spent years trying to find an angle, and what, eventually, did they find with their slings and arrows, hurled in bad faith?  They claimed that the Grievance Studies hoax was human subjects research.  On the editors of the journals (who were fellow professors, and supposedly "experts," although obviously not in anything with any intellectual validity), and since Boghossian never got IRB approval, he violated human subjects research rules.  My conclusion was that Portland State was sorta/kinda right.  Irrelevantly right, and in total bad-faith right, but Boghossian should have gotten IRB approval first.  Like the dirty cop who actually does catch you doing something you shouldn't, like driving one MPH over the speed limit, Boghossian was in the wrong.

But Bailey wasn't, and Diaz isn't an academic.  In other words, nobody did anything wrong.

Yet Springer acted as though Bailey and Diaz falsified the data.  They did not.  Diaz isn't a professor, and hence had no IRB to consult, and Bailey sought and received IRB approval after Diaz took the survey to him.  What happened?  Gender activists lost their shit when they read the article, because it talked about ROGD like it is a thing that happens, and rather than respond with science and data, they demanded a retraction.

Which Springer gave them.

Remember what happened with Wakefield.  The medical community found the fraud and showed that the results did not replicate.  Then and only then did Lancet retract the article.  Is that what is happening?  No.  The activists are skipping the debunking part of retraction and trying to find the narrowest of grounds, bullshit as they are, to demand retraction so that they don't have to respond with science or data.

If Bailey & Diaz are wrong, show it.

Debunk them.

Wakefield was a fraud.  You want that retraction?  Earn it.  But that's not happening.

Why not?  Because to the activists, this is merely a game.  Science is not about knowledge production.  Knowledge, according to their intellectual godfather-- Michel Foucault-- is socially constructed as an exercise in power.  The gender activists control the journals, which means they determine what gets called "knowledge."

If we follow the rules of the scientific method, we read Littman's paper, we ask, does it replicate?  So far, yes, but only once.  Then we ask, do the extensions from Bailey & Diaz replicate?  Keep going.  Generate new hypotheses, test, replicate.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

But post-modernists don't believe in science.  They believe in the social construction of knowledge as an exercise in power.  Bailey & Diaz?  That paper doesn't count as "knowledge" because it was retracted!  If you reference it in any discussion, that's out of bounds.  It doesn't count, it's not real knowledge because it was retracted.

Does it matter that the grounds for retraction have precisely fuck-all to do with the scientific validity of the analysis?

Not to them, because science isn't the point to them.  Foucault is.

You cannot understand what is happening unless you understand Michel Foucault and why these people are so enamored of him.

If you want to learn something about ROGD, you should still read the paper, and keep in mind that it is one paper in a very small field.  The gender activists want to use this little maneuver to say, you're not allowed to read this paper, or treat its contents as knowledge.  It isn't really that Diaz didn't have an IRB to consult.  They simply rule ROGD out of bounds, for ideological reasons, and have used their power over the journal to pull a maneuver that would never work in any other circumstance.

If you are ever discussing this subject, and the other person says, "that paper was retracted," ask the reason for the retraction and what that reason has to do with the validity of the results.

Because now, we must return to the scene of the perfect crime.  John Money.

Gender identity.  Assigned at birth.  These ideas and their affiliates all come from John Money.  John Money was also among the worst frauds in academic history, and the "research" upon which these concepts are based is not only fraudulent, but among the worst human subjects abuse in academic history.

(But sure, retract Bailey & Diaz.)

Do you remember John Money?  Let's have a refresher, shall we?  John Money developed the concept of gender identity as we now know it.  Money believed that everyone was gender-neutral at birth, but that a doctor "assigned" you to a gender by telling you that you are a boy or a girl.  Through socialization, your gender identity is formed, but only because you were told that you are a boy or a girl, and this is what a boy or a girl is, and if you had been told otherwise, you would have been otherwise.  Does this sound familiar?  It should.

Money's big scientific challenge was figuring out how to test the proposition.  His prayers to the gender god were answered by a medical accident in Canada.  The Reimers had twins.  The gold standard in research design.  They took their twins in for circumcision, and there was a medical accident with Bruce.  The hospital was using an electrical device for the circumcision, and the device burned off his penis.  Brian did not get the same treatment.  Distraught, the Reimers heard John Money on television, talking about his notions of gender, and they contacted him.  Money told them to do the following, which turned into the most horrific, lifelong experiment in modern, Western scholarly history.  Money had them perform an infant sex change on Bruce, turning Bruce into "Brenda."

"Informed consent?"  Oh, fuck that.

Brenda was told that "she" was a girl, and had always been a girl, no mention of any of this history.

Imagine asking for IRB approval for this shit.  How about a prison sentence instead?  (Actually, wait.  It gets worse, and remember that all gender theory comes from him, and this "research project.")

If Money were right, then Brenda would just grow up a normal girl.

Throughout this process, Money was sexually abusing both Brian and Brenda, forcing them to simulate sex acts with each other during early childhood.  And photographing them.

When Brenda was 9, Money decided he had all the evidence he needed that he was right, that Brenda was a normal girl, and he rushed to publish, and brag to the scientific community about gender identity, ___ assigned at birth, and all of the other slogans that you recite.  Everything that leftists and gender activists believe comes from what John Money published when Brenda was 9.  Yup.

Actually, though, even by 9, Brenda was not really a well-adjusted girl.  John Money was already telling Trump-sized lies, and by 13, there's a thing that happens called puberty, and that's the real point at which you want to know what's up and what's down.  How was Brenda doing then?  Well, funny you should ask.  Brenda really did not fit in among the girls.  Brenda was, shall we say, much too boyish, and had deep problems.  At 13, the Reimers finally had to come clean, and Brenda became David.

John Money was many things.  A liar, a fraud, a child molester...

And wrong about every goddamned thing.  He broke every basic ethical tenet, abused children, lied about the results, covered up the ultimate disconfirmation of his claims, and that makes him the worst of everything.  He may be the worst person in all of Western academic history, but he is also the most important, because everything about gender is derived from him, and every bit of leftist language comes from him, and this little project of his.  And professors can be fired for not spewing John Money-isms.  Isn't that nice?

Be nice!

Money never came clean.  There are still actual monuments to him at places like the Kinsey Institute.  Kinsey, himself, was another sack of shit, but let's keep it focused on John Money for the moment.

Gender, and everything we now have to say about gender, comes from John Money, and his fraudulent, child abusive work.  Literally the exact, same people who demand a retraction of Bailey & Diaz's work also demand that we all speak as John Money told us to speak.

How many children have been molested by Bailey & Diaz?  How much data have they falsified?

Yet what must be retracted?  Not John Money, but Bailey & Diaz.  Continue to believe in all of the concepts handed down from the mountain by St. John Money, but retract Bailey & Diaz.  Why?  It's a game.  Foucault's game.  Knowledge is socially constructed by whoever holds the power to construct knowledge.  We have that power, so we say that the Bailey & Diaz paper isn't knowledge.  Therefore, you can't claim it as knowledge because it says, "RETRACTED ARTICLE" on it.  It's all just a game to them, rather than a search for truth, because postmodern philosophy rejects the concept of truth.

I have written repeatedly that you should essentially reject all of Psychology, as a discipline, given its replication crisis.  Conditionally accept any particular finding, upon its replication, but basically, throw out the discipline.

Right now, throw out all gender research, if it supports the left (which is basically all of it).  Boghossian would have told you this before the Bailey & Diaz affair, and within the post-modernist milieu, I would narrowly accept such advice, but there has also been research that I have found interesting.  Here's the problem.  Any time you read a finding, you need to ask yourself the following question.  Suppose the result had been the opposite.  Could it have been published?

My most controversial works have been those in which I argued that competitive elections are paradoxically harmful to democracy.  Could I have published results going in the other direction?  Obviously.  Does that mean I am right?  Wrong?  Neither.  It means you need to make up your own mind based on logic and evidence.  It means that the peer review process doesn't say that one side doesn't get to publish because we said so.  I had to fight damned hard, but I never had to fight a retraction war against ideologues.

It doesn't work that way in gender.  The IRB matter was a false pretense for retraction.  Activists didn't like it because they need ROGD not to exist.  Rather than respond by debunking Littman, and Bailey & Diaz with data, they demand that Springer retract Bailey & Diaz on the flimsiest of pretenses.  That way, they can say, "you can't cite Bailey & Diaz because it was retracted!"

Does the maneuver have any impact on what we know or don't know?

No, because they think that knowledge is socially constructed as an exercise in power.  See: Foucault, Michel.

And they pull this maneuver on Bailey & Diaz while worshipping monuments to John Money.

If a paper could not have been published with a finding in the opposite direction, because ideology would not have permitted it, then the existence of the paper tells you nothing.  You learn nothing.

Even the most scientific-looking work in gender is worthless because any work going in the opposite direction could not have been published.  The flimsiest of excuses could force the journal to retract it, not because of poor methodology, much less fraud, but because the activists cannot tolerate the existence of the publication.

While John Money has monuments to him.

It took years to force Lancet to retract Wakefield's article, and it took data.  This?  This is what shows you that nothing published on gender is worth anything, because if the data had gone the other way, it couldn't have gotten through the activist gauntlet.

Has anyone checked on Isabel Fall lately?  I wonder what these people had to say about her.  Actually, I can hypothesize.

Concrete Blonde, "Scene of a Perfect Crime," from Free.