this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
284 points (84.8% liked)

science

15021 readers
791 users here now

A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.

rule #1: be kind

<--- rules currently under construction, see current pinned post.

2024-11-11

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 32 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] metalaco 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In my opinion this is a valuable step forward but was inadequate to assess for the problem at hand. Only 59% of patients who were surveyed responded which opens up to a significant bias and seems to be too few patients surveyed to detect the outcome in question. I agree that the vast majority are satisfied or do not have regrets, but it seems unrealistic that it would be 100% satisfaction. Who can claim 100% satisfaction for any kind of medical procedure?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

I saw a series of studies once for HRT (not a surgery, but relevant to transgender research and major bodily changes) that said that 90% of patients reported either an improvement or at least no change in their quality of life after HRT compared to before. Of the 10% who reported a worse quality of life or stopped treatment, the majority of causes were due to external factors such as harassment/hate crimes or being disowned by friends and family. The least commonly reported cause was post HRT regret, and the vast majority of that 10% said that they would be restarting HRT as soon as they safely could.

Not only is that a huge success rate, but it also says something about the percentage of people who would respond to such a survey, as going "stealth" as it's referred to, can be a major component of transgender people's safety considerations. If people don't know your trans, you can't be assaulted for it. And considering the sexual assault rate for trans women in the US is 80%, they have reason to worry about that sort of thing. Also, a quick Google search tells me that the average response rate for medical surveys is 76% for in-person surveys, 65% for postal, and online surveys are 46% for website based and 51% for email surveys. So that 59% isn't too far outside the range as long as it isn't in-person surveys.

[–] ShittyBeatlesFCPres 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What about gender affirming care generally? We need a control group. Whom regrets getting plastic surgery?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Elon seems happy with his hair plugs.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] ShittyBeatlesFCPres 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] PostmodernPythia 1 points 1 year ago

Fuck yeah, linguistic punk!

[–] Lammy 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Isn’t this the opposite of science?

Why not post “finding faith saves lives” ?

It would be equally empirical.

[–] trashgirlfriend 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What are you even trying to say

[–] Lammy -3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There is no objectively falsifiable hypothesis, or imperially reproducible result.

Don’t bring science into politics, that’s what religions and governments have tried to do for years as part of propaganda / anti-science campaigns. It never goes well even if you think it’s morally correct, because scientific reality does not always align with, nor does it care about current morality. Nevertheless science is objectively true.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There are falsifiable hypotheses in this study.

Here's the study. Go get access to the full text and read it https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstract/2808129

[–] Lammy -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Emotions (like regret) are not falsifiable, because they are not scientific phenomena. Similarly, you cannot have a scientific study on whether art is good, or if god is real, because they are by definition unscientific phenomena. That is why unscientific studies like this post, should not be allowed in a forum on science.

But perhaps the more important point here, is that conflating unscientific matters with actual science, has been at the heart of the anti-science movement, since science was discovered. It makes it much easier to discredit all of science as a whole, when you start claiming that social studies is science.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You truly have no idea what you're talking about with regards to science, hypotheses, and how they work.

[–] Lammy 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m curious what you think the scientific method is

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You should look it up for yourself if you don't think subjective experiences can be defined and measured in an objective and falsifiable way.

You could, for example, conduct a falsifiable experiment related to people's perception of color or heat or their night vision.

[–] Lammy 0 points 1 year ago

Subjective, by definition, cannot be objective. It sounds like you’re talking about social studies.

[–] trashgirlfriend 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The existence and wellbeing of trans people is not politics.

[–] Lammy -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It sure as hell isn’t science.

[–] trashgirlfriend 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And that's why every study that goes against the existence of trans people and efficacy of gender affirming care is bunk bullshit and every actual good study confirms it.

You are free to spend the rest of your life malding about the TIMs or the AGPs or troons or whatever your specific flavour of idiot decides to call trans people, just stop pretending any real science agrees with you.

[–] Lammy -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Obviously you really want this to be about trans people, but it’s not, it’s about science.

Science doesn’t agree with me because I have no opinion on the issue.

I do however, believe in the importance of the scientific method.

[–] trashgirlfriend 2 points 1 year ago
[–] specfreq 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I agree. "Study" is a bit strong here, they asked 2 questions and got 139 replies. Despite the bullying, my gender affirming care has done wonders for my mental health.

I think the purpose is to add the findings to a separate pool of data.

[–] Lammy -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ok but both are still completely unscientific, as is the entire field of psychology. It’s fine to call it research, but to conflate it with science is 100% false.

[–] specfreq 2 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The authors did note that they had to exclude survey results for 13 respondents because they puzzlingly rated maximal or nearly maximal levels of both satisfaction and regret. The authors speculated that these respondents may have misread the instructions and misunderstood that the scales were reverse scored for the two ratings.

lol exclude the data that doesn't match your hypothesis and you can probe anything.

[–] trashgirlfriend 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How would you interpret the data of someone who said they both have extreme regret and exteeme satisfaction with a procedure?

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would too conclude that the survey was flawed.

To be honest, I could believe that a lot of surveys just discard results that can't process, for whatever reason.

Can confident conclusions be made from such surveys? Probably not.

[–] trashgirlfriend 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"Study number 7592043 shows that gender affirming care is effective"

You lot:

"idk... just seems like there isn't enough data... just asking questions, etc etc."

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Nope.

I do believe it't effective. I don't believe 0% regrets.

[–] seacocker 3 points 1 year ago

You can't include nonsensical data. The correct thing to do is note it in the paper, like they did.

[–] randomdeadguy -5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Good news for the gender solutions industry

[–] PostmodernPythia 3 points 1 year ago

Is this the new right-wing line? Like the “abortion industry”? Gimme a fucking break.