“Follow the science!”
From MSNBC to Dr. Anthony Fauci and the Biden White House, people were chastised with this thought-terminating cliche for years throughout the coronavirus pandemic. But there’s one area where establishment Democrats and liberal media outlets are suddenly not so interested in “following the science”: the evolving debate over the medical transition of gender-confused minors.
In fact, they’re actively covering it up.
The New York Times recently revealed that a prominent activist researcher is withholding the results of a decadelong, taxpayer-funded study examining the impact of puberty blockers on youth experiencing gender dysphoria. Back in 2015, Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy and her colleagues recruited 95 gender-confused children and administered these medications, which prevent puberty and sexual development, and monitored their mental health outcomes over two years. Their hypothesis was, in line with the thinking of transgender activists, that these young people would do better after receiving the medication.
The results suggest otherwise. At least, that’s what we’re forced to surmise because Olson-Kennedy is refusing to release the full results of the study despite it being funded by taxpayers via a $9.7 million National Institutes of Health grant.
“I do not want our work to be weaponized,” Olson-Kennedy told the New York Times, worried that her findings would bolster efforts by various state governments to restrict minors’ access to medical transition treatments.
So much for following the science.
This activist approach is wildly atypical, according to Dr. Erica Anderson, a clinical psychologist and one of the leading experts in gender medicine. Anderson stressed that she cares deeply about what’s best for these young people but that it’s actually in their best interests that more data be released so they can be treated more effectively.
“Any research that’s worthwhile that illuminates some of the issues with gender-questioning youth is welcome by many people,” she said. “We need more light, less heat.”
Regardless, though, politics shouldn’t ever override scientific inquiry.
“Anticipating the reaction of other people … and then tailoring what you say publicly based on that, that’s not a way to conduct science,” Anderson said. “Scientists in other fields don’t try to, you know, divine what the reaction of the general public is going to be or politicians are going to be before they publish their results.”
“It’s not how science is done,” she concluded.
Anderson agreed that this approach is hypocritical coming from the same side of the political spectrum that told us to “follow the science” throughout the pandemic.
“You can’t have it both ways,” she explained. “You can’t say, OK, we’re gonna do the science, follow the science, and then, if the science yields something that’s offensive to the minority that’s being studied, then we’re gonna reject the results. That’s preposterous … and the ideological bias is obvious.”
Adding insult to injury is the fact that taxpayers were forced to fund this study but now the results are being withheld from the public — something Anderson assures me is not typical.
“Historically what we have expected is that tax-funded research gets published, whatever the results are,” the clinical psychologist explained. “The results may not, as in this case, confirm the hypothesis of the scientists, but it doesn’t matter. The constituencies, all of them that are interested, are owed an explanation for what happens.”
Unfortunately, this betrayal of taxpayers and the scientific spirit is not a one-off incident. It’s emblematic of a broader trend in youth gender medicine, according to those who cover the issue closely.
Journalist Benjamin Ryan recounts how activist researchers attempted to conceal similarly damning data over in Britain within the National Health Service and attempts to discourage U.S. researchers from further illuminating the flaws in the “evidence” routinely cited to defend youth transitioning. All of this leads him to conclude that “the global pediatric medicine field has a clear habit of hiding — and discouraging — inconvenient research findings.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, these revelations are prompting deflections, not reflection or introspection, from major LGBT activist organizations. GLAAD, for example, the left-wing LGBT activist group that infamously falsely claimed that “the science is settled” about youth gender medicine, criticized the New York Times’s reporting on the Olson-Kennedy cover-up for…not quoting any transgender people.
That’s right: It didn’t have anything to say about the substance of the story or about taxpayer-funded research being covered up. Its only response was to complain, “The New York Times is at it again: another article about trans healthcare that quotes 0 trans people, ignores context, and is critiqued for bias.” The activists even went on to accuse the New York Times of contributing to a “climate of anti-trans fearmongering.”
It’s an interesting form of anti-logic that replaces argument with identity — as if the same story featuring the same experts saying the same thing would be somehow more true if those experts happened to check off a different box on the census. And it’s particularly rich to see those defending a politicized cover-up of actual science accuse others of “fearmongering.”
The whole saga is a sad window into the ideological capture of our institutions, from nonprofit organizations to academia and beyond. It’s also an opportunity for members of Congress to step up and demand accountability for federally funded research, if they’ve got the political courage to heed the call.
Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI) is leading the charge, using her role as chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services to demand the NIH investigate this misuse of funds.
“NIH is responsible for overseeing its extramural research projects to ensure supported researchers practice transparency, exemplify scientific integrity, and are proper stewards of taxpayer funds,” McClain reminded Biden-appointment NIH Director Monica M. Bertagnolli in a curt letter. The congresswoman further labeled Olson-Kennedy’s antics “an irrefutable example of politicization of scientific research to further an ideological agenda” and requested additional documentation about the research.
Republicans may well lean into this issue because, to date, it’s been a winning one for them — and a losing one for Democrats, so much so that Vice President Kamala Harris, who infamously introduced herself with her pronouns while running for president as a progressive in 2020, dodged questions about her stance on youth gender transition during this year’s presidential campaign with obfuscations that she will “follow the law.”
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Trump, meanwhile, put the debate over transgender issues at the heart of his campaign message, running an ad in swing states that highlights Harris’s past support for taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for prisoners and glibly tells voters, “Kamala Harris is for they/them, Donald Trump is for you.” Whether this discourse significantly affects the presidential election remains to be seen. But despite the initial insistence by many progressives over the years that these things “don’t happen,” data now show that 5,288 to 6,294 “gender-affirming” breast removal surgeries were performed on females under age 18 from 2017 to 2023, including some who were under 13 years old at the time of their surgeries.
So, as long as thousands of minors continue to receive these irreversible and controversial treatments, and as long as activist researchers continue to obfuscate their effects, this debate isn’t going anywhere.
Brad Polumbo is an independent journalist and host of the Brad vs. Everyone podcast.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
