ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
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User ID: 626
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
11hr ago
Because the Finnish youth on treatment were also being monitored every 3-6 months during checkups, there's also going to be a higher rate of any possible flags being noticed and referred compared to a group who doesn't get monitored by doctors 4x a year.
Where are you getting the 3-6 month number from? I see no indication of it in the paper. I can imagine this being a problem if the relevant comparison was to the controls only, but you're comparing two subgroups of people already interacting with the medical system due to gender dysphoria.
The effect size is pretty massive sure, but that doesn't mean much. Why should I assume the selection effect of "people likely to utilize healthcare are likely to utilize healthcare" is itself small?
Because both groups are already utilizing healthcare, for one. Also, when you criticize a study as "lazy or retarded" the possible bias should be big enough to wipe away or invert the finding, and I think it's reasonable to ask for some backing on how likely that is given the numbers at hand.
It's actually pretty popular that parents, not government, makes the choices about parenting.
Not really. Even on the trans issue itself, the very same people who defend these treatments as being "between the child, parents, and their doctor" will routinely defend institutions hiding a child's transition from their parents.
Parents can even do things like get their children permanently circumcised, there's a growing movement against requiring childhood vaccines, and in general parents can refuse medical care for their children unless it's directly and immediately endangering the life of the child for US laws.
The US has medical licensing bodies, that take away licences from doctors that prescribe or carry out unproven treatments. It also has a system in place that prevents people (adults!) from voluntarily buying the drugs for themselves that they want. I'm not sure about what the US laws say on the matter, but I don't think they would take kindly for parents getting a hold of prescription drugs, and giving them to their children, on the basis of nothing more than their personal belief it will make them better. I'm not proposing anything different here.
The implication of your idea would be that we'd get rid of this system, or at least make it entirely voluntary, which would be hugely controversial. I'm pretty sure it would be only popular with hardcore libertarians.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
14hr ago
This is just a reading problem, I said that they are selected for being the types to use healthcare. People who engage in voluntary healthcare for years are the types of people who engage in voluntary healthcare.
But the comparison in the study takes two groups who, by your argument, are likely to engage in voluntary healthcare. The only difference you can potentially point to is how likely they are to stick to a treatment. Also keep in mind that the effect size you're trying to explain away this way is pretty big. Big enough that I'd think the idea should be backed by evidence itself
Yep, that's why I said "unfortunately like basically every pro and anti trans study, it wasn't really a good one.". Social science being low quality is basically the default.
This isn't a social science paper, and these issues are pretty common in other fields as well.
This makes the assumption that the default should be that government bans people's choices unless it's "proven" to help. Why can't the default be that government stays out of what people, including children and their parents, want to do with their lives?
It's an extremely unpopular idea. There's a reason why trans activists don't even bring it up.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
15hr ago
Their model for psychiatric health is, I'm not even kidding, how much you see a mental health professional. It might be a decent proxy in some ways, but it has very obvious issues. A schizophrenic living on the streets untouched is considered more mentally sound than a middle class student going to a therapist because of "anxiety".
This doesn't necessarily show how mentally healthy you are, it shows how willing you are to engage with the healthcare industry.
This would be a reasonable-ish criticism in the US (and even there "yeah, I know it's not perfect, but it's not bad enough to dismiss the findings"), but in a country with a robust public healthcare and welfare system, the dynamics are completely different. The homeless schizophrenic is far more likely to get treatment than the middle class student trying to get treatment for "anxiety", because the state doesn't have unlimited money, and will triage people.
No treatment/after treatment comparisons can't get away from this selection effect, people who stick with treatments are the types of people who stick with treatments and use medical care.
It definitely lowers it. You can't claim they don't engage with the healthcare system, if they already signed up for gender dysphoria treatment, and are just waiting for it.
Social science sucks. At best this obvious flaw in study design not being cared about is lazy, at worst it's because they're retarded and didn't even think about possible selection effects like most social scientists don't.
We've been allowing an exponential increase in transgender medical interventions, including for children, on the basis of even poorer quality studies claiming they improve mental health outcomes. This study, at the very least, serves as evidence against the pro-trans studies who use similarly flawed methods, except they have no controls, and use way smaller sample sizes. If you want to reject it, there's no reason to take any pro-trans study seriously, and we'd have to admit we're performing massive, dangerous, interventions on children, with absolutely no evidence they help at all.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
18hr ago
Fair enough, I disagree with his premise.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
18hr ago
they found that psychiatric morbidity worsens significantly post-surgery
Not just surgery, hormonal treatment as well:
Medical GR interventions included masculinising/feminising hormonal treatments, chest masculinisation, and/or genital surgery (vaginoplasty/phalloplasty/metoidioplasty).
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
18hr ago
You could say the question was rhetorical (because I already know the answer to it), but in no way is it sarcastic. It means exactly what it's straightforward, literal interpretation would imply.
I disagree with your claim, because I think it reverses causality. America isn't great because of all the skilled immigrants, skilled immigrants want to go there, because it gives them better opportunities than they have in other places.
The vast majority of the indian immigrant influx to Canada during the early 2020s went in on study permits and not an H-1B analog that's a lot more rigorous
Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't have the impression that H-1B is particularly rigorous, and I've seen Canadians swear up and down that their system is more restrictive.
The US didn't curb skilled immigration during that time, so at best they were getting second-rate talent even if they had rigorous screening
Even if this is true, there's a few implications to it. One is that no one should even try to compete for immigrants, because they're all going to go to the top country anyway, and then ones you will get, will only cause economic stagnation. Another is that even for America this would probably mean mass deportations are a good idea, as you can just keep the absolute best performence, and get rid of everyone else.
Ok, but this isn't based on your knowledge of the Finnish system, and you don't know for a fact that the pre-intervention group isn't also getting checked up regularly, right?
Yeah, I know. But the finding is based on the raw comparison to the controls, it's based on comparing each of the subgroups (pre- and post-intervention) to the controls. For your objection to be valid, the pre- group would have to be as unlikely to interact with the medical system as the general population. Which would be weird, given that they already entered the system asking for help with dysphoria.
Ok, fair enough, there are apperently similar results for the other side of my question as well. That said, there's also the rest of my argument. For this to be indicative of a general principle being applied, we'd need to see similar support for changing the medical licensing and prescription systems to being purely advisory at most. I doubt that's a very popular idea.
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