\n<\/p>\n
T<\/span>he US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently released a report linking \u201cgender ideology\u201d to leftwing authoritarianism and political violence \u2013 a study scientists say was poorly conducted and \u201cnakedly political\u201d, likely leading to greater politicization of science and health.<\/p>\n It follows attempts by the administration to limit access to gender-affirming care \u2013 including, on Friday, an agreement reached between the Department of Justice and a New York hospital to no longer offer pediatric gender-affirming care. Dozens of hospitals stopped offering gender-affirming care after the Trump administration began investigating them for offering the standard of care.<\/p>\n Patients on Medicaid and government insurance plans have also been blocked from accessing care, and a proposed rule would block any health system offering gender-affirming care from receiving federal funding.<\/p>\n The new report, which was not published by a scientific journal and did not undergo peer review, takes aim at medical organizations offering guidelines on gender-affirming care. It also links those who say they support trans individuals with supporting authoritarianism and political violence.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a very poorly done piece of research,\u201d said Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, an epidemiologist from the University of Sydney, who highlighted several methodological failings. \u201cIt was nakedly political. I think this is probably the most obviously political study that I\u2019ve come across.\u201d<\/p>\n The report is \u201cquite an abnormal document with a number of oddities,\u201d said Daniel Aaron, an associate professor at the University of Utah\u2019s SJ Quinney College of Law.<\/p>\n \u201cIt likely also violates federal law because it\u2019s not peer-reviewed, and it\u2019s essentially quite an influential dissemination of information,\u201d which could mean it violates the Information Quality Bulletin, a federal regulation that requires peer review for influential scientific information from the US government, he said.<\/p>\n The HHS did not respond by press time to the Guardian\u2019s questions about whether this report was commissioned by the agency and if it violated federal regulations.<\/p>\n Aaron believes the report would not survive peer review and wondered why a political science report was published by HHS.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s actually not even health-related, so I don\u2019t understand why this is related to HHS\u2019s mission,\u201d Aaron said.<\/p>\n Craig Konnoth, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law who coauthored with Aaron a perspective on gender-affirming care policy for the New England Journal of Medicine, agreed. He sees the report as an attempt to undermine mainstream health and science organizations such as the American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, all named in the report.<\/p>\n \u201cBy that standard, any medical recommendation becomes \u2018authoritarian\u2019. Any standard set by any licensing board becomes \u2018authoritarian\u2019,\u201d Konnoth said. \u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing is this broadside attack on the scientific establishment more generally, and trans rights are being used as the vehicle to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n Colin Wright, an author of the report and a fellow at the conservative thinktank Manhattan Institute, said he believes the study was published by HHS quickly because a draft had been leaked to the public. He said the researchers are planning to release more information, including the numbers from the survey, and they are planning to submit the study to an unnamed journal for publication.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was kind of a surprise to us that it dropped when it did, and so we didn\u2019t have plans beforehand,\u201d Wright said. \u201cWe probably could have tightened the language a little bit more.\u201d<\/p>\n Wright disputed that the study was an attempt to link support for trans people and political authoritarianism and violence, though the report itself says: \u201cThese findings suggest that gender ideology is associated with LWA [left-wing authoritarianism] and willingness to justify political violence.\u201d Gender ideology was measured by statements such as: \u201cPeople should be supported in expressing their transgender identity,\u201d and \u201cParents should support their children\u2019s transgender exploration.\u201d<\/p>\n Wright suggested that the study is about the guidance offered by medical organizations and \u201cin many ways geared to make people sort of have a more extreme reaction to it, and to kind of fuel somewhat authoritarian tendencies of trying to silence people\u201d on gender-affirming care. He argued that the guidelines appear to push people toward ideological extremes.<\/p>\n \u201cSort of independently, it increased their willingness, at least correlationally, to their support for political violence,\u201d Wright said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of ideological content to it.\u201d<\/p>\n In an online survey, 1,208 people ranked statements about support for trans people as well as about political ideology and political violence.<\/p>\n The political ideology questionnaire essentially measured whether someone was a Democrat, said Meyerowitz-Katz, who added: \u201cI don\u2019t think anyone would think this is a good measure of authoritarianism.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the statements was about whether opposition to gay marriage is homophobic; another was a statement about whether the focus on terrorism should shift to the far right. \u201cIf you were a rational human being who understood the facts, you would agree with that,\u201d said Meyerowitz-Katz. For instance, approximately 75-80% of deaths from terrorist attacks in the United States come from people on the far right, and rightwing attacks are more lethal than leftwing violence.<\/p>\n Similarly, the questions on political violence focused only on political violence against conservative figures or institutions, he said. If they\u2019d included political violence against other actors, \u201cyou would almost certainly see the opposite correlation,\u201d making the questionnaire an unreliable predictor of whether someone supports political violence, Meyerowitz-Katz said.<\/p>\n It was also difficult to parse these relationships, because the researchers haven\u2019t yet released any numbers from the survey, Meyerowitz-Katz said: \u201cThe only thing they report in that paper is correlations.\u201d But they don\u2019t say, for instance, how many respondents supported actions like arson of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) buildings.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is very silly,\u201d said Meyerowitz-Katz. \u201cThey\u2019re producing what I would describe as pseudoscience \u2026 It\u2019s a bad, poorly done report.\u201d<\/p>\n Konnoth, who studies the link between opposition to LGBT rights and authoritarianism, noted that the report overlooks significant research in the field. \u201cThey don\u2019t cite and engage in the data that goes against that thesis,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Typically, HHS publishes issue briefs and synthesized information, but this is an \u201cextremely weird\u201d case of the HHS appearing to adopt a study as its own report, Aaron said.<\/p>\n The purpose of the report appears to be an attempt to correlate leftwing people, particularly those who support transgender people, with violence, said Meyerowitz-Katz. \u201cThe only possible outcome of this survey was to show a correlation between leftwing beliefs and support for transgender people and \u2018political violence\u2019, and so I think that was the aim. I don\u2019t see another possible way to interpret this particular piece of research.\u201d<\/p>\n Aaron said it appears to be \u201caimed to benefit a political group or demonize an opposing group and build political support,\u201d he said. \u201cIt kind of builds this fake evidence base for transgender people as a political issue.\u201d<\/p>\n HHS is tasked with protecting the health and wellbeing of all Americans, he said, noting: \u201cIt\u2019s not happening here.\u201d Aaron compared the report with recent actions on vaccines that depart from the scientific evidence and reshape the vaccine infrastructure \u2013 influencing those who make decisions on vaccines and fueling the anti-vaccine political movement.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we can draw parallels with this consistent anti-science production of information by the federal government,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Konnoth called it an \u201cattempt to create an alternate scientific narrative\u201d that affects all Americans.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a targeting of these mainstream fundamental organizations that put out research that doesn\u2019t just involve trans rights, but involves broader claims about science,\u201d he said. \u201cIf we buy into their attempt to discredit the medical establishment, then we are in deep trouble \u2026 It\u2019s life-and-death for massive swathes of the American population.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently released a report linking \u201cgender ideology\u201d to leftwing authoritarianism and political violence \u2013 a study scientists say was poorly conducted and \u201cnakedly political\u201d, likely leading to greater politicization of science and health. It follows attempts by the administration to limit access to gender-affirming care \u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52148,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[794,5620,6057,7403,380,25280,1913,293,694,2481,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-52147","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-administration","9":"tag-attempts","10":"tag-authoritarianism","11":"tag-hhs","12":"tag-link","13":"tag-nakedly","14":"tag-political","15":"tag-report","16":"tag-support","17":"tag-trans","18":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/52148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}