Thread by @4th_WaveNow

Thread: The website @ScienceBasedMed came out with yet another hit piece on @AbigailShrier 's book today. As with the prior articles, this one is quite sloppy with the facts. @stevennovella please correct the following error (explained further in this thread):

Author (A J Eckert "(they/them) Connecticut’s first out nonbinary doctor") links to our 2015 piece which examined suicidality data from the 2008 U.S. Transgender Discrimination Survey, the source of the claim that 41% of trans ADULTS attempt suicide.
4thwavenow.com/2015/08/03/the…

Our article focused on the 2014 Williams Institute/American Foundation for Suicide Prevention analysis of the data, which, among other things pointed out that the 41% claim should not be interpreted to mean actual suicide attempts. In their words:

Their point is that a single question about suicidal thoughts is not adequate to ascertain the truth; followup questions are necessary. In our article, we said this *could* mean the actual number of surveyed trans ADULTS who attempted suicide might be closer to 20%. HOWEVER:

(direct quote from our article): "Even if the rate is closer to 20%, that is still unacceptably high. And self harm is a huge problem, whether the actual intent to end one’s life is present or not."

So what did Eckert claim we said in their @ScienceBasedMed article?

Why does @ScienceBasedMed keep letting its authors misquote like this? First, we didn't "claim" anything about TEENS: The 2008 survey polled trans & GNC ADULTS. Second, the "speculative" estimate was derived from analysis by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Third:

Eckert (if they read our article) KNOWS we said 20% would still be "unacceptably high", and the rest of our article--far from dismissing self harm/suicidality--discusses in detail not just the flaws in the survey, but the very serious problem of self harm in trans/GNC people.

The series of sloppy hit pieces recently published by @ScienceBasedMed have been rife with these sorts of errors. We call on editor @stevennovella to correct this and do a lot better at fact checking. If you can do it for anti-vax propaganda, youu can do it for trans issues, too.

For a some more examples of what looks like deliberate misquoting/misrepresentation in these @sciencebasedmed articles, see here:

https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1416486324387913736?s=20

Here is the 2014 Williams Institute/American Foundation for Suicide Prevention report referenced in our 2015 article and discussed in these tweets.
web.archive.org/web/2015072221…