New York Magazine reviewing work of writer facing plagiarism allegations, @BobbyAllyn reports for @NPR.

New York magazine is examining the past work of one of its writers who has been accused of plagiarism after publishing at least three stories with striking similarities to other published work.

@RossBarkan, who is a contract writer for the magazine, first attracted critical scrutiny when one of his stories earlier this week on the conservative influencer @BenShapiro appeared to copy another piece on Shapiro published days before in The Washington Post.

When this was pointed out on social media, the magazine updated Barkan's story to directly quote the Post writer, @drewharwell, whose opening paragraphs Barkan lifted nearly wholesale.

After this, NPR found at least two other instances in which Barkan apparently pulled partial paragraphs from other stories that appeared in the publications @theintercept and @CompactMag. npr.org/2026/05/17/nx-…

NYU professor @JonHaidt, who has stood at the forefront of the movement to challenge academia’s culture of suppressing the free exchange of ideas, is facing a campaign to cancel his graduation address. nytimes.com/2026/05/13/us/… NYU’s Student Government Assembly is urging the university to reconsider selecting Jonathan Haidt as commencement speaker, arguing his views on DEI, transgender identity and social justice are out of step with the values and diversity of the Class of 2026. The letter says students feel “disappointment, disgust, defeat, and embarrassment” over the choice of @JonHaidt and accuses NYU of prioritizing a narrow ideological narrative over students’ experiences.

Progressive journalist David Roberts says: “It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Bluesky has been a net negative for US politics. They corralled everyone on the left into a little glass fishbowl where they shout at one another & everyone else ignores them. Meanwhile, all the pols & institutions stayed on X & are being dragged farther right.” Progressive journalist Marisa Kabas says it’s not right to blame Bluesky. It’s all X’s fault.

Azeen Ghorayshi and Austin Mitchell were 2026 Pulitzer Prize finalists for their podcast The Protocol about youth gender medicine. A must listen: nytimes.com/2025/06/02/pod…

Taylor Lorenz publishes effective advertorial

In @TaylorLorenz’s new Substack, she used Panagram to detect how many top Substackers are using AI to produce their articles, in an apparent effort to criticize their ethics.

Panagram sponsored Lorenz’s Substack, revealing that it is effectively an advertorial. She doesn’t make a note of this sponsorship until the very end of her article.

This comes after Lorenz was widely criticized for posting a free ad for The Bark Phone, which is parental-control software for a children’s smartphone. In the ad, Lorenz touted smartphones as good for kids because they help kids express themselves.
Should a tech journalist such as @TaylorLorenz weave sponsorship of tech products into her reporting thanks to receiving payments from tech companies? That’s what Lorenz did here with Panagram:
usermag.co/p/how-much-of-…

In Erin Reed’s chat group, people debate whether it would be better to attend this Sunday conference panel of four skeptics of pediatric gender medicine and ask pointed questions, boycott it, or disrupt it with boos. Frank Dowling, who refers to the group as “frauds”, was among the AMA members whose LGBTQ message board posts I quoted from in my reporting for @thefp about how members reacted to the organization coming out against youth gender surgeries: thefp.com/p/the-medical-…

Same guy: thefp.com/p/the-medical-…

Controversial Pediatric Gender Panel Draws Trans-Activist Push for Cancellation
benryan.substack.com/p/transgender-…
Trans-activist Substacker Erin Reed has prompted an uproar over a panel of skeptics of pediatric gender medicine slated for Sunday at the Pediatric Academic Societies meeting in Boston.

Transgender activists and their allies are in an uproar over an upcoming medical-conference panel concerning pediatric gender medicine that features skeptics of this field whom activists accuse of being anti-trans.

Since the prominent trans-activist Substacker Erin Reed published an article about the panel on Tuesday, conference organizers have apparently been inundated with tens of thousands of emails demanding it cancel the panel, in particular due to the panelists’ connections to a small nonprofit known as the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine, or @SEGM_EBM.

This burgeoning deplatforming campaign raises questions about the place that the free exercise of scientific ideas has within a medical field as peerlessly politicized as pediatric gender medicine. As transgender activists seek to shut down what they argue are toxic fringe positions akin to climate-change deniers, a relatively small but determined collection of scientific and medical experts have remained committed to publicly scrutinizing this field and defending themselves against what they say are baseless accusations that their perspectives are rooted in bigotry and animus. Many of you will be surprised to learn that Erin Reed has a habit of publishing claims about her adversaries that are not firmly nestled in a bed of truth. open.substack.com/pub/benryan/p/…

About Health Nerd's take-down of the Finnish study on mental health outcomes among youth attending gender clinics
🧵👇
The study isn't perfect by any means. There are fair reasons to criticize it. But Health Nerd's central thesis falls apart upon the simplest examination.

I find it very disappointing when people leverage their academic credentials to supposedly bust bad science or misinformation but only wind up spreading more misinformation in the process. Where are we these days if we can't trust people to use their credentials wisely and inspire trust in those with advanced degrees?

I've tried explaining to Health Nerd what he got wrong, to no avail. It was like arguing with a character in a Lewis Caroll poem.

See the thread below.

https://x.com/benryanwriter/status/2041856288234025373

Health Nerd's argument depends on redefining the study’s outcome variable as “how many times kids saw a psychiatrist for any problem.” No, that's not what the paper measures. It measures contacts with specialist-level psychiatric treatment. In Finland, that is referral-based care generally reserved for more serious mental illness. Milder mental health problems are handled in primary care. gidmk.substack.com/p/does-gender-…

Queer editor James Ball declares Bluesky a “dying social network,” blaming aggressive censoriousness by Blueskyites of perceived ideological enemies:

“There's a large cadre that basically cheers on chasing off any lib/centrist/academic who's the punchbag of the day. There's a culture of saying ‘fuck off back to X, then.’ And the anti- bedtime leftists set too much of the culture.

“I don't know if it's fixable, especially as I think quite a lot of the people here don't *want* to fix it. But at the rate users are quitting they'll run out of targets soon enough, and the rest of us will lose what is – for a fair few of us I suspect – the last fun/useful social network. Sigh.”
More from James about Bluesky’s demise:

HOW GENDER MEDICINE SET ITSELF UP FOR DISASTER

For @CompactMag, I report on what the 100s of WPATH conference videos I obtained tell us about this troubled field: compactmag.com/article/how-ge…

👉I 'll be publishing the conference videos on my Substack: benryan.substack.com/p/i-obtained-1…

As I write for Compact magazine:

This catalogue, which the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, or WPATH, fought to keep shielded, provides a rich account of how leading figures in pediatric gender medicine approached scientific research, drove the evolution of medical practices, and strategized politically during a critical turning point in this field’s brief and tortured history. The two years following Chase Strangio’s 2021 address were a period in which statehouse Republicans escalated their attacks on this field. The WPATH conference presenters largely responded to the political siege by doubling down. Rather than engage in soul searching over whether their methods in pediatrics were ethically sound and whether any criticisms had merit, they overwhelmingly stuck to their guns.

Presenters frequently downplayed fundamental hazards about irrevocably altering adolescents’ bodies. Meanwhile, a parade of systematic reviews—the gold standard of scientific evidence—was concluding that the evidencebacking pediatric gender medicine is weak and inconclusive. These findings have led health authorities in a number of European nations, concerned about risks such as infertility, to reverse course. They reclassified pediatric gender-transition interventions as experimental and sharply restricted minors’ access.

Not WPATH. The organization remained on an inexorable trajectory in the opposite direction, toward its eventual head-on collision with the second Trump administration.

For highlight clips, see the 🧵👇 Kellan Baker counseled against saying “gender-affirming care.” Messaging research indicated that when people hear it, he said, “they think ‘trans kids in the driver’s seat.’” But he said this was an accurate assessment. “I think we all support trans kids in the driver’s seat because it’s their bodies, it’s their lives,” he said.

“But when you think about folks who don’t know trans people, they are very scared by the idea that young people are making irreversible decisions and that no one else has any oversight over those decisions.”

To read my article in @CompactMag about the 100s of videos I obtained from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and its US offshoot, USPATH: compactmag.com/article/how-ge…

I will be publishing the most notable conference videos on my Subsack: benryan.substack.com/p/i-obtained-1…

🧵👇Debunking podcaster Michael Hobbes is wrong about the American Medical Association’s longstanding position about youth gender surgeries.

Before Feb. 2026, the AMA had never specified that gender surgeries should generally be reserved for adults.

In 2024, the AMA asserted: “Our American Medical Association recognizes that medical and surgical treatments for gender dysphoria and gender incongruence, as determined by shared decision making between the patient and physician, are medically necessary as outlined by generally-accepted standards of medical and surgical practice.”

No mention of age limits.

policysearch.ama-assn.org/policyfinder/d… Hobbes is pointing to this WPATH FAQ without acknowledging (or knowing) that it actually misrepresents what the organization’s trans-care guidelines, The Standards of Care Version 8 (SoC 8) says. WPATH famously removed all age limits (except for phalloplasty) in the SoC 8 when it was published in Sept 2022 under pressure from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Is the AMA Telling the Truth About Their Expressed Positions on Youth Gender Surgeries?

The American Medical Association to the @StrackHaley at the National Review @NRO on Feb. 3: "[T]he AMA agrees with ASPS that surgical interventions in minors should be generally deferred to adulthood."

The @AmerMedicalAssn today: "We responded" to questions about the American Society of Plastic Surgeon's opposition to pediatric gender-transition surgeries "only after being contacted by media outlets, using the language approved by the board. While some media coverage characterized this as agreement with the ASPS statement, that phrasing did not come from the AMA." The AMA on Feb 3:
nationalreview.com/news/first-maj…

Meghan Wachspress, who accused Illinois congressional candidate Daniel Biss of an "inappropriate relationship" after he, at 26, was her math prof and she, 20, was his student and the 2 dated for a while and made out in '04, wrote on Substack in 2025 that MeToo didn't go far enough.

"In an alternate universe the experiences encompassed by #metoo could have expanded outward to include other kinds of workplace interactions and structural inequalities that minimized or objectified women in the Kantian sense (making them men’s tools), costing women status, money, and time compared to their male colleagues," she wrote.
substack.com/home/post/p-16… She also posted this:

https://twitter.com/benryanwriter/status/2033954350033473592

IN DEFENSE OF EFFEMINATE GAY BOYS

If anyone had suggested that I might really be a girl, I don’t know how I would have responded, by @BenAppel for @TheAtlantic.

GIFT LINK: theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/03/… Similarly, @chadfelixg wrote:

thefederalist.com/2020/02/24/if-…

"The science doesn’t seem so settled after all, and it’s important to understand what happened here. The approach of left-of-center Americans and our institutions — to assume that when a scientific organization releases a 'policy statement' on a hot-button issue, that the policy statement must be accurate — is a deeply naïve understanding of science, human nature and politics, and how they intersect," writes @JesseSingal for @NYTOpinion.

GIFT LINK: nytimes.com/2026/02/24/opi… For @NYTOpinion, @JesseSingal writes:

The A.P.A. presents a particularly striking case of why transparency is important. In 2024, it published what it touted as a “groundbreaking policy supporting transgender, gender diverse, nonbinary individuals” that was specifically geared at fighting “misinformation” on that subject. But when I reached out to the group this month, it pointed me to a different document, a letterwritten by the group’s chief advocacy officer, Katherine McGuire, in September in response to a Federal Trade Commission request for comment on youth gender medicine.

The documents, separated by about a year and a half (and, perhaps as significantly, one presidential election), straightforwardly contradict each other. The A.P.A. in 2024 argued that there is a “comprehensive body of psychological and medical research supporting the positive impact of gender-affirming treatments” for individuals “across the life span.” But in 2025, the group argued that “psychologists do not make broad claims about treatment effectiveness.”

In 2024, the A.P.A. criticized those “mischaracterizing gender dysphoria as a manifestation of traumatic stress or neurodivergence.” In 2025, it cautioned that gender dysphoria diagnoses could be the result of “trauma-related presentations” rather than a trans identity, and noted that “co-occurring mental health or neurodevelopmental conditions (e.g., depression, anxiety, autism spectrum disorder) … may complicate or be mistaken for gender dysphoria.” It seems undeniable that the 2025 A.P.A. published what the 2024 A.P. A considered to be “misinformation.” (“The 2024 policy statement and the 2025 F.T.C. letter are consistent,” said Ms. McGuire in an email, and “both documents reflect A.P.A.’s consistent commitment to evidence-based psychological care.”)

NEWS: Mt. Sinai, the sprawling hospital system, has joined NYU Langone in shuttering its pediatric gender clinic in the face of threats from the Trump administration of cutting off its Medicaid funding.

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani @ZohranKMamdani @NYCMayor pledged in his campaign to spend $65M in city funds on gender-transition treatment to evade pressures from the Trump administration to cut off such access. But since NYU announced it would no longer provide gender-transition drugs or surgeries to minors, the mayor has been mum on the potential for spending public funds on these interventions. gothamist.com/news/nyc-paren…

Taylor Lorenz Plagiarism Scandal Erupts

YouTube sleuths found: @TaylorLorenz apparently copied substantial portions of a TechDirt article about Joseph Gordon-Levitt @hitRECordJoe and Section 230.

Lorenz appeared to pass off the article's text as if it was her own script.🧵⬇️


Go to 4:22 in this video to see the part where the YouTube hosts assert that @TaylorLorenz has plagiarized her narration from a TechDirt article about Joseph Gordon-Levitt @hitRECordJoe and Section 230:
youtube.com/live/JXI9uRwfG…

I can’t even begin to enumerate all the nasty things Parker Molloy has said about me in an effort to punish me for reporting about pediatric gender medicine and to scare off other reporters who might dare to enter this arena. My policy with responding to such behavior is I report what people such a Molloy say or do, and will often fact check errors. They then turn around and make vicious and demeaning claims about who I am.

https://x.com/benryanwriter/status/2023952437447639280

Update: Parker Molloy is expressing her rage toward me on Bluesky right now.

The Federal Trade Commission has opened a consumer protection probe into the American Academy of Pediatrics and has demanded its records regarding pediatric gender medicine.

In 2018, the AAP published its foundational policy document on the gender-affirming care method. It was written by a single medical resident, Dr. Jason Rafferty, and edited by a small committee. It was subjected to a brutal fact check by Canadian sex researcher Dr. James Cantor the following year. The AAP never responded to the fact check. In 2023, the AAP reaffirmed the policy statement with no changes.

The statement asserts that even very young children know their gender identity as well as anyone and should be trusted to guide the way in their own pathway of transition. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

How Can Doctors Like This Provide Competent Care To Their Patients?

Some beef with Dr. Jonathan Howard, by @JesseSingal.
jessesingal.substack.com/p/how-can-doct…
Dr. Jonathan Howard, a neurologist and psychiatrist at @NYULangone Health, is furious at Michael Shermer, the founding publisher of Skepticmagazine.

Howard is an impressive figure. Like many doctors at university-affiliated medical centers, he also serves as a professor, in this case at the @NYUGrossman School of Medicine. He has, according to his biography, “authored and edited multiple textbooks” on multiple sclerosis, his area of specialty.

Why is Dr. Jonathan Howard furious at @MichaelShermer? It has to do with a recent exchange between Senator Josh Hawley and an OB-GYN named Dr. Nisha Verma. Hawley, seeking to make a point about “gender ideology” (as he might call it) during a hearing, repeatedly asked Verma if men can get pregnant and Verma could not give a straight answer. Shermer chimed in to suggest an answer Verma could have given that accounts for the fact that, as Shermer (and anyone else using the traditional, biological definition of the term) sees it, men cannot, in fact, get pregnant.

That’s why Howard is furious, and that’s why he wrote a deeply aggrieved article in Science-Based Medicine about Shermer’s bigotry. The headline? “The Anti-Trans Obsessions of ‘Skeptic’ Michael Shermer: Hallucinating Imaginary Demons to Empower Actual Villains, Once Again.” The subheadline? “I want to demonstrate to Michael Shermer that it’s possible for men like us to not talk about trans people constantly. If I can do it, so can he.” (If you’re unfamiliar with Science-Based Medicine’s strange recent trajectory, see here or here.)

Not only does Dr. Jonathan Howard of NYU Langone Medical Center disagree with Michael Shermer that men can’t get pregnant — Howard thinks that to even ask this question puts other humans in danger.

That probably sounds like a caricature on my part, or a sloppy and inaccurate gloss of Howard’s actual views. But that’s exactly what he wrote
Jonathan Howard has gotten it into his head, meanwhile, that I am personally responsible for the MAHA movement because once I published an essay on Vinay Prasad’s Substack about trans medicine researchers deceiving the public. This is bonkers conspiracy thinking by Howard.

Dr. Blair Peters,a gender-transition surgeon at OHSU, responds with disdain to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons coming out against such surgeries for minors. He says the broader membership was never polled about this.

Which is the same thing that has happened at the American Academy of Pediatrics, for example, but going in the other direction. No matter how hard @JuliaMasonMD1 has pushed, the AAP’s 2018 policy statement on the gender-affirming care method has never been up for a vote by the broader membership.

All of the major medical organizations that have led the way in establishing pediatric gender medicine’s broader credibility, including the AAP and the Endocrine Society in particular, have supported these practices in minors based on the decisions of small committees.

The AAP’s 2018 policy statement was written by a single person, Dr. Jason Rafferty, who was a resident at the time.

All of the other medical societies’ little committees have followed these other groups’ lead, along with WPATH. This has given the illusion that all medial providers support these practices in minors.

But I’ve spoken to pediatricians who are too afraid to express their concerns at the AAP’s annual conference for fear this will destroy their careers. More from Blair Peters: