Rebecca WatsonLast year I promoted physicist Sabine Hossenfelder's YouTube channel, so I figured I should probably comment on her video last week, in which she takes the moderate position between both "crazy" sides of the trans "debate." https://skepchick.org/2023/05/physicist-sabine-hossenfelder-screws-up-on-trans-kids-care/
I went through Hossenfelder's video line by line and found it to be a mixed bag: some good and accurate information that sits alongside citation-free assertions, like "doctors in clinics report cases of 'rapid onset of gender dysphoria."
The main issue was false balance: a misleading preliminary survey of transphobes on an internet forum who came up with "rapid onset of gender dysphoria" (eventually corrected by PLOS One along with an apology) is considered equal to a study that found no such thing exists.
There's also the issue of dismissing the huge amount of evidence researchers have found that show that gender-affirming care literally saves lives, and the earlier the better. Here, she dismisses one study for a control group of 7...
...failing to note that they found a reduction in depression and suicidality not just at the end of the study but at the 3 and 6-month marks, when untreated patients numbered 38 & 24 (out of 108 total). Small total sample size? Sure. It's still one more piece of the puzzle.
I don't think Hossenfelder went out of her way to misrepresent the transphobic case. I think that, like the New York Times, she's fallen for the existing false balance framework that transphobes have established, devaluing science to equate it with anecdote & fearmongering.
It's a shame, because I enjoyed the other videos I saw from her. I hope she gets back to the science. https://skepchick.org/2023/05/physicist-sabine-hossenfelder-screws-up-on-trans-kids-care/
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@rebeccawatson
I personally unsubscribed for good. If I can't trust her not to do bad science in a subject I am well-versed in, I definitely can't trust her in subjects I am not well-versed in.
T. Emil Rivera-Thorsen@yuvalne @rebeccawatson You can trust her to do good science in her own field. As a physicist, she is far above average. She just seems to have fallen in the "all other science is just applied physics" trap that so many physicists seem to go into once they gain a platform.
@thriveth
physics is like, a minority of her videos nowadays. Just in the past 3 months she posted videos about sociology, addiction, AI, marijuana, climate science and green energy, and that's not counting her science news videos.
while I am somewhat good at reading papers, I am not well-versed in any of these fields, and therefore cannot tell when she is wrong. which means I cannot trust her.
@rebeccawatson
physics is like, a minority of her videos nowadays. Just in the past 3 months she posted videos about sociology, addiction, AI, marijuana, climate science and green energy, and that's not counting her science news videos.
while I am somewhat good at reading papers, I am not well-versed in any of these fields, and therefore cannot tell when she is wrong. which means I cannot trust her.
@rebeccawatson
BlueWinds@yuvalne @thriveth @rebeccawatson
Exactly. I used to enjoy her physics videos, but she's gone off the deep end a bit, with bad takes and shallow videos on subjects she has no expertise in.
Some of those videos were on subjects I *do* have expertise in, and they were both insultingly incorrect and arrogant about it.
@bluewinds
that's exactly how I felt this time which is how I knew I cannot trust her.
@thriveth @rebeccawatson
that's exactly how I felt this time which is how I knew I cannot trust her.
@thriveth @rebeccawatson