• metalaco@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    In my opinion this is a valuable step forward but was inadequate to assess for the problem at hand. Only 59% of patients who were surveyed responded which opens up to a significant bias and seems to be too few patients surveyed to detect the outcome in question. I agree that the vast majority are satisfied or do not have regrets, but it seems unrealistic that it would be 100% satisfaction. Who can claim 100% satisfaction for any kind of medical procedure?

    • Khotetsu@lib.lgbt
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      1 year ago

      I saw a series of studies once for HRT (not a surgery, but relevant to transgender research and major bodily changes) that said that 90% of patients reported either an improvement or at least no change in their quality of life after HRT compared to before. Of the 10% who reported a worse quality of life or stopped treatment, the majority of causes were due to external factors such as harassment/hate crimes or being disowned by friends and family. The least commonly reported cause was post HRT regret, and the vast majority of that 10% said that they would be restarting HRT as soon as they safely could.

      Not only is that a huge success rate, but it also says something about the percentage of people who would respond to such a survey, as going “stealth” as it’s referred to, can be a major component of transgender people’s safety considerations. If people don’t know your trans, you can’t be assaulted for it. And considering the sexual assault rate for trans women in the US is 80%, they have reason to worry about that sort of thing. Also, a quick Google search tells me that the average response rate for medical surveys is 76% for in-person surveys, 65% for postal, and online surveys are 46% for website based and 51% for email surveys. So that 59% isn’t too far outside the range as long as it isn’t in-person surveys.

  • Lammy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Isn’t this the opposite of science?

    Why not post “finding faith saves lives” ?

    It would be equally empirical.

      • Lammy@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        There is no objectively falsifiable hypothesis, or imperially reproducible result.

        Don’t bring science into politics, that’s what religions and governments have tried to do for years as part of propaganda / anti-science campaigns. It never goes well even if you think it’s morally correct, because scientific reality does not always align with, nor does it care about current morality. Nevertheless science is objectively true.

          • Lammy@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Emotions (like regret) are not falsifiable, because they are not scientific phenomena. Similarly, you cannot have a scientific study on whether art is good, or if god is real, because they are by definition unscientific phenomena. That is why unscientific studies like this post, should not be allowed in a forum on science.

            But perhaps the more important point here, is that conflating unscientific matters with actual science, has been at the heart of the anti-science movement, since science was discovered. It makes it much easier to discredit all of science as a whole, when you start claiming that social studies is science.

            • mrpants@midwest.social
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              1 year ago

              You truly have no idea what you’re talking about with regards to science, hypotheses, and how they work.

                • mrpants@midwest.social
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                  1 year ago

                  You should look it up for yourself if you don’t think subjective experiences can be defined and measured in an objective and falsifiable way.

                  You could, for example, conduct a falsifiable experiment related to people’s perception of color or heat or their night vision.

    • specfreq@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I agree. “Study” is a bit strong here, they asked 2 questions and got 139 replies. Despite the bullying, my gender affirming care has done wonders for my mental health.

      I think the purpose is to add the findings to a separate pool of data.

      • Lammy@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Ok but both are still completely unscientific, as is the entire field of psychology. It’s fine to call it research, but to conflate it with science is 100% false.

  • vsis
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    1 year ago

    The authors did note that they had to exclude survey results for 13 respondents because they puzzlingly rated maximal or nearly maximal levels of both satisfaction and regret. The authors speculated that these respondents may have misread the instructions and misunderstood that the scales were reverse scored for the two ratings.

    lol exclude the data that doesn’t match your hypothesis and you can probe anything.

    • trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      How would you interpret the data of someone who said they both have extreme regret and exteeme satisfaction with a procedure?

      • vsis
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        1 year ago

        I would too conclude that the survey was flawed.

        To be honest, I could believe that a lot of surveys just discard results that can’t process, for whatever reason.

        Can confident conclusions be made from such surveys? Probably not.

        • trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          “Study number 7592043 shows that gender affirming care is effective”

          You lot:

          “idk… just seems like there isn’t enough data… just asking questions, etc etc.”

          • vsis
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            1 year ago

            Nope.

            I do believe it’t effective. I don’t believe 0% regrets.

    • seacocker@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You can’t include nonsensical data. The correct thing to do is note it in the paper, like they did.