#methodological bias

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Leor Sapir

Published: Jan 22, 2024

Every time I recommend "The Myth of 'Reliable Research'" to medical professionals, they tell me it's a superb article, research at its finest.

They're not wrong.

The foundation for sex trait modification in minors ("gender-affirming care") is a Dutch study, published in two papers (2011 and 2014), and widely cited even today, even by transgender advocacy groups like WPATH, as the gold standard of research in this area. 

"The Myth of 'Reliable Research'" provides a critical appraisal of the Dutch study. It explains the serious methodological problems that led health authorities abroad to find--in systematic evidence reviews--that this research is highly unreliable. 

"Three methodological biases undermine the research: (1) subject selection assured that only the most successful cases were included in the results; (2) the finding that 'resolution of gender dysphoria' was due to the reversal of the questionnaire employed; (3) concomitant psychotherapy made it impossible to separate the effects of this intervention from those of hormones and surgery." 

The article discusses how an "innovative clinical practice" (essentially, an experiment) "escaped the lab" and was quickly adopted in a number of Western countries as "settled science." 

Though not discussed in the article, a key issue is why European health authorities have been better able to detect this problem of "runaway diffusion" and change course. As I've argued, the reasons have to do with a mixture of decentralization in American healthcare, complex private-public interactions, profit motives, professional incentives, and broader political polarization. 

After reviewing the flaws of the Dutch study, "The Myth of 'Reliable Research'" goes on to discuss subsequent research and the problem of "spin," which is when researchers misrepresent their findings (often in the abstract, perhaps anticipating that lazy, ideologically-aligned, or subscription-less journalists will often not read past that paragraph, but sometimes in the study's conclusion). 

The three examples of "spin" in research are:

* Carmichael et al. 2021: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0243894 (note that there was a follow-up to this study: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0092623X.2023.2281986)

* Costa et al. 2015: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jsm.13034

* Tordoff et al. 2022: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2789423 (the authors rightly call the spin of this article "dramatic")

For more on how journalists promote bad science see here: https://unherd.com/2023/04/the-media-is-spreading-bad-trans-science/

Medical historians and others who write about how Western societies got embroiled in one of the biggest medical scandals in modern history will undoubtedly cite "The Myth of 'Reliable Research'" as an important moment in the scientific debate, a moment when it was no longer possible for clinician-advocates to insist that the "science is settled" and that anyone who is skeptical is motivated by prejudice or ignorance. 

And the proof is in the pudding. Pro-medicalization activists, including clinicians, now admit that the quality of evidence--which in EBM means the confidence we can have in the estimate of effect of some intervention--is "very low." They insist, however, that many other pediatric interventions are also based on low quality evidence. 

The pivot is unsuccessful for reasons I can't get into here. There are exceptional circumstances where EBM allows for recommendations for treatment based on low-quality evidence, and this is not one of them. 

But let's not lose sight of the concession here, which is that "gender-affirming care" is an ongoing medical experiment, and two decades of research have failed to produce reliable findings that these risky and harmful interventions are "medically necessary." 

If you follow the gender medicine debate and haven't read "The Myth of 'Reliable Research,'" consider it a massive gap in your knowledge.

Here is the open-access article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0092623X.2022.2150346

For precision: "innovative clinical practice" is not technically an experiment; in general, experiments--ideally, RCTs--are needed to figure out whether, when, and on whom ICPs are beneficial. But in the Dutch case, the ICP was launched more or less in the context of a (very poorly done) experiment. 

[ Archived: https://archive.md/CAsIP ]

[smile-files]

i do think characters from franchises like mlp are much easier to analyze in a story-audience lens because they are so marketable/merchandisable and thus have a very tangible relationship to public opinion. for what it's worth i don't think there's any official henry merch, but then i don't know if any other miracle mask characters get that privilege. being part of a game series which is fairly well-known but not particularly large (which contributes to its relative lack of merchandising) does add a unique spin on how characters end up being perceived. in henry's case, from my own experience, many peers who aren't fans of the series know of him only through my philosophizing on his suffering: and thus his suffering comes to define him again, as it is that whence most of his character derives and thus what i would focus the most on. that in itself can be connected to how the community, at least this particular corner of it, is comprised of many people who are queer, mentally ill, and/or neurodivergent - including myself - which has the potential to make us more likely to latch onto the suffering of said characters and inadvertently broadcast it to a larger internet public who will thus know of the characters through that lens

[unsolicited-opinions]

There was never a famine in Gaza

In related news, there was never a genocide in Gaza and there was never apartheid in Israel.

[on-stardust-wings]

This addition made me think about it, and it probably makes sense there are so few votes for practicing Christian with negative feelings about Good Omens?

A poll like this will naturally have a pretty considerable sample error. (Every poll is already biased towards people who are willing to take polls. That sounds stupid, but is unfortunately true, and a real issue when you try to gather data for science.) As a Tumblr poll, this one is also biased because of how it spreads. On Tumblr, there are three main ways to come across a post: you see it while browsing a tag/topic directly, someone you follow reblogs it to your dash, or you visit someone's blog and they reblogged it. Tumblr is additionally prone to create interest bubbles: if you are in a bigger fandom for example and you dislike a ship or a character, or in the positive sense if you have a fave ship and character, you'll usually have peers who share these preferences and who put posts on your dash that have a lot about the character you like and not much about the ship you don't care for. This happens to any post, people mostly reblog posts they like/agree with/want their peers to see (with the exception of people who so strongly disapprove of a post that they choose to argue on it, and that's a minority, if a very loud one). If you follow or visit people's blogs that aren't fandom but multiple random topic blogs, you'll be exposed to content from fandoms and interests you aren't personally into, but also those are unlikely to be completely opposed to your own interests (you wouldn't follow this person if they frequently posted stuff you dislike or disapprove of). So this poll? Was posted to Good Omens fandom spaces. People who stay in the fandom, especially long term, are unlikely to be people who oppose of it. It's been, like, a year since the second season aired. If there were people who actively and strongly disliked the way Good Omens handled religion, they wouldn't stick around here anymore. They might (and probably will) have posted directly after the individual seasons aired. To voice their complaints and all. But complainers move on to new complaining grounds fairly quickly most of the time. The people who stay around are primarily people who overall like the material. They like it enough to look up fandom posts on Tumblr. I feel like it's in the nature of the thing that people whose religiosity negativity affected their opinions of Good Omens are going to be a small minority in the fandom. (It's also difficult to be a minority like that: Good Omens fandom is happy to be critical of Christianity and likes to be pretty blasphemous, I imagine if you are already struggling with religious guilt, it'll feel difficult to talk about it to other fans who don't share this guilt. In comparison to the different bubbles for different ships, it's quite possible there is a bubble of GO fandom for people who have these feelings about religion and Good Omens, but this bubble probably doesn't interact that much with other bubbles, ie, the bubble this poll ended up circulating in.)

Which isn't to say it's not a good poll or that that polls on Tumblr are bad in general or that I don't love seeing their results. It just means that when interpreting the results (and that goes for any poll or survey) one has to keep in mind the biases that are naturally part of the data we acquired. The results are interesting, the tags are fascinating to read, but it's not a representative poll. It just can't be.

At the time of my making this post, positive feelings about Good Omens have a significant majority of votes. Which again, makes sense for a poll posted into a fandom space. The results also seem to align with the overall gut feeling I (and op too I gather) have about the population of Good Omens fandom: there are plenty of people who aren't religious/Christian, there are also lots of people who have Christianity related trauma (I definitely know fans like this) but who feel positively about Good Omens, but the people whose religious guilt or complicated feelings about Christianity make Good Omens a conflicted topic? Might just not enjoy being in the fandom much, or keep separate from the rest of us, so might just not see this poll. I think?

good omens and religiosity

ok so one thing about me is that i'm christian and i'm also VERY interested in the sociology of religion. last year i wrote a paper on religion in film and television (more specifically the differences between christianity in film and television vs other religions, both in how they are portrayed and how they are perceived) and i did mention good omens in it so. i wanna see something

*MRWR stands for "my relationship with religion". too long for the poll lmao

**"affected your liking of good omens" can either mean 1. influenced your opinions on the show while/after you watched it, 2. it got you to start watching it, or 3. made you grapple with your liking of the show (e.g. religious guilt)

please reblog for sample size because i feel like there are about 0.7 actual practicing christians/catholics in this fandom lmaoo 😭 also if you care to elaborate in the tags please do so!!! this is very intriguing to me!!!!!

edit: i forgot to add an "more than one/other" option. you know what just pick the most applicable one or tell me in the tags thanks bye

[destinationtoast]

Hello! I keep hearing that fandom culture has changed, and there are less comments now than there were years ago. Have you noticed this in your analysis? Is the percentage of comments being left today lower than before?

Hey! Thanks for the question -- it prompted me to start collecting data about comments (after procrastinating on it for a while, because I had to write new code to gather comment data). I've also seen other discussions from folks also thinking about how to do this kind of analysis (like in the fandom data projects community) -- hopefully we'll end up with multiple people attacking this from different angles and getting a variety of data about comments!

I'll give a sneak preview that partially addresses your question and contains some good news. If we look at the fraction of AO3 works that get at least one comment (focusing just on one-shots for now), I think things have gotten better over the past decade on AO3*:

In other words, it tentatively looks like more works were getting at least one comment in 2024 than in 2014 (for a variety of time periods). One caveat, though -- if a bunch of works with no comments got deleted in the interim, there will be survivor bias here. I'll try to look into that possibility later. Another caveat: this is based on only like ~100 randomly selected works from each year -- this may all change with more data!

Another interesting tidbit: I still see some of the 2014 works getting comments. In fact, ~30% of works have gotten new comments over 5 years after they were posted, and it looks like ~10% of one-shots posted back in Mar 2014 got a new comment in 10 years later, in 2024.

I'm still doing other analyses; there may be other factors that better match with the discourse around how comment culture has changed. It could be that comment activity peters out faster now than it did back then, for instance. Or the total number of comments left on the popular works is less now than it was back then (though my current methods may not be able to capture that). Edit thanks to quick eagle-eyed readers: it's likely that some of what people are thinking about is ratio of comments to hits -- that is hard to compare in 2014 to 2024, because we don't know which hits came from which years. But I am working on some analyses along those lines. :)

If you have other hypotheses about what's changed in commenting culture, feel free to share! I'll look into what I can.

Some methodology notes:

*I've been tackling this by comparing AO3 one-shots posted in early 2014 to one-shots posted in 2024, and comparing activity in the days/weeks/months immediately after the works were posted. (To start with, I'm only scraping the first page of comments for each work -- meaning the first 20 comment threads -- so there are lots of comments I'm potentially missing for the really popular works. But for many works, this captures all the comments, and I think it may be sufficient for a lot of the analyses I am interested in.)

I'm choosing to focus on 2014 vs. 2024 because 2024 is close to now (but it's been long enough for comments to have settled down a bit), and 2014 was well after AO3 was established (thus it was already a pretty lively time on AO3). I don't want to collect data about every single year because it's too time intensive/too hard on AO3's servers. But if people think that I should be looking at different years, I'm interested in feedback.

Because it's only been ~10 months since March 2024, I am limiting a lot of my analyses to only look at commenting activity the first ~10 months after works were posted in both cases.

[whatudowhennooneseesyou]

𝐊𝐢𝐦 𝐇𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐣𝐨𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝟏𝟖+ 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐀𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐬 (𝐋𝐨𝐯𝐞 & 𝐑𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐅𝐨𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐝)

Word Count:

Disclaimer: Think about it. Write about it. Have hard thoughts. Do not take it seriously. None of this confirmation is confirmed and all theoretical. If you want to read more, check out my 'Hongjoong as your late bloomer bf' post.

Methodology: Traditional Astrology & Whole Sign

Hongjoong has dyed his hair back black and it's my favourite hair colour on him (we see it so rarely) and b/c he's my Ateez bias- I had to revamp his natal chart.

Overview:

Scorpio Sun (11th House)

Gemini Moon (6th House)

Capricorn Rising (Saturn-Ruled)

Sagittarius Mercury (12th House)

Scorpio Venus (11th House)

Virgo Mars (9th House)

Fuckboi Rating:

2/10

Out of all the members of Ateez, I'm inclined to believe that Hongjoong would least likely be a fuckboi because his Scorpio stellium and Moon in the 6th House indicates he's not a shallow man and craves soul-bonding, all-too consuming connection in relationships.

Take this next point very casually BUT as someone who has similar placements to him AND the overall energy I get from Hongjoong, I wouldn't be surprised if he identifies with being demi-sexual and he can't find pleasure in physical intimacy w/o an emotional connection.

This is emphasised with having a Virgo Mars because Earth Mars typically have a fluctuating sex drive so he can probably abstain for awhile and be okay with it.

Red & Green Flags:

Red:

Emotional and verbal dysregulation! His 12th House Mercury indicates difficulty expressing emotions in a calm and collected manner.

The Sagittarius influence heightens that trait by making his impulsive behaviour more erratic and could be seething for days before he randomly explodes over a simple issue.

PETTY! The 12th House Mercury and Scorpio placements indicate he could be the type to weaponize the silent treatment, going for hours without speaking to you until you figured out what you did wrong.

Green:

LOYAL TO THE BONE!!! You could go to hell and back and Hongjoong would hold your hand the entire time. These moments of 'difficulties' actually enhance Hongjoong's affection towards you because you trust him to see you at your most 'vulnerable'.

Committment!!! Yes, this should be a bare minimum but Hongjoong would be a faithful man and you would never have to worry about him cheating because he probably views cheating as a betrayal of trust.

Self-automony! By this I mean he values independence and wouldn't try to 'change' you as a person and would choose to accept your flaws and all.

Ideal Type...If He's Into Women:

It's interesting because his 5th House in Taurus is the complete opposite to his Scorpio Venus so his type could have polarising qualities.

Either they are boisterous and loud in public and shy and laid-back around him or vice versa. He likes a partner who shows a side of themselves that only Hongjoong can see.

Hongjoong is definitely an arse and legs man and would be attracted to the grunge but feminine archetype so lace dresses, stockings with Doc Martens etc.

I've noticed in fancalls he loves curly hair, whenever there's a fancall with an Atiny and they have curly hair, he'll always comment about how good their hair looks.

Dom, Sub Or Switch?

Hongjoong is one of the members that's more of a true 'switch' when it comes to power dynamics and yes, he is definitely more on the dominant side BUT not to far...I'd say 60% dominant, 40% submissive.

It's why whenever I scroll the ateez smut tags and see a Seongjoong fic where it's bottom!hwa...I laugh because it's actually the other way around.

Hongjoong is definitely more of a service/pleasure dom and his Gemini Moon and 11th House Venus makes him flexible in what he desires sexually in a partner.

He would enjoy having a bratty sub that he can put in place (kindly) like you see with Wooyoung.

He would also enjoy an obedient sub that completely adores and worships him.

No matter what, he needs to know that you're willing and trusting to put your entire body and soul in his hands.

Kinks...Just A Few Of Them:

Corruption!!!

Yes, I know this is very obvious BUT it's completely true because his Scorpio placements indicates he wants to OWN you as partner (consensual of course) and the thought of him being the FIRST to touch you, to mould you to his desires...it would just cause his heart to quicken and his mind to race with the most impure of thoughts.

This would also cater towards enjoying someone who might be nervous/slightly insecure around him, it would boost his ego to see your cheeks flush at him taking off your clothes or whispering something suggestive in your ear.

'You're so cute when you're nervous angel but don't worry, I'll take care of you because you're mine remember? And I always look after what's mine'.

Voyeurism...Kinda??

Hear me out and if someone knows the proper term for this...can you comment down below???

But with Hongjoong and his love for photography...he'd love to keep a personal scrapbook of all the photos he's taken of you after a steamy session of love-making.

This goes hand in hand with his corruption kink and his love for 'ruining' you- lipstick smeared, hair tousled, mascara running down your face, cheeks flushed.

I'm leaning towards voyeurism because he wouldn't show these photos to anyone, they would be for his own personal collection because he gets off on knowing that it's just HIM that can do this to you and see you this way.

'Fuck angel, spread your legs a bit more...I want to see it all drip out for me...these photos just want to make me dress you up and fuck you all over again'.

Taglist: @scuzmunkie @marievllr-abg @umbralhelwolf @starsareseen @lino-jagiyaa @mischiefsmind @mrcarrots @junieshohoho @partywithgyu @whatsk-poppinhomies @craxy-person @hologramhoneymoon @gyuhanniescarat @staytinyinmybpack @necessiteez @wooyoungmybelovedhusband @berryberrytan @laylasbunbunny @bangchanbabygirlx @i-love-ateez @anyamaris @krishastumblernow @hexheathen

@michel-angelhoe @northerngalxy @justaaveragereader @ja3hwa

@lyramundana @saintfool @wolfakira @youre-alittle-taste-of-hell @silentreaderthings @daddysspecialdollyworld @abby-grace @smilefordongil @wisejudgedragonhairdo @writhingwrecked @hongthoven

Please comment, share and thirst the hell out of this because this took WEEKS to finish!!!

May's fic will be out and published on the 31st.

[my-darling-boy]

It’s horrible how my design course has killed my enjoyment in creativity because all they want is finished pieces founded in nothing but a spontaneous mark just to hang at some concrete art gallery or to sell to some “join our revolution” comfy business-casual company with a prison cell wellness room. I’m not saying that it’s “not art” —cos that’s a different post altogether— it’s that the ethos behind this particular formula for art education is ruining the way we think about creation.

Design courses (and other art courses I’ve heard?) are no longer teaching artists or designers techniques, drawing skills, art fundamentals and allowing them to find their own voice so much as they are only instructing how to tic boxes alongside pushing corporate and classist motivated style/methodology bias aimed at producing workers, not creatives, not to mention providing Adobe with endless funds for their despicable scam programs. That’s it. My creativity is only a means to money for them, and if they can extract the process of creation from me without the complex creative intimacy involved in it, they know they can churn out products and services faster and it’s concerning some lecturers don’t seem to be aware this is what they’re teaching? Like they’re buying into industry propaganda?

And the whole time it’s sold to you like you can be some trailblazer when the irony is they’re usually either prepping you for cubicle work or for some misguided high horse creative team pumping out design solutions completely divorced from the reality. I’m tired of all the talks about sustainability in a vacuum with no conversation about nuanced designs that factor in broader social and economic perspectives which lack thereof is leading to sustainable products being sold at a price only able to be afforded by wealthier people who are causing said economic and social problems and contributing to the rapid obsoletion of trades and crafts. Lecturers and speakers don’t seem to think that’s any of our concern and should just worry about producing the design for the hypothetical Bluetooth powered organic hairbrush or using the twigs to make the pattern for the £85 fabric square.

Like? Can I please make something that actually resonates with people outside the circle jerk of egotistical creatives and corporations? Something charming and maybe idk something that doesn’t make me want to tear my miserable portfolio in half with my teeth? And they’re like Mm nope sorry it has to be an extreme close up of a mark making abstract leaf you made from a recycled trash bag inspired by a stalled urban space which we will force you to price at £100 during your exhibition 5 people will bother to attend and no you’re not allowed any other style cos this isn’t the Dark Ages :///

I think the worst thing my lecturer ever said was, while looking around the room of our class work reduced down to a series of cubes and splatters and abstract typography, “Wow, I love how you can’t tell what anyone’s [main artist discipline] is!” Like awww conformity at the expense of a person’s individuality to make pieces for airport hallways and rich people’s living rooms wow so cool heehee like girl that’s not good?? Why on Earth are you complimenting us for that? Like I get it, I thought this course would boost skillset as an illustrator (as we were told), turns out the degree is really not for me, fair enough to anyone thinking that, but forcing students to produce modern abstract art because you think it’s the ONLY Logical Pathway for the future of design, judging them intensely for doing a different style, and thinking producing financially inaccessible art + design is the solution to things like climate change and community severance is an objectively bad take.

[evidence-based-activism]

IOC Study on Transgender Athletes Severely Flawed

So, to a certain extent, the question of "should transwomen be able to compete female sports?" is an ideological question (i.e., "should identity supersede reality?").

That being said, there's a recent report [1], funded by the IOC, that is being used to "prove" that transwomen do not have a biological advantage over non-trans women. This report is severely flawed and does not actually lend support to the idea that transwomen have no biological advantage in sports over female people.

(I will mimic the language used in the report (e.g., using "ciswomen").)

Significant differences noted by the report that do NOT support transwomen's inclusion in women's sports:

Transwomen were substantially taller than ciswomen

Transwomen had more lean/fat-free mass than ciswomen

Transwomen had better lung function than ciswomen, as measured by forced vital capacity, forced expiratory volume in one second, and peak expiratory flow. (See the next section for a discussion on the ratio.)

Transwomen had greater hand grip strength (a proxy for overall strength measurement)

Transwomen had higher absolute peak power (lower extremity) compared to ciswomen. (See next section for a discussion on the relative measure.)

Transwomen had the same "absolute strength" as cismen

The data showing no significant difference between transwomen and ciswomen has substantial flaws:

The sample size was too small to reliably determine differences in bone mineral density

For lung function only the FEV1:FVC ratio was lower for transwomen, but the values are generally within the normal range for both groups. The impact of this difference is therefore questionable, as the transwomen have greater absolute values on each measurement and the ratio is not showing any abnormalities. In addition, the effect size (size of the difference) is much smaller than the effect size of the absolute differences described above. The conclusion here is simply that the participants do not have any obstructive respiratory diseases, and the transwomen have greater absolute lung function. (Although there are better tests for this.) There is also one outlier in the transwomen group that is likely driving this relationship in the ratio; unfortunately they do not perform the expected control analyses to demonstrate the retention of results without the outlier. [2]

The researchers decided to examine power in the lower extremities relative to lean/fat-free mass, which yielded a lower result for transwomen compared to ciswomen. However, this methodology make absolutely no sense. We have already established that transwomen have significantly greater lean/fat-free mass, and this paper is interested in determining equitably in sport performance. In general, sports aren't divided out by mass (and certainly not by lean mass), therefore we are interested in absolute differences, not in differences adjusted by some other factor. (Particularly not when that factor is established to be significantly different between transwomen and ciswomen!)

The same criticism applies to their analysis of cardiac function. But even more importantly, "the most crucial variable influencing VO2_max was not assessed in the present study" which is a significant oversight given the stated goals of this paper.

There are numerous other limitation and issues with this report:

This study is of "cross-sectional design, making it challenging to establish causation or examine if the performance of athletes changes as a result of undergoing GAHT"

"The athlete training intensity was self-reported. Therefore, the results may suffer from selection and recall bias." [emphasis mine] -> In other words, these results may be "comparing apples and oranges" with varying rates of fitness impacting the results.

"The athletes participating in the present study represented a variety of different sports, and this would have undoubtedly impacted the results of the study as different sports stress different training and sports modalities." [emphasis mine] -> This is a significant limitation, as comparing the strength of a ciswoman weight lifter to a transwomen distance runner (or vice versa) is meaningless. It's true that measures of fitness tend to correlate, but comparing across sport disciplines for highly competitive sports (where they are focusing on improving specific characteristics) distorts the results. (They explicitly note this: "Exercise type, intensity and duration all have an impact on physiological responses and overall laboratory performance metrics.")

"Social media recruitment leaves this study open to sample bias"

"The gender-affirming treatment of the transgender athletes was not controlled"

"The participants were not screened by a clinician before participation, and any medical conditions were self-reported"

The transwomen in this study all suppressed testosterone to ciswomen's levels and increased oestradiol above ciswomen's levels. This is a limitation because this degree of success in hormone suppression is uncommon, meaning that even these these poorly-supportive results are likely inapplicable to the majority of transwomen. [3]

There is a significant conflict of interest: this study was funded by the IOC after they had already changed the rules to remove the "hormone suppression" requirement [4]

All in all, this study is a classic case of researchers misrepresenting their data in the study's abstract. The data they actually collected shows that transwomen on hormone suppression maintain significant advantages over ciswomen. Further, the flaws in the study limit the applicability of their results.

---

In addition, there are other studies that contradict this result:

This review [3] discusses numerous sources describing "the inherent male physiological advantages that lead to superior athletic performance and then addresses how estrogen therapy fails to create a female-like physiology in the male"

This review [5] found "the performance gap between males and females becomes significant at puberty and often amounts to 10–50% depending on sport" and that "longitudinal studies examining the effects of testosterone suppression on muscle mass and strength in transgender women consistently show very modest changes, where the loss of lean body mass, muscle area and strength typically amounts to approximately 5% after 12 months of treatment. Thus, the muscular advantage enjoyed by transgender women is only minimally reduced when testosterone is suppressed."

This study [6] found that transwomen "generally maintained their strength level" during "gender-affirming therapy".

This study [7] found that all physical advantages were present after one year and that some are retained even after years on hormone suppression. They also specifically hypothesized that "gender dysphoria could stimulate the opposite behaviour [differences in exercise habits] in transwomen, decreasing push-up performance and explaining why transwomen performed fewer push-ups than [cismen] prior to starting oestrogen." This motivation difference likely won't apply to elite athletes, which further supports the idea that transwomen athletes should not be competing with female athletes.

As this position statement [8] indicates we know that there are substantial differences in athletic performance for male and female people.* However, there is little high-quality, definitive evidence concerning the effects of hormone suppression/replacement on people's athletic performance. The current state of evidence suggests that hormone suppression/replacement fails to bridge the physiological gap between male and female people, but we need further higher-quality evidence to definitively prove this.

(That being said, the burden of proof here is on the people attempting to initiate a change; that is equitably between transwomen and female people should be (have been) established prior to eliminating biological sex-separation.)

*Before anyone jumps on this: this is not a moral difference. There is absolutely no reason why running faster or lifting heavier things would make someone "better". The biological difference in performance exists, but it does not in anyway suggest superiority of men over women. Beyond that, it is unsurprising that men outperform women on traditional sports given that sports were designed by and for men. In sports that cater to women's physiological advantages (e.g., endurance, flexibility), women outperform men. [9]

---

So, given all this, what would we actually need to make determine transwomen's relative advantage over female people?

The "perfect" study would involve (at least) these elements:

Random selection from the desired population(s) of transwomen (e.g., top-ranked athletes in a specific sport, non-athletic, etc.) with matched (for population) non-trans female and non-trans male controls

Observation (not self-report) of activity level prior to, during, and following a standardized treatment (hormone suppression/replacement) initiation

Continual measurement of various physical and athletic performance, preferably with a range of laboratory (e.g., spirometry, body measurements) and naturalistic (e.g., actual sports competitions) tasks along with monitoring the treatment and clinical/health issues in all participants (again, not via self-report)

Large enough sample sizes to allow for sufficiently powered tests of all groups/differences of interest

A double-blinded assessment approach (or "placebo" controlled) such that both the researcher assessing the participants and the participants do not know what is being evaluated until the study is complete. For example, you may tell one half the transwomen participants that you are tracking the long term health effects of the intervention (hormone therapy), while you tell the other half that you are assessing differences in athletic performance as a result of the intervention. This will allow for the evaluation of demand characteristics like the ones impacting [7].

There are likely even more factors I have not currently thought of. Of course, completing the "perfect" study would likely be almost impossible. It would certainly be impossible to do for every population of interest (e.g., Olympic weight-lifters, adolescent track and field athletes, sedentary office workers) at the same time.

That being said, a study that fails to include all of these factors (particularly the blinded approach, matching of control participants, and sample size) is not going to meet the standard of evidence needed to make decisions of this magnitude (i.e., choosing to change the priority from biological categorization to ideological categorization). In reality, we would likely need many studies that individually evaluate each group of interest (e.g., transwomen olympic-level weight-lifters vs female olympic-level weight-lifters), each applying as many of the ideal study characteristics as possible.

In conclusion, the IOC has failed to perform their stated duty to regulate and ensure fair competition in sports. There is no current evidence suggesting that transwomen have lost their male-advantage in sports, much less any evidence suggesting they are at a disadvantage.

References below the cut:

Hamilton, B., Brown, A., Montagner-Moraes, S., Comeras-Chueca, C., Bush, P. G., Guppy, F. M., & Pitsiladis, Y. P. (2024). Strength, power and aerobic capacity of transgender athletes: a cross-sectional study. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 58(11), 586-597.

Al-Ashkar, F., Mehra, R., & Mazzone, P. J. (2003). Interpreting pulmonary function tests: recognize the pattern, and the diagnosis will follow. Cleveland Clinic journal of medicine, 70(10), 866-881.

Heather, A. K. (2022). Transwoman elite athletes: their extra percentage relative to female physiology. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(15), 9103.

“International Olympic Committee Issues New Guidelines on Transgender Athletes.” NBC News, 3 Jan. 2024, https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/international-olympic-committee-issues-new-guidelines-transgender-athl-rcna5775.

Hilton, E. N., & Lundberg, T. R. (2021). Transgender women in the female category of sport: perspectives on testosterone suppression and performance advantage. Sports Medicine, 51, 199-214.

Wiik, A., Lundberg, T. R., Rullman, E., Andersson, D. P., Holmberg, M., Mandić, M., ... & Gustafsson, T. (2020). Muscle strength, size, and composition following 12 months of gender-affirming treatment in transgender individuals. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 105(3), e805-e813.

Roberts, T. A., Smalley, J., & Ahrendt, D. (2021). Effect of gender affirming hormones on athletic performance in transwomen and transmen: implications for sporting organisations and legislators. British journal of sports medicine, 55(11), 577-583.

Pitsiladis, Yannis MMedSci, PhD, FACSM; Harper, Joanna MS; Betancurt, Jonathan Ospina; Martinez-Patino, Maria-Jose; Parisi, Attilio MD; Wang, Guan; Pigozzi, Fabio MD, PhD. Beyond Fairness: The Biology of Inclusion for Transgender and Intersex Athletes. Current Sports Medicine Reports 15(6):p 386-388, 11/12 2016. | DOI: 10.1249/JSR.0000000000000314

Ro, Christine. The sports where women outperform men. (2024). From https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240731-the-sports-where-women-outperform-men

[communist-hatsunemiku]

can you expand on the statistics/research findings post you just made? what makes them unreliable sources?

There is no way for humans to gather data and conduct research that is completely objective. There is no scientific methodology that eliminates bias and is non-ideological, period. This doesn't mean these things are inherently unreliable or suspect! The best, most thoughtful research is conducted with human bias strongly taken into account, instead of swept under the rug.

But bias and prejudice is baked into research and statistical analysis, that is rendered invisible by this idea that "it's science! can't argue with science!". Even the most well-meaning, idealistic "I'm going to make the world better" researcher can participate in (or even be entirely responsible for) shoddy research that causes more harm than good.

So the takeaway is that we all need to ask ourselves a few basic questions when looking at a study or statistics. Who is funding this research? Who is conducting the research, and what does that person(s) career look like? How is the research being done, what methods were used, is there a control group? Are there similar studies, and what were the findings of those? Who participated and how were those people recruited for the study/survey? Is there a peer review? And (very importantly) who stands to materially benefit from the conclusions of this study?

Also I wanted to add this evergreen image.

[transmutationisms]

do you feel like SSRIs are mostly pseudoscience? I'm not sure if I should be open to trying them or avoid them at all costs since I'm not sure if they even work or if they will mess me up permanently

a preliminary note that i don't find the category 'pseudoscience' to be useful & would classify SSRI research more as 'methodologically shoddy science' or 'ideologically slanted' or 'part of a centuries-long effort on the part of psychiatrists to secure themselves professional prestige by claiming neurobiological etiologies where none are shown to exist' &c &c. imo the notion of 'pseudoscience' is itself pretty positivistic, ahistorical, and ideologically noxious (particularly apparent in any analysis of epistemological imperialism).

that aside: you raise two major issues with SSRIs, namely whether they work and whether they will cause you harm.

efficacy of SSRIs is contested. a 2010 meta-analysis found that in patients with mild or moderate depressive symptoms, the efficacy of SSRIs "may be minimal or nonexistent", whilst "for patients with very severe depression, the benefit of medications over placebo is substantial". a 2008 meta-analysis found a similar distinction between mildly vs severely depressed patients, but noted that even in the latter population, drug–placebo differences were "relatively small" and argued that the differences between drug and placebo in severely depressed patients "seems to result from a poorer response to placebo amongst more depressed patients" rather than from a greater efficacy of SSRIs. a 2012 meta-analysis found some SSRIs consistently effective over placebo treatments, but several authors disclosed major relationships with pharmaceutical companies. a 2017 meta-analysis concluded that "SSRIs might have statistically significant effects on depressive symptoms, but all trials were at high risk of bias and the clinical significance seems questionable" (emphasis added) and that "potential small beneficial effects seem to be outweighed by harmful effects".

when evaluating any of this evidence, it is crucial to keep in mind that studies on antidepressant trials are selectively published—that is, they are less likely to be published if they show negative results!

A total of 37 studies viewed by the FDA as having positive results were published; 1 study viewed as positive was not published. Studies viewed by the FDA as having negative or questionable results were, with 3 exceptions, either not published (22 studies) or published in a way that, in our opinion, conveyed a positive outcome (11 studies). According to the published literature, it appeared that 94% of the trials conducted were positive. By contrast, the FDA analysis showed that 51% were positive.

meta-analyses are not immune to this issue, either. in addition to the problem that a meta-analysis of a bunch of bad studies cannot magically 'cancel out' the effects of poor study design, the authors of meta-analyses can and do also have financial interests and ties to pharmaceutical companies, and this affects their results just as it does the results of the studies they are studying. according to a 2016 analysis of antidepressant meta-analyses,

Fifty-four meta-analyses (29%) had authors who were employees of the assessed drug manufacturer, and 147 (79%) had some industry link (sponsorship or authors who were industry employees and/or had conflicts of interest). Only 58 meta-analyses (31%) had negative statements in the concluding statement of the abstract. Meta-analyses including an author who were employees of the manufacturer of the assessed drug were 22-fold less likely to have negative statements about the drug than other meta-analyses [1/54 (2%) vs. 57/131 (44%); P < 0.001]. [...] There is a massive production of meta-analyses of antidepressants for depression authored by or linked to the industry, and they almost never report any caveats about antidepressants in their abstracts. Our findings add a note of caution for meta-analyses with ties to the manufacturers of the assessed products.

so, do SSRIs work? they are certainly psychoactive substances, which is to say, they do something. whether that something reduces depressive symptoms is simply not known at this point, though it is always worth keeping in mind that the 'chemical imbalance' narrative of SSRIs (the idea that they work by 'curing' a 'serotonin deficiency' in the brain) has always been a profitable myth. look, any medical treatment throughout history has been vouched for by SOME patients who report that it helped them—no matter how wacky it sounds or how little evidence there was to support it. this can be for a lot of reasons: placebo effect, the remedy accidentally treating a different problem than it was intended for, the symptoms coincidentally resolving on their own. sometimes the human body is just weird and unpredictable. sometimes remedies work. i'm sorry i can't give you a more definitive answer about whether SSRIs would help you.

as to potential risks: these are significant. SSRIs can precipitate suicidal ideation, a risk that has been consistently downplayed by pharmaceutical companies and studies. SSRIs are also known to contribute to sexual dysfunction and dissatisfaction, again a risk that is minimised and downplayed in much of the literature and in physician communication with patients. further (known) side effects range through emotional blunting, glaucoma, QT interval prolongation, abnormal bleeding & interaction with anti-coagulents, platelet dysfunction, decreases in bone mineral density leading to increased risk of osteopenia and osteoporosis, jaw clenching / TMJ pain, risk of serotonin syndrome when used in conjunction with other serotonergic substances, dizziness, insomnia, headaches, the list goes on.

i don't mean to sound alarmist; all drugs have side effects, some of the ones above occur rarely, and you may very well decide the risk is acceptable to you to take on. i would, though, always encourage you to do thorough research into potential side effects before starting any drug, including an SSRI. more on SSRI side effects in david healy's books 'pharmageddon', 'let them eat prozac', 'the antidepressant era', and 'the creation of psychopharmacology'; 'pillaged' by ronald w maris; and 'the myth of the chemical cure' by joanna moncrieff.

in addition to the above, SSRIs are known to come with a risk of 'discontinuation syndrome'—that is, chemical withdrawal when stopping the drug. this, too, is often downplayed by physicians; many still deny that it can even happen. some patients don't experience it at all, though i can tell you purely anecdotally that SSRI withdrawal was so miserable for me i simply gave up on quitting for over a year, despite the fact that at that point i was already thoroughly experienced with chemical withdrawals from other, 'harder' drugs. again, i am not telling you not to go on SSRIs if you decide these risks are worth it to you! i simply think this is a decision that should always be made with full knowledge (indeed, this is a core, though routinely violated, principle of medical 'informed consent').

ultimately this is not a decision anyone should make for you; it's your body and mind that are at stake here. as always i think that anyone considering any kind of medical treatment should have full knowledge about it and should be making all decisions freely and autonomously. i am genuinely not pushing any agenda 'for' or 'against' SSRIs, only against prescription of them that is done carelessly, coercively, or without fully informing patients of what risks they're taking on and what benefits they can hope to see.

[sashabarkov]

here are some better pictures of pittsburgh’s (amazing, beautiful, top-notch) skyline from several angles :)

Vote based on quality of the skyline not quality of the city

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Jeremy Sharon

Two of the most problematic reports regarding alleged famine were issued in March 2024 and November 2024 by the IPC’s Famine Review Committee (FRC).

The FRC’s March report asserted that famine was “was projected and imminent,” in particular in northern Gaza, and that 677,000 people in the Gaza Strip were already in the Phase 5 Catastrophe level of its food insecurity scale.

If this were correct, it would have meant that at least 135 people were dying of starvation every day in March 2024.

Palestinian children suffering from malnutrition or chronic diseases such as cancer, wait with family members at Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on June 24, 2024, after they reportedly were given permission by the Israeli army to leave the besieged Palestinian territory for treatment through the Kerem Shalom crossing, amid the ongoing conflict in the Palestinian territory between Israel and Hamas. (Bashar Taleb / AFP)

An IPC Special Brief projected that 1.1 million people would be in the Phase 5 Catastrophe level in the period from March 16 to July 15, 2024, which would have meant at least 221 people dying of starvation every day in that period.

The FRC’s November report stated that there was “an imminent and substantial likelihood of famine occurring,” while in December 2024, FEWS NET published an “Alert” asserting that “A Famine (IPC Phase 5) scenario continues to unfold in North Gaza Governorate.”

UKLFI identified numerous, substantive problems with these reports, however.

In June 2024, the FRC itself published an updated report stating that “the available evidence does not indicate that Famine is currently occurring,” despite its dire predictions from March.

The March report also did not provide any statistics on the mortality rate from the malnutrition and starvation it asserted was happening and predicted would strengthen from March to July.

That report noted that the death toll related to malnutrition was 25 in total, whereas the claimed Phase 5 catastrophe level in northern Gaza should have meant that some 60 people were dying from malnutrition every day, according to the population in the region at the time, UKLFI said.

The June report did provide a mortality rate from all causes, meaning as a result of military action and malnutrition together. The stated level would, however, only have qualified as Phase 3 level of food insecurity at the most, if it was based on non-trauma deaths, which it was not.

UKLFI noted in its study that FRC, and the World Food Program organization, were in possession of the non-trauma mortality figures but chose not to share them.

Trucks with aid arrive at the Gazan side of the Kerem Shalom border crossing, in the southern Gaza Strip, on January 17, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

Another key problem with the March report – as pointed out in an Israeli study by public health officials published by Israel’s Foreign Affairs Ministry in May and noted in the UKLFI’s study – was that it failed to take into account food supplied to northern Gaza by the private sector, alongside the humanitarian aid brought into the territory.

The March report was cited directly by the International Court of Justice in the genocide suit brought by South Africa against Israel, and also referenced by the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor Karim Khan when he announced he was seeking arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant, warrants which were ultimately issued by the court.

Indeed Khan specifically cited the FRC claim that 1.1 million were facing “catastrophic hunger,” which he said was the highest number “ever recorded, anywhere, anytime,” when filing his application for arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant.

In November, the FRC issued an “Alert” saying there was a “substantial likelihood of famine, particularly in northern Gaza, and stating, “It can therefore be assumed that starvation, malnutrition, and excess mortality due to malnutrition and disease, are rapidly increasing in these areas.” Famine thresholds “may have already been crossed,” it added.

But this report, too, did not include mortality data to back up its assertions. It stated that a malnutrition parameter known as MUAC indicated Phase 3 malnutrition throughout Gaza, but did not provide precise details.

In a “Special Brief” also issued in November, FRC said that acute malnutrition was “ten times higher” than before the war.

But the FRC reports, and a FEWS NET report, mistakenly asserted that the MUAC rate in Gaza before October 7, 2023 was 1%, when in reality it was 4%, UKLFI pointed out.

And don't forget, boys and girls, Israel is the only country in the world that is expected to supply its genocidal enemies with food, electricity, water, and other humanitarian supplies. Nothing was expected of Hamas, and Hamas was even free to "execute collaborators" without a peep from the world's "human rights" advocates." The double standard is appalling. GAJ

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Arno Rosenfeld at The Forward:

The Heritage Foundation plans to “identify and target” volunteer editors on Wikipedia who it says are “abusing their position” by publishing content the group believes to be antisemitic, according to documents obtained by the Forward. Employees of Heritage, the conservative think tank that produced the Project 2025 policy blueprint for the second Trump administration, said they plan to use facial recognition software and a database of hacked usernames and passwords in order to identify contributors to the online encyclopedia, who mostly work under pseudonyms. It’s not clear exactly what kind of antisemitism the Wikipedia effort, which has not been previously reported, is intended to address. But in recent months some Jewish groups have complained about a series of changes on the website relating to Israel, the war in Gaza and its repercussions. In June, a panel of Wikipedia editors declared the Anti-Defamation League a “generally unreliable” source of information about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, limiting when the organization can be cited in Wikipedia articles. And there was an outcry this fall among some Jewish scholars and pro-Israel activists over edits to Wikipedia’s entry for Zionism to add references to “colonization.” [...] The Heritage Foundation sent the pitch deck outlining the Wikipedia initiative to Jewish foundations and other prospective supporters of Project Esther, its roadmap for fighting antisemitism and anti-Zionism. The slideshow says the group’s  “targeting methodologies” would include creating fake Wikipedia user accounts to try to trick editors into identifying themselves by sharing personal information or clicking on malicious tracking links that can identify people who click on them. It is unclear whether this has begun.

[...] Allegations of bias Wikipedia has long faced claims from conservatives that it has a liberal bias. Chaya Raichik, the Orthodox former real estate broker behind “Libs of TikTok,” has assailed Wikimedia’s spending on diversity programming, for example. And a June study from the right-leaning Manhattan Institute found a “mild to moderate tendency” for Wikipedia to more negatively describe some conservative public figures. Several prominent Jewish groups have also expressed concern that Wikipedia is tilted against Israel. A World Jewish Congress has released a report in March said the site’s articles about the Israel-Hamas war were biased in “terminology, framing and lack of context, one-sided sources and critical omissions,” while Aish.com, an Orthodox news website, said in November that it had been “hijacked by digital jihadists.” In May, the Los Angeles Jewish Journal ran a cover story titled “Wokepedia?” that described “seven tactics Wikipedia editors used to spread anti-Israel bias.” The article said that the term “anti-imperialism” had been added to the Hamas page as one of the Palestinian terror group’s ideologies, and the term “antisemitism” removed. Neither term is currently on the Hamas page; editors frequently discuss and change the content of controversial articles.

Radical right-wing organization The Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther is planning to identify and target Wikipedia editors as part of its project to combat antisemitism and anti-Zionism. In reality, such a campaign would serve to intimidate Wikipedia for its alleged pro-Palestinian bias.

[gengor]

Okay, so I’ve wanted to make a big fe3h politics post for a while now. I wanna come at this from a different angle, and think about how authorial intent and/or bias factor into the political messaging into my interpretation of the characters. So, in this post, I'm going to:

Explain how the writers show that they ultimately want Dimitri’s route to be the ‘good route’ and show how the political ideologies of Dimitri and Edelgard are clearly spelled out for the player (Claude will get a separate post)

If you're not already in the boat of ‘fe3h is a political game’, then just scroll past this lol. Fe3h talks about racism and misogyny and debates how the world should structure its government. It is very political.

So, I’m gonna quote from the translated writer's interview

“Kusakihara: Edelgard’s route’s theme is literally “military rule.” It’s the route where you haveyour own cause and convictions, and even if people you know stand in your way, you mow ‘emdown. In contrast, Dimitri’s route began with the idea to make it “righteous,” the easy approach.It’s just, at the beginning, poor sensitive Dimitri ends up like that because of the circumstances… We sprinkled in juxtapositions like that.

Everyone: (laughs)

Kusakihara: Once he’s fallen, he goes through some twists and turns and awakens to the true king’s path. I wanted to write the righteous route as the conquest route’s opposite [TN: lit.“paradox”]. Claude started with the keyword of “schemer hero,” and I thought he’d weave more plots behind the scenes, and you can’t hate him, but he’s still a bad guy… But as I was writing him, he ended up more of a pure good guy than originally planned (laughs).

Tell us how Edelgard and the Empire got to the position they’re in now.

Kusakihara: I think most of the characters walking the path of conquest up until now have been men. I also think villains are often men… I wanted to do something unexpected, or make it harder to predict future events, so that role went to a woman this time.

Yokota: There’s a contrast between her strong side, pushing through with her conquest, and her adorable side, and I think she turned out to be a good character. Also, sure enough, we left in the longstanding series trope of “empire = bad guys.” With the name “empire,” I feel like there really is this vague image of “probably evil.” Regarding the story, it started with the element of “let’s make it Romance of the Three Kingdoms,” but we also wanted to have a school life. That meant it would have to be temporarily peaceful, and from there, we needed something to spark a war. To that end, something needed to be the bad guy… or rather, shoulder a role close to that, or the story wouldn’t work, so we had the Empire support us in that way.”

Okay, so I don’t really think I need to say all that much to convince you further that Edelgard was their planned villain. It's pretty cut and dry. But the next question to ask is: what is the ‘ideology’ that she’s willing to cut people down to achieve? Well, Edelgard falls into this conservative trope that my partners has got me to start calling ‘evil leftist wizards’ but it’s been called killmonger syndrome by some people online too.

There is a pattern in lots of fiction, both Western and Japanese, to create an antagonist who seeks power to implement left-leaning or progressive goals. Oftentimes, the narrative doesn't really engage with the validity of these claims and will make these characters condemnable by ‘evil via association’, or maybe they ‘have some points but they're just too radical in their methodology’. There is also a tendency of these types of narratives to use right-leaning language and iconography interchangeably with left-leaning language (it goes hand in hand with the way so many conservatives will accuse leftists of ‘being the real fascist’) 

Some mainstream examples of this trope include Amon from the Legend of Korra. He fights for *equality* and the liberation of nonbenders, but the writers are clearly trying to tie him to fascism with the imagery of the rising sun, and having him do a literal Sieg Heil in many of his posters. 

Another example is Viktor from Arcane, who, in the latest season, became the series' main antagonist who wanted to end discrimination, Erik Killmonger, who wanted to bring an end to racism in America by any means necessary.

Edelgard falls into this trope. She wants Fódlan to move past an antiquated system of theocratic nobility, which is a left-leaning goal. But the game wants her to be condemnable via association because she cooperates with a lot of cartoonishly evil characters from TWSITD to get her goals done or engages in other morally grey/condemnable actions to get her goals accomplished. So, while I think it's fair to criticize her for many of the things she does, she is ultimately how the game is choosing to portray leftism, and frankly, it's not a great or insightful critique of leftism. 

So where is Dimitri in all of this? Well I think Dimitri represents the politics of the writers, which scews very centristy.

Why do I think Dimitri is a centrist? He told us this point blank in the appropriately named event: Crests: The Good and the Bad 

“I believe that Margrave Gautier was wrong to disinherit Miklan simply because he did not bear a Crest. Still, there is always a reason for why such customs stand the test of time. Imagine what this world would be like if no one placed any stock in Crests...Bloodlines that carry Crests would dwindle. The metaphorical blade used to oppose threats would eventually rust.This same argument has been made time and time again across the years. Both sides are at once right and wrong.”

 “I believe those with Crests and those without should acknowledge the others' strengths and learn to respect each other based on personal merits. And that doesn't apply only to Crests. The same holds true for lineage, race, faith, ideologies…” Source

I wanna draw attention to that word. “Ideologies”. Basically Dimitri is saying judging people on their race is bad but then he lumps judging someone based on their *ideology* to be an equally bad thing. 

It’s worth noting that Dimitri will verbally condemn racism, but he still participated in quelling a rebellion from Duscur. Source The game tries to make this seem more palatable by having Dedue adhere strictly to whatever Dimitri says, turning Dimitri into a white savior type character. 

While Dimitri might say things that sound progressive, there’s signs in there that he isn’t actually left-leaning. Dimitri can see issues with the current system but believes actually challenging the status quo to be wrong. He will *always* be the Lord who protects the church and upholds the system of nobility. The system of nobility which has women being sold off to their husband's families to produce heirs, the system of nobility that concentrates Fodlans power solely in the hands of white people (see Claude and Balthus’s character premise for proof… and also note that Hapi is Dimitri’s only platonic ending with a woman) 

In this sense, Dimitri has kind of become my favorite Lord, not because I think he’s right, but because he feels like the perfect window into the mind of how centrists operate. He has SO much power in this world as the king and or crown prince, but he chooses to appease conservatives instead every time.

And to be clear, I don't think people who sympathize with him are stupid or wrong to do that. Opinions on media don’t automatically translate to politics. I personally don't sympathize with him because I am hyper invested in the politics here. But I still really enjoy him as a character.

Edit: I feel like I didn’t conclude this well.

I think ultimately the thing I wanted to say about fe3h discourse is that it’s important to acknowledge that the writers were trying to side with centrism by using Dimitri as their ‘good choice’. And any criticism Edelgard should keep in mind that the writers are trying to use her morally grey behavior to undermine progressive revolutions. Tying her to imperialism was an intentional choice done to undermine the legitimacy of her goals. The premise of a ‘progressive imperialist movement’ is kind of just something that can only come out of the mouth of a conservative to begin with.

[morkaischosen]

Based on something that went past on Discord, and in the full knowledge of the bias inherent in posting this in the context of the rest of my Tumblr, I'm curious as to the relationships between which of (a specific subset of) Jenna Moran's games people have heard of. We'll obviously get a lot (relatively) of "all three" since I'm posting this in a cluster of jennagamers; the interesting output is the differences in the one and two game responses.

This is loose and informal so I'm not too bothered if an individual's answers are "I've heard the name" or "I have some idea of the premise of this game," as long as you're consistent with your own answers.

The games I'm focusing on here are Nobilis; Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, or CMWGE; and Wisher, Theurge, Fatalist, often abbreviated WTF.

Reblogs appreciated, and notes as to where you've heard about the games would be interesting - part of my thinking here is about the contexts in which the games get talked about. In particular I'd love to compare the dynamics of my corner of Tumblr* against something like the RPGnet crowd, but I recognise the methodology here won't achieve that.

[bethanythebogwitch]

Tips for spotting pseudoscience

Pseudoscience (that which is presented as science but does not follow proper methodology and does not meet scientific rigor) is everywhere and being able to spot it is important to keep yourself from being misled. Here are some common things you see with pseudoscience that should not be present with real science. This list is not exhaustive and not all pseudoscience will fit all of these traits, these are just common ones.

Testimonials

Pseudoscientists won't provide proper evidence to support their claims. If they could, it would be science, not pseudoscience. Instead, they will offer people's stories about how whatever they're selling worked for them. You see this very frequently with people selling alternative medicine. "My cancer disappeared after I started using black salve" or "This homeopathic remedy cleared up my flu right away". Testimonials aren't useful as evidence for the same reason eyewitness reports are the least useful for of evidence in court: people are flawed. People can misremember, people can lie, people can make mistakes, and people can be biased. Science is structured so that mistakes or biases can be spotted and corrected through peer review and replication of experiments. However, a person who seems to sincerely believe what they're telling you intuitively seems more trustworthy than a clinical scientific paper.

Appeals to emotion

An appeal to emotion is when someone trues to persuade you of something using emotion rather than reason. There are lots of different kinds of appeals to emotion out there and all of them get used in pseudoscience. A creationist saying "do you really want to be an accident of nature instead of created by a loving god?" is appealing to a desire to feel special and important. A homeopath saying "don't you want to take this one simple pill instead of going through months of chemotherapy?" is appealing to a desire to have a quick and simple solution to a complicated problem. A conspiracy theorist saying "the government is hiding the truth from you" is appealing to anger at feeling deceived. A militant vegan claiming that cow milk is full of pus and spreads disease is appealing to disgust. How we emotionally feel is not an indicator of the truth of a claim.

Appeals to intuition

I almost consider this one a subcategory of appeals to emotion. Science is really complicated and we naturally want to find simple solutions to things. Combine that with an innate bias to accept claims that support our beliefs and reject claims that do not support them, and we get the problem that people naturally want to believe ideas that seem intuitively correct and reject ideas that don't. This is where you'll get stuff like creationists saying "does evolution really make sense?" Appeals to intuition are flawed for the simple reason that our intuition is often wrong. Our brains evolved to help us find food, shelter, and mates, not to understand the mysteries of the universe. Therefore, what we intuitively think of as correct is often wrong. Intuitively it makes sense that the earth is flat and the sun orbits us, but through examination and discovery, science has shown that both of these are wrong.

Conspiracy theories

Pseudoscientists can't admit that the reason their ideas aren't mainstream is because they don't work. Instead, they will come up with conspiracies their they are being suppressed by "them". Alternative medicine proponents will claim that big pharma is covering up their miracle cures because they make more money treating patients than curing them. Free energy proponents will say the same things about power companies. This is often wrapped up with religions claims. Creationists often claim that scientists promote evolution to deny god and tons of conspiracy theorists claim that satanic cabals are behind the world's problems. If anyone tells you that their claims are being suppressed by scientists, run.

Technobabble

Pseudoscientists love to misuse scientific terminology or to make up their own. By misusing scientific terms, they can use the appearance of scientific rigor to lay people who don't know what those terms actually mean. In science, terms have very specific meanings that may differ from how those terms are used in common parlance. A classic example is creationists trying to dismiss evolution by claiming it's only a theory. This conflates the popular use of the term theory (to mean a guess or idea) with the scientific meaning of theory (a well-supported explanation for some aspect of the universe). One of the biggest sources of technobabble comes from quantum mysticism. Pseudoscientists like Deepak Chopra misuse terms like the observer effect and take advantage of how unintuitive and confusing quantum physics is to claim stuff like observation effects reality. Other examples include new-agers describing things as being ona different frequency or vibration without explaining what frequency means (it's a unit of measurement describing the number of times something happens in a given time span) or what is vibrating or alternative medicine proponents claiming that their product cleans toxins without explaining what said toxins are or how they work.

Unquestionable authorities

In science, nothing is beyond questioning. Scientists should welcome other people questioning or criticizing their ideas because that's how science progresses. Individual scientists don't always live up to that standard, but that's why science is a collaborative process. In pseudoscience, the proponents are often treated as infallible gurus. These people hate being questioned because questioning and critically examining their claims shows them to be false. Proponents of pseudoscience often go trough diploma mills (places that give easy access to diplomas without needing to go through a credible institution) and publish their claims in pseudoscience journals to give themselves the appearance of credentials and scientific rigor, counting on lay people not being able to tell the difference between said diploma mills and pseudoscience journals and the legit ones. Western media loves the trope of the lone genius standing up and proving everyone else wrong and pseudoscientists love to play into this, but that's just not how real science works. This trait of pseudoscience very often goes along with the next one. Followers of pseudoscience gurus often react angrily to said guru being questioned and will ignore all criticism, no matter how valid. For a real life example, Andrew Wakefield published a biased and flawed study claiming to show a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Despite the fact that the study has been redacted and shown to be fraudulent by every relevant medical professional, anti-vaxxers still cling to Wakefield as the ultimate authority figure.

Response to criticism

As mentioned above, science works by having people independently test, verify, refute, and refine each other's ideas. It's a group project that never ends and is always being refined. Criticism and questions should be welcomed, not rejected and if somebody proves you were wrong, you should thank them because together you have helped improve the collective body of knowledge that is science. Pseudoscientists hate being criticized. They tend to lash out at those who do, often proclaiming them to be close-minded, stupid, or part of the conspiracy to suppress their ideas. A good rule of thumb is that real scientists don't respond to criticism by posting lengthy rants on Youtube or with personal insults. Scientists can and often do get annoyed at lay people questioning them, which is why better science communication is so important. Keep in mind that it's vanishingly rare for something in science to be disproved by a lay person simply because lay people don't have the experience and knowledge that practical experience and education provides.

Strawmanning

Strawmanning is when someone presents a series of inaccurate points as their opponent's position and then refutes that instead of tackling their opponent's actual position. This allows the presenter to appear as though they've refuted their opponent when actually they haven't. Like many other pseudoscience tactics, this one relies on lay people not knowing enough about the topic to spot the deception. A classic example of this is the crocoduck incident. Young-earth creationists Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort claimed that if evolution were true, there should be an animal halfway between a crocodile and a duck, which they presented as a picture of a duck with a crocodile's head. This relies heavily on a misconception of what common ancestors are. Common ancestors do not need to look like a chimera of their descendants. Cameron and Comfort claimed that since there is no crocoduck, that was evidence against evolution. In fact, this was only evidence against their strawman of evolutionary theory. Most strawmen are nowhere near as obviously wrong as the crocoduck and the more you know about a topic, the better you will be at spotting strawmen. It's worth doing some research on claims to see if anyone has debunked them yet.

If I have a conclusion to all this, it's probably that pseudoscientists rely on the general public not having a good enough understanding of science to realize they're spouting bullshit. Part of that comes from the fact that science is really complicated and often needs years or decades of education and experience to fully grasp. Another part of the problem is the piss-poor state of science communication and basic education in science and critical thinking right now. We desperateness need to do better at both. Unfortunately, in my country of the USA, conservative activists and politicians are actively undermining public understanding of science and critical thinking because an uninformed public is more likely to vote against their own interests. We need to actively support science education and communication to help people break free of misinformation.