Some info about the Littman controversy:
Littman became interested in the possible role of "
social contagion" in
gender dysphoria among young people, and conducted a study by surveying around 250 parents recruited from three websites where she had seen parents describe sudden
gender transitions in their adolescents.
[5] She presented preliminary results at a 2017 conference, and a descriptive study was initially published in
PLOS One in August 2018.
[5][1]
Littman's study described cases of a rapid onset of gender dysphoria based on reports by the surveyed parents,
[5] along with information that was collected about the children's peer group dynamics, social media use, and prior mental health issues.
[11] Littman speculated that rapid onset of gender dysphoria could be a "social coping mechanism" for other disorders, such as
depression and
anxiety caused by adolescent trauma.
[1]
"social contagion" and imitating behavior is nothing new, neither is the fact that gender dysphoria is comorbid with a bunch of other conditions (I do not know if the same is true vice-versa).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comorbidity
In principle her hypothesis is nothing revolutionary and indeed not very problematic. Some of the most extremist positions critisized her hypothesis in itself as discriminatory (which could be taken as a stance against freedom in science),
but the fact of the matter is that Littman was mostly attacked for her self-selection bias and flawed methodology.
And those attacks seemed to not be baseless. Even though Littman's paper was championed in
Science, the criticism of its scientific validity was enough for her to make a redaction.
Responding to negative comments,
PLOS One announced two weeks after publication that it would open a post-publication review of the study's methodologies and analyses.
[13][5][4]
In March 2019,
PLOS One completed its post-publication review, and Littman's corrected version of the paper was published on March 19, 2019.
[14] In the journal's blog,
PLOS One editor Joerg Heber apologized "to the trans and gender variant community" for the previous review and publication, saying "the study, including its goals, methodology, and conclusions, were not adequately framed in the published version, and that these needed to be corrected."
[15] Heber noted that the hypothesized condition of ROGD had "not yet been clinically validated."
[15]
it seems like the changes were quite vast and included methodology among other issues:
[T]he post-publication review identified issues that needed to be addressed to ensure the article meets
PLOS ONE's publication criteria. Given the nature of the issues in this case, the
PLOS ONE Editors decided to republish the article, replacing the original version of record with a revised version in which the author has updated the Title, Abstract, Introduction, Discussion, and Conclusion sections, to address the concerns raised in the editorial reassessment. The Materials and methods section was updated to include new information and more detailed descriptions about recruitment sites and to remove two figures due to copyright restrictions. Other than the addition of a few missing values in Table 13, the Results section is unchanged in the updated version of the article.
[3]
Littman herself vastly downplayed the changes to her publication, you can choose who you think is more realiable:
The manuscript was meticulously evaluated, and, in response to the resulting feedback, changes were made to several sections of the paper, though the methods and findings remained mostly unchanged.
Though she does admit (in a print interview) that she did change methodology, if only slightly. Which is a pretty big deal.
It is, of course, quite ironic that
@Truthy reposted this paper uncritically, seeing as he is not only aware of trans-issues and a great critical thinker, but also (iirc) a practicing academic and someone with more scientific literacy than most people (here or anywhere). This speaks volumes about the ideological bend of this discussion and that this is not, and never was, an empiric or objective discussion, but a discussion that is highly emotional and draws from subconscious sources. Most of our beliefs, after all, are not explicit. That is true about metaphysical beliefs as much as beliefs about gender or our social reality. Seems a lot of people implicitly agree with Rowling and have the same deep-seated fears, but are afraid to openly voice that, because they don't want to be labeled transphobic, so they shift the overton window to freeze peach.
And it only goes to support my (and
@Synsensa s) point that people weirdly seem to be going out of their way to defend something they apparently don't particularly believe in, to ignore the negative and highlight the "good points", refer constantly to free speech and free science, to shift the debate window, and so forth. I don't see any maliciousness in it personally, but I find it highly questionable.
In the end though the important question is whether Littman published something that is helpful and up to academic standards. From all I have read, it seems she did have good intentions, and after republication her paper definitely did meet peer-review standards. Maybe she rushed it, and the paper suffered for it. It seemed almost too perfect a timing. Maybe she made a mistake with only interviewing the parents (I consider that a heavy mistake, personally). Maybe she started with too strong of a hypothesis and ended up in confirmation bias territory too quickly.
But all this notwithstanding, I do think her work is legitimate and has no clear anti-trans ideological bend. It is completely different from, say, that paper that
@Robo-Star posted, which was clearly just a hitpiece disguised as science.
If you want to read a proper scientific critique, see if you have access to this:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7012957/
