Rod Hay wrote:
> Saturday May 13 1:02 AM ET
>
> Study Questions 'Sex Reassignment'
>
> By SETH HETTENA, Associated Press Writer
>
> BALTIMORE (AP) - The practice of surgically ``reassigning'' boys born
> without penises is
> being called into question by a new study that suggests gender identity
> is determined in the
> womb.
The debate that has developed over this is probably askew. From many
years of eagerly reading every report on research on mental illness that
comes my way in the popular press I have learned that the early reports
on some particular piece of research are almost *always* (not just
usually, but always) contradicted by other reports within six months
to a year. Science writers just can't get it straight. And when they do
get the bare details more or less accurate, they tend both to make wild
extrapolations from the research and to leave out the kind of warnings
that serious scientists always make concerning the finality and/or
implications of their research.
So on the basis of an AP report we can assume nothing whatever about
this research, its validity, or its implications. This does not mean that
the
conclusions asserted may not turn out to be accurate, but it does mean
that we don't really *know*, now, any more than we know before the
article was published. So, really, debates over its implications ought to
be postponed for a year or so.
One caution: I doubt very strongly that careful researchers would have
been so confident as the report seems to indicate as to what constitutes
"boyish" behavior. That too is contested ground.
Carrol
P.S. Just one example. *Science News* is remarkably accurate in its
reports on research. And it is fairly careful to indicate whenever research
is not fully confirmed. Yet if one were to read through it for the last 10
years (and I've been subscribing for nearly 15 years), one would discover
that bipolar affective disorder was genetic, that it was not genetic, that
new research established quite decisively that it was genetic, that further
new research suggested strongly that genetic factors only indicated
a tendency, that might or might not be realized, to develop bipolar
disorder, that psychotherapy was more or less useless, that medication
without psychotherapy had .... and so forth.
