Well, this is the work of Andy Lewis, who is an obsessively transphobic "skeptic" figure, one of those folks with an inability to deal rationally with the existence of trans people. Which seems to be a real problem in that movement.
https://tuckerlieberman.medium.com/transphobia-skepticism-4bfd9453e706
https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/three-prominent-atheists-resigned
I guess easy dunking on creationism and homeopathy doesn't really equip you intellectually to be able to identify and combat the religious ideology that drives transphobic propaganda. These guys have really drunk the kool aid. And Andy is someone who repeatedly makes himself completely ridiculous in service of that propaganda effort.
Let's take two of the "myths" Andy identifies that illustrate this.
*Myth 4: There were less than 10 detransitioners out of 3499 patients in the Cass study.*
This is not a myth. It is true. But like Cass, Andy just assumes that can’t be correct, explicitly saying that the “[t]he low recorded rates must be due in part to insufficient data availability.”
That doesn’t really seem like the work of someone bringing genuine skepticism to the table, but more like someone espousing their faith. Why must that be true? He simply repeats, of course, much of the standard (and repeatedly debunked) mythology round detransition that I examined extensively in the article.
I mean, as a debunking this is as feeble as it could possibly get.
*Myth 7: Most other systematic reviews and clinical guidelines disagree with Cass.*
This is also, in fact, true, and Cass has to dismiss them all from consideration to reach the conclusions she does. Andy mentions the use of AGREE II, and I examined (long before writing the article) precisely how this was misused to briskly and arbitrarily rule out almost all applicable standards in this Bluesky thread:
https://bsky.app/profile/lousadzak.bsky.social/post/3kqclxreiiz2j
The end result is that the UK ends up aligned with basically Finland and Sweden, as an international outlier.
According to Andy, other standards are untrustworthy because they cite each others’ work. That doesn't follow. It is absurd and insulting to dismiss the entire literature on trans healthcare on the basis that it represents a "citation cartel".
Note that the reviews of the use of puberty blockers that have emerged since Cass, in France and Australia, also completely disagree with her findings and align with the international consensus:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0929693X24001763
Andy deploys one other devastating rebuttal, which is his personal opinion:
“On a personal note, I have to say the WPATH guidelines can only be read as deeply dishonest or utterly incompetent..“
Well, this is obviously not the case. This is someone ideologically invested in anti-trans bigotry: an idea that infects and distorts everything that he writes.
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One could examine the other "myths" that he discusses and show where the holes are in most of them: but if you've read the article, you've already seen how Cass uses rhetoric to dismiss the bulk of evidence, the nonsense she uses to undermine Gillick competence, and so on. Andy buys into all this.
These are genuinely examples of pseudoscience , but Andy is uninterested in challenging them - because he is profoundly transphobic at heart. He's notorious for it, and for being abusive in its service.
