Talk:Irreversible Damage/Archive 8

Jack Turban credentials
I was wondering why you keep reverting changes to Jack Turban's credentials? He is presently a chief fellow, at the time of the review he produced for Psychology Today he was a fellow. I'm not sure what your objection is here. Perhaps you could elaborate? Sideswipe9th (talk) 19:57, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't know what to say beyond what I put in each diff comment. He keeps getting called a psychiatrist when he is still a trainee in psychiatry.  That he is chief trainee, that he is one versus another rank of trainee, etc. don't change that.Banglange (talk) 20:03, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I believe you are mistaken. In a US context, a fellow is not a trainee. It is a follow on qualification after residency, but it is not mandatory. At this point he is as far as I'm aware allowed to call himself a psychiatrist. See Psychiatrist, according to his Linkedin profile, Jack did his residency in paediatrics and psychiatry between May 2017 and July 2020 in Boston. At the time of writing the review, December 2020, he had earned the right to call himself a psychiatrist and had enrolled as a fellow at Stanford as a follow-on qualification. Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:15, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Turban's review of Shrier is dated June, 2020. He says in his own bio, however, that he did not become a fellow until after that: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-turban-12218130.  When he wrote/posted/published his review of Shrier, he was still a resident, neither a fellow nor a (full) psychiatrist.Banglange (talk) 23:56, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure where that date has come from, as the source on its website very clearly says "Posted December 6 2020". I've checked The Wayback Machine, which is excluded from the site, and archive.today for which the earliest snapshot is dated December 7th. I'm not sure where a publication date of June 12 2020 came from, as that would be before the publication of the book on 30 June 2020, and mentions events like Target removing it from sale which didn't happen until November 2020. Even the URL for it is dated December 2020. I've corrected the source in the article now however to match what it says. Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:25, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I just checked for when the source was first added to the article. It seems it was added in this diff, dated 8 December 2020. And I can see exactly where this confusion has come from. At some point after adding the article, someone changed the date format. At the time of the initial add, the article date was 2020-06-12. In YYYY-MM-DD format that is 12 July 2020, but in YYYY-DD-MM format it is 12 December 2020. In this diff on 13 December an editor corrected the date into a less ambiguous format, but appears to have read it in the wrong format and assumed the review was written on 12 June 2020. I've corrected it now in the article, but this is definitely a lesson in always checking what the sources say first! Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:47, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Seeing as that particular diff edited the dates on multiple sources, some of which may still be in use on the article I'll be doing a quick source check now to make sure all the publication dates match up. Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:49, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Wow, Sideswipe9th: I really do have to say what a good piece of sleuthing that was! The remaining issue, however, is that Turban does not appear to have written the review at all: The blog says the review was by "Devon Frye" and merely posted by Turban on his PT blog: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/political-minds/202012/new-book-irreversible-damage-is-full-misinformation. None of this seems to quality as an RS at all. Banglange (talk) 02:25, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Cheers! There were a couple of other references that had been previously added in an ambiguous format, or had the wrong date entirely which I've now corrected on the article.
 * With respect to Devon Frye, I believe you're mistaking the reviewer of the review for the author of the review. If you check the source, Jack Turban is the author of the book review, and Devon is the reviewer of Jack's book review. If you click on Devon's name you get redirected to an information page on Psychology Today's editorial process, which includes an "editorial review for all expert author content." All content written by expert authors on that website are subject to review, even if the content is itself a book review! Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:35, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Ah! Now I get it.  Thanks, again. Banglange (talk) 02:37, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
 * After all the contentiousness I got in the middle of in other threads, I have to compliment everybody in this one for centering things on facts, and getting to the bottom of various misunderstandings about terminology, date formats, and authorship of reviews and reviews of reviews. It's a nice break from the culture wars. &#42;Dan T.* (talk) 16:41, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Cheers . It was a strange one which took a lot of diffs to find when it first got added and when it got mistakenly corrected. It'd certainly be nice if the world as a whole could stop using ambiguous dates! But it was a worthwhile exercise in making sure all the current citations are dated correctly. Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:18, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Search query
Google: "book endorses" site:wikipedia.org — 17 results returned

The primary results are explored below. All the other Google results (for me) are talk pages, with just two exceptions: one page featuring a person with the surname 'Book', and another in the Armenian language.

1st result: this very article
This article comes up for me as the top result (long ago I configured my Google account to exclude personalized search, but I don't know whether they still do anything with that setting years later).

The book endorses the contentious concept of rapid onset gender dysphoria, which is not recognized as a medical diagnosis by any major professional institution.

You know how that reads to the brainstem? It reads as "the book endorses contention". Yuck. Yuck. And yuck. Plus the flaming red letters: "not recognized by any major" already at the end of the second sentence. This page should very nearly be considered a BLP page for Abigail Shrier, as this page is the target page for her name.

Completely inappropriate placement and framing for a BLP page, if you ask me.

2nd result

 * Daemonologie (1597)

Last paragraph of second paragraph of first non-lead section.

The book endorses the practice of witch hunting in a Christian society. James begins the book: The fearefull aboundinge at this time in this countrie, of these detestable slaves of the Devil, the Witches or enchanters, hath moved me (beloved reader) to dispatch in post, this following treatise of mine (...) to resolve the doubting (...) both that such assaults of Satan are most certainly practised, and that the instrument thereof merits most severely to be punished.

Well, that leaves little to the imagination.

4th result

 * Irreducible Mind (2007)

Deep into second major subsection

The book endorses phenomena related to psychosomatic medicine, placebo effects, near-death experiences, mystical experiences, and creative genius, to argue for a "strongly dualistic theory of mind and brain".

Then two sentences later, a buttress:

The book "challenges neuroscientific reductionism" as it argues that properties of minds cannot be fully explained by those of brains.

That's not even controversial as a claim, as it pretty much encompasses only scientific atheists and deists of granite. It's right up the alley of John Searle's Chinese room.

5th result

 * The Bell Curve (1994) — fancy meeting you here

Way down in the basement

Eric Siegel wrote on the Scientific American blog that the book "endorses prejudice by virtue of what it does not say. Nowhere does the book address why it investigates racial differences in IQ. By never spelling out a reason for reporting on these differences in the first place, the authors transmit an unspoken yet unequivocal conclusion: Race is a helpful indicator as to whether a person is likely to hold certain capabilities. Even if we assume the presented data trends are sound, the book leaves the reader on his or her own to deduce how to best put these insights to use. The net effect is to tacitly condone the prejudgment of individuals based on race."

Isn't that a grand exercise in moving the goalposts? In "evidence based" scientific discourse, one advances the evidence in hand. Positing alternative explanations is worthwhile secondary narrative—if you've actually got something useful to add that clarifies the larger discussion. This is not a normal standard in evidence-based discourse. Anyone who knows the context of that book knows that saintly, clarifying remarks was not going to be its wheelhouse, and that there was already a large, extant literature devoted to exactly that.

Of course, there are many people in the postmodernist camp who believe that goalposts should be moved in precisely this way; and not very many of the old guard who agree with them. In part, this is a generational divide. Bear in mind, they call old people "wise" and young people "callow" for a good reason. In China's Cultural Revolution, youth was very much on the wrong side of history.

But this is entirely fine as content in that article page. It's very clearly attributed to one person, whose perceptual frame is easy to identify. With a moment's thought, the reader can see that he's clearly addressing the is/ought chasm of activist application (though this is implicit) and reason out that I guess we're to assume—because assuming the worst is easy—that most readers only bother to learn the "is" lay of the land in order to rush into hot "ought" judgement. Traditional science recognizes itself as descriptive, first of all. The laws of motion are fundamentally descriptive, and to interpret Newton's equations as "explanatory" is to do an injustice which harkens back to teleology.

This is fine, and we don't need to add that "Eric Siegel endorses teleology because of what he does not say." I mean, shouldn't he have drawn direct attention to how he's playing the is/ought card against a long established, pernicious backdrop of explanatory teleology?

6th result

 * Arnold DeVries

Bottom of biography section

DeVries was the co-author of Ben Klassen's 1982 book Salubrious Living. ... For example, DeVries admired Pacific Islanders for their physical beauty and criticized the dieting and lifestyles of western culture. The book endorses fasting, sunbathing, fruitarian and raw food dieting. DeVries eschewed medical treatment and believed that fasting could treat most illnesses.

This one is completely uncontentious. Props for tipping fasting as a health practice back in 1982, long before the current fad. X "could treat most illness" is the universal calling card of snake oil, so now I have to rescind those props, after all.

7th result

 * Kermit Zarley

Bottom of second major subsection

The publication of his most recent book, The Restitution of Jesus Christ, was preceded by his usage of the pseudonym Servetus the Evangelical. His stated reasons for doing so were: "if my fellow Evangelicals ever knew about my christological beliefs they would not accept me as a genuine Christian and ostracize me from the Evangelical community". His book endorses a Unitarian viewpoint of christology, similar to the quasi-Unitarian position of Michael Servetus himself.

This appears completely uncontentious. Interesting that my net gatherer up yet another example of someone fearful of being voted off an island.

10th result

 * Kenneth Hsu

Way down in body text

File:Ascending and Descending.jpg

Hsu criticized Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. According to Hsu "If most extinctions are caused by catastrophes ... then chance, not superiority, presides over who shall live and who shall die. Indeed, the whole course of evolution may be governed by chance, and not reflect at all the slow march from inferior to superior forms so beloved by Victorians, and so deeply embedded in Western thought." The book endorses catastrophism and non-Darwinian evolution.

The book "endorses catastrophism"? Yikes. The supplied cite is paywalled. But whatever. The actual quote from the author is math salad. For example, would it really matter if you threw dice in the presidential primaries to extinguish many also-rans? You'd still get two opposed candidates of a largely predictable political valence, and the main contest would continue to be the election itself, and that's only one choice out of many (most), but enough to constitute the primary mass of how the cookie crumbles. That modern biological forms are more complex than earlier biological forms seems incontrovertible on the geologic evidence. What part of evolution guarantees this, if any part at all, remains highly speculative. Genetic inheritance is now a proven theory. That supports an understandable change process in biological populations (the direct meaning of the word "evolution").

People have apparently never heard of the three body problem of game theory. John von Neumann solved game theory for a two-person game. But the remark was that a three-person game "degenerates from strategy into combat" because the central strategy is for two parties to gang up on the third party. Also for any intransitive game, you can obtain circular behaviour for another reason. In a shifting, multiparty environment, the strong can continue to vanquish the weak over and over again, and you can go nowhere on a linear metric of final superiority.

"Slow though the process of selection may be, if feeble man can do much by his powers of artificial selection, I can see no limit to the amount of change, to the beauty and infinite complexity of the co-adaptations between all organic beings, one with another and with their physical conditions of life, which may be effected in the long course of time by nature's power of selection."

- Charles Darwin

The Victorian attitude was strongly informed by the large contribution made by selective breeding to the British Agricultural Revolution, which had a lot to do with why a much expanded population wasn't starving to death by the millions.

Summary
I was pretty sure I was going to get a narrow result set for that search, because I've visited ten of thousands of Wikipedia leads in my extensive travels, and I just don't see that kind of loaded language very often.

It was a bit of a fun exercise, to be honest, and oh so very sweet that The Bell Curve made a special guest appearance in my very limited dragnet.

Further quibbles
The citation to Amazon refuses to advertise renowned anti-trans journalist's book suggesting trans teens are a 'contagion'  is pretty much worthless.

Shrier is known for writing obsessively about the debunked 2018 phrase "Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria", which posits that "social and peer contagion" is responsible for young people identifying as trans, as opposed to growing acceptance and understanding.

The word "debunked" links to another page (there's no other support for the use of this charged word).


 * No, there's no such thing as 'rapid onset gender dysphoria' — October 2019

Reiterating that the phrase comes from a single 2018 study and that there is no reliable evidence that it exists, the Australian Professional Association for Trans Health (AusPATH) said it does not recognise ROGD – and neither does any other major health organisation.

That's not "debunking". That's a statement that the proposed diagnostic has not yet crossed the bar to accepted diagnostic. Every diagnostic category now recognized must have once begun as a tender shoot. And even when we had mountains of corpses (women's bodies), that often wasn't initially enough to get a fringe proposal taken seriously. Oh, these professional societies are lightning fast and never falter.

"As with all cases involving significant corrections to the published record, we have not taken this decision lightly, and do appreciate that there are different viewpoints about the study. In our view, the corrected article now provides a better context of the work, as a report of parental observations, but not a clinically validated phenomenon or a diagnostic guideline."

Bebunked? Are people smoking drugs here? It was never "bunked" in the first place, so far as I can see. Most virginal ideas don't entire the discourse in a "bunked" condition.


 * Heavenly Creatures (1994)

Based on the notorious 1954 Parker–Hulme murder case in Christchurch, New Zealand, the film focuses on the relationship between two teenage girls—Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme—which culminates in the murder of Parker's mother.

In 1952 Christchurch, New Zealand, the more affluent English 13-year-old girl Juliet Hulme (Winslet) befriends a 14-year-old girl from a working-class family, Pauline Parker (Lynskey), when Juliet transfers to Pauline's school.

They bond over a shared history of severe childhood disease and isolating hospitalizations, and over time develop an intense friendship. Pauline admires Juliet's outspoken arrogance and beauty. Together they paint, write stories, make plasticine figurines, and eventually create a fantasy kingdom called Borovnia. It is the setting of the adventure novels they write together, which they hope to have published and eventually made into films in Hollywood. Over time it begins to be as real to them as the real world.

Pauline's relationship with her mother Honora becomes increasingly hostile and the two fight constantly. This angry atmosphere is in contrast to the peaceful intellectual life Juliet shares with her family. Pauline spends most of her time at the Hulmes', where she feels accepted. Juliet introduces Pauline to the idea of "the Fourth World", a Heaven without Christians where music and art are celebrated. Juliet believes she will go there when she dies. Certain actors and musicians have the status of saints in this afterlife, such as singer Mario Lanza, with whom both girls are obsessed.

During a day trip to Port Levy, Juliet's parents announce that they are going away and plan to leave Juliet behind. Her fear of being left alone makes her hysterical, culminating in her first direct experience of the Fourth World, perceiving it as a land where all is beautiful and she is safe. She asks Pauline to come with her, and the world that Juliet sees becomes visible to Pauline, too. This is presented as a shared spiritual vision, a confirmation of their "Fourth World" belief, that influences the girls' predominant reality and affects their perception of events in the everyday world.

No, there's never been the least evidence that teenaged girls who bond against the world especially tightly can talk themselves into some seriously pathological outcomes.

In a September 4 statement, APS said, "Empirical evidence consistently refutes claims that a child's or adolescent's gender can be 'directed' by peer group pressure or media influence, as a form of 'social contagion'."

At the very bottom of the article, some indication of actual contrary evidence. So let's chase that one down.


 * No, there's no 'social contagion' turning Australians transgender — 13 September 2019

"Empirical evidence consistently refutes claims that a child's or adolescent's gender can be 'directed' by peer group pressure or media influence, as a form of 'social contagion'," APS Fellow Professor Damien Riggs said. "To say that there is a trans-identity crisis among young Australians because of social media pressure is not only alarmist, scientifically incorrect and confusing, but is potentially harmful to a young person's mental health and wellbeing." "Claims that young people are transgender due to 'social contagion' serve to belittle young people." "[The claims ask] them to believe that their sense of self and their gender is nothing more than a by-product of what other people might think or say through the media."

Oh, the usual talking points from that side. Claims do not "ask". That's a weird tap dance beloved by one partisan group, only. Nor is "the claim" (not here properly spelled out) saying that all children feel this way for this reason; it's trying to account for some of the surprising recent inflation confined to one narrow demographic only (young women).

Okay, so that's the world according to Damien Riggs. Who is this guy?


 * Psychotherapy

I run a small private psychotherapy practice on Wednesdays between 10 am and 5 pm, though other appointments may be available by negotiation. I specialise in working with transgender children and adolescents aged 12 and under. This work has involved advocacy on the part of young people, counselling and supporting their transition, and connecting them in with other supports. I also specialise in providing support and counselling to parents of transgender children and adolescents. More details about my clinical approach are available in my new book.

In his own blurb, he's a small partisan practitioner oriented toward advocacy with a book to sell. And he's finally the anchor tenant for using the charged word "bebunked" in our primary citation.

More than enough said. Unfortunately, I know better that to enter this debate through the established trench network, so I did something different, because—who knows?—it can hardly be worse. &mdash; MaxEnt 23:49, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
 * This post was far too long, containing many apparent irrelevancies about other articles which have nothing to do with this topic, and overly-detailed analysis and WP:FORUMing about one of the sources. The sentence in our article that prompted this comment has been the result of much discussion here, and well represents and balances the various sources on the topic (and not just the one you criticize here). Crossroads -talk- 04:58, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree with Crossroads. There's so much unnecessary content in this that it's hard to understand what point MaxEnt is trying to make. If it's just a concern over the terminology "endorses", then that has been discussed before. If there's another point that I've missed, could it be restated in a much briefer way? Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:27, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Source 50
Source [50] is a YouTube video. And I am not sure YouTube videos are ideal sources for Wikipedia.

What do you guys think?CycoMa (talk) 23:59, 30 October 2021 (UTC)


 * I think Source 50 is valid for the phrasing it supports, per WP:RSPYT and WP:ABOUTSELF. ezlev (user/tlk/ctrbs) 00:41, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I weakly support removal of the whole sentence. I have no doubts about the reliability of sources 49 and 50, but both are primary. The Spectator source is just an excerpt from the book. I find it relevant that someone who was interviewed in the book apologized later, but absent any coverage of that in secondary sources, I am unsure if it's due for inclusion. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 00:54, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree that this is WP:UNDUE. If it's just an op-ed and a YouTube video, there is no reason to think this is noteworthy. Crossroads -talk- 05:00, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * (Yes. But think about it. If you let this door open, then the door stays open for other uses of YT videos. Think about all the endless arguments about using a YT video as a source this would floor the brakes on. Look at it this way: what becomes good for the goose will become good for the gander.) Pyxis Solitary   (yak) . L not Q. 09:31, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I actually did a Wikipedia essay on the "goose and gander" issue many years ago, complete with some neat Goose Sauce and Gander Sauce packets. (Incidentally, the thing that distinguishes a goose from a gander is, of course, biological sex, but it's a "transphobic dogwhistle" to say so!) &#42;Dan T.* (talk) 13:49, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm weakly in favour of keeping the sentence, if we could find a secondary source to support it. I think one of the people interviewed for the book and mentioned in it by name, regretting their involvement is noteworthy, if we can find a non-primary source to back it up. Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:07, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * , isn't this just the slippery slope fallacy? There are very clear guidelines for when a YT video is appropriate as a self-published source, which is why I linked to WP:RSPYT and WP:ABOUTSELF. Because of that, I don't think the issue you raise would become a problem. That said, unless a secondary source is found to establish that inclusion is due, I also support removal of the sentence in question. ezlev (user/tlk/ctrbs) 01:20, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I removed the Chase Ross segment. For posterity, here's the diff of my removal. I only spent about ten minutes searching, but I was unable to find RS referencing Ross and the book. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 18:26, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Schrier claims...
Schrier claims that a member (unnamed) of the National Association of Science Writers was expelled for just suggesting that her (Schreir's) book "sounded interesting." Schrier, Abigail, June/July 2021 "Gender Ideology Run Amok," Imprimis June/July 2021, 5096/70:1-7, p. 6. Kdammers (talk) 06:14, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I believe they were (allegedly) expelled from an online forum run by that organization rather than the organization itself. Is there another (more reliable) source for this story? &#42;Dan T.* (talk) 00:35, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: I've placed this thread in a new section since it seems separate from the "Source 50" discussion above. ezlev (user/tlk/ctrbs) 00:50, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Abigail Shrier's speech at Princeton
Shrier has posted her speech at Princeton University where she talks about why she wrote the book. Perhaps there are quotes there which are appropriate for this article. (She's not very complimentary of Wikipedia: "If you form views based on those Wikipedia articles or reports by corrupt fact-checkers, if you act based on them, are you exercising freedom of will?") The posting of this speech has produced a cascade of further reactions; the blog Why Evolution Is True praised it, and this in turn prompted Richard Dawkins to tweet in praise of the book. &#42;Dan T.* (talk) 14:15, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
 * She also repeats lies and slurs about transgender people. It's not a bad speech as far of these things go but it's the same thing she says in every speech/interview she gives. Voiceofreason01 (talk) 14:25, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
 * This is, of course, WP:ABOUTSELF material (and sometimes WP:MANDY applies). But my sense is that at times, Shrier is more transparent about the intentions and opinions reflected in her book when she is promoting it in other venues; this speech may actually be helpful in that regard. Newimpartial (talk) 18:10, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
 * A Richard Dawkins tweet is most definitely not a WP:RS, and I doubt "Why Evolution is True", a blog, is either. I do appreciate the levity though, it is pretty funny for her to imply that, after reading this Wikipedia page, the only way to exercise your freedom of will is to buy her book. Bravetheif (talk) 23:30, 10 December 2021 (UTC)