They Knew the Media Had the Story Wrong...and Didn't Correct It

How a flawed study became a media sensation, and why no one stopped it

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In February of this year, JAMA Network Open published an article called “Mental Health Outcomes in Transgender and Nonbinary Youths Receiving Gender-Affirming Care” that claimed “receipt of gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormones, was associated with 60% lower odds of moderate or severe depression and 73% lower odds of suicidality over a 12-month follow-up.”

The University of Washington then published a press release repeating the study’s conclusion: “Those who received gender-affirming hormones or puberty blockers had 60% lower odds of depression and 73% lower odds of self-harm or suicidal thoughts.”

And then, the media picked it up and ran all the way across the field with it:

“Amid Attacks on Care for Trans Youth, New Study Confirms Why It's Life or Death,” claimed Them.

“Transgender youth on puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormones have lower rates of depression and suicidal thoughts, a new study finds,” wrote The Conversation.

“Medical treatments cut risks for depression, suicide among transgender youth,” reported UPI.

There was one problem, though: that’s not what the data said. They showed no improvement in those who received the care, but rather worse outcomes in those who didn’t—and yet it didn’t account for why those few people left not on drugs didn’t take them. And there was such an enormous loss to follow-up that the claims couldn’t be supported. And those were just a few of the study’s shortcomings. Jesse Singal wrote an exhaustive examination of the paper, coming to the conclusion that “Researchers Found Puberty Blockers And Hormones Didn’t Improve Trans Kids’ Mental Health At Their Clinic. Then They Published A Study Claiming The Opposite.”

If you’ve been following this ongoing saga of the left media inaccurately reporting the science of gender-affirming care, this won’t surprise you. But this part should: According to an article published today, UW communications staff knew that the conclusions in the study and the press release were false, and continued to let the media story run amok. The Jason Rantz Show, a talk show on Seattle’s conservative KTTH, claims to have obtained emails from the staff acknowledging there were “some pretty concerning claims” in Singal’s piece and they “will not be including this article in our media tracking/or otherwise driving traffic to this piece.” But they didn’t reach out to any press outlets to correct them because of the “overwhelming amount of positive coverage of the study’s findings.”

Here’s more from the KTTH article:

In an email to a communications staffer, Gregg acknowledges that a UW Medicine video producer “originally misinterpreted the data” in the press release.

The press release page on the UW Medicine website was changed to, “UW researchers recently found that gender-affirming care for transgender and nonbinary adolescents likely decreased rates of depression and suicidality.”

This replaced the line claiming depression rates “plummeted.”

It also added a note at the top of the page: “[April 8, 2022: Editor’s note: Language has been updated below to more directly reflect the findings as reported in the study].”

But an email from the study team, relayed to the communications group via Laura East, prompted another edit.

The UW Medicine team made the edit, but by then, media outlets like KING 5 had already falsely declared the study reduced depression.

Let’s just ponder for a minute the implications of not correcting the record. This study has been used to justify the expansion of gender-affirming medical interventions for young people. Its false statistics are repeated in publications for pediatricians, in social work schools, in medical associations. Ostensibly, people who work at these places should be able to read studies and understand their quality, but somehow this particular subject requires them to wear blinders while doing so.

As Singal himself puts it:

Jesse Singal @jessesingal

3/ For a major university and medical center to allow misinformation about young people and suicide -- the most serious subject imaginable -- to spread in this manner, and to then refuse to let anyone access data that could clear things up, is not great.

The media is the conduit to the rest of the society. Every outlet who wrote about this study, and every institution that promoted its narrative, needs to acknowledge that they’ve been spreading misinformation, and allow for a much more complicated picture to be painted. Grab a brush, let’s go.

Then let’s ponder the reason why it wasn’t corrected: “…given the extremely positive pick up by mainstream media, I would agree and just let this be.” I don’t think you need me to interpret that for you. Let’s just let that rest for a minute, shall we?

Look, I haven’t verified any of these emails, and I can’t vouch for the information in this article, and I’m very sorry that, as usual, the critique is only in a right-wing publication; the left media should find this newsworthy, too. However, as someone who has spent many of my working hours trying and failing to publish mainstream media pieces about what the science on gender-affirming care for kids with gender dysphoria really says, only to find pieces that are called What the Science on Gender-Affirming Care for Transgender Kids Really Shows in mainstream media that argue the opposite of what I’m suggesting, well, I believe it (though will amend immediately if its false). This is how this runaway narrative has gotten this far. People know it’s wrong, and they don’t correct it.

I think this is a great topic for, say, the once-wonderful show On the Media, or for media reporters like Ben Smith. My suggestion: drop them a line, and ask them to get interested in the truth.

**Correction: An earlier version read: “The Jason Rantz Show, a talk show on Seattle’s conservative KTTH, claims to have obtained emails from the staff acknowledging there were “some pretty concerning claims” about the study, and deciding to no longer promote it in communications materials.”

But a reader suggested this was a misinterpretation and that Singal himself had said he believes the communications staff was suggesting not to refer to his article, not the study. I’ve updated the text to reflect that.