I think Michael Bailey's dismissal of my autogynephilia questions for Scott Alexander and Aella makes very little sense

As I understand it, Blanchard and Bailey have devised a thing, and an instrument to measure the thing, that has the property that more or less by definition it will be found much more among trans women than among cis women (though it could, in principle, apply to cis men too, and his instrument would pick that up). And then he measures trans women and cis women and cis men, and says: look, this thing turns up in trans women and not in the other groups, so I bet it causes trans-ness.

Some complications:

1. I'm not sure the Core Autogynephilia Scale "more or less by definition" could be inferred to be found much more among trans women than among cis women. My main issue with the scale is that it seems really weird to even compare across the groups, not because I think it by definition would be found more among trans women. But some people disagree with my assessment on this.
2. Blanchard never studied cis women; his claims about cis female sexuality must come from other places, though I'm not sure where exactly as he hasn't really discussed it in detail. Instead, Blanchard studied trans women and found the endorsement rates to be high among gynephilic trans women and low among androphilic trans women. Bailey references a study that he performed in the clip, but in this study he didn't compare trans women and cis women, he compared highly active mostly cisgender male members of online erotic AGP communities to cis women. I think substituting highly active members of online erotic AGP communities for trans women is biased and somewhat misleading, but for various reasons I don't expect it to have a decisive influence on the results, though I do think the fact that Bailey obscures this should have a decisive influence on our respect for Bailey, as well as people who support him.
3. The "I bet it causes transness because it is more common in trans women than cis women" is not the sole or main argument for why autogynephilia should be causal, it is one out of many. I'm dissatisfied with a lot of the other ones too though, but I mostly agree with the conclusion.

To which tailcalled replies: no, look, your instrument is focusing on experiences that would be more sexual in nature for trans women than for cis women, even if there were nothing sexual about trans-ness and the thing you're focusing on had no causal role in making trans women the way they are; you'd get the same result if trans women were in this respect exactly like cis women except for the shape of their bodies; so how about asking these other questions instead, which don't have that problem?

My initial reply was "come on, it's ridiculous to swap out highly active members of online erotic AGP communities for trans women", which Blanchard blocked me for on twitter. While I have issues with the Core Autogynephilia Scale, I'm not confident in any story that it is wrong, only confident that it is weird/awkward to compare on.

My comment is more in response to Bailey, asserting seemingly without evidence, that "confound y'know being seen as a woman or having a female body from having sex with a partner while having a female body or the prospect of going out on a date while wearing sexy clothes".

I think part of the reason that he gets away with this is that a previous study titled Autogynephilia in women did have such questions, such as "I have been erotically aroused by dressing in lingerie or sexy attire for a romantic evening or when hoping to meet a sex partner". So there's a sort of culture of dismissing these sorts of findings with these sorts of arguments already.

I should also say that I don't personally consider this to be a fruitful area of research, because of many of the inherent difficulties, and have therefore criticized the general idea in the past. When I sent my item to Scott Alexander, I warned him that it was an experimental one with unclear validity.

And then Bailey says: but those questions explicitly insert sexual elements into the scenarios being asked about, which will tend to lead to positive answers even from people who don't have the specific feature I'm looking for, so the fact that surveys with the Aella/tailcalled questions in them give positive results for cis women doesn't mean much.

I think he's being kind of ambiguous about what kind of argument he is making here.

Typical autogynephiles get off to sexual fantasies about being women that have explicit sexual elements. However, at times, the sexual elements might be strange to non-autogynephiles. Zack gives an example here:

when I'm masturbating, and imagining all the forms I would take if the magical transformation technology were real (the frame story can vary, but the basic idea is always the same), I don't think I'm very good at first-person visualization? The content of the fantasy is about me being a woman (I mean, having a woman's body), but the associated mental imagery mostly isn't the first-person perspective I would actually experience if the fantasy were real; I think I'm mostly imagining a specific woman (which one, varies a lot) as from the outside, admiring her face, and her voice, and her breasts, but somehow wanting the soul behind those eyes to be me. Wanting my body to be shaped like that, to be in control of that avatar of beauty—not even necessarily to do anything overtly "sexy" in particular, but just to exist like that.

This is explicitly sexual insofar as the image of a nude woman is sexual, which I think it is generally considered to be? But it is not sexual in the usual alloerotic way. So Bailey might be saying, hey, when you suggest to women "Picture a very beautiful woman. How sexually arousing would you find it to imagine being her?", they might not be picturing this, but instead picturing something where they have sex with another person.

Alternatively, sometimes Blanchardians do make the argument that autogynephiles get off to things that are not conventionally sexual. For instance Blanchard asserted:

The notion that typical natal females are erotically aroused by—and sometimes even masturbate to—the thought or image of themselves as women might seem feasible if one considers only conventional, generic fantasies of being a beautiful, alluring woman in the act of attracting a handsome, desirable man. It seems a lot less feasible when one considers the various other ways in which some autogynephilic men symbolize themselves as women in their masturbation fantasies. [...] I have listed other examples in previous articles: an autogynephile who was sexually aroused by the thought of helping the maid clean the house or sitting in a girls’ class at school, an autogynephile whose favorite masturbation fantasy was knitting in the company of other women, an autogynephile who was sexually aroused by the idea of riding a girls’ bicycle, and an autogynephile who got an erection when he went out cross-dressed and someone called him ‘‘ma’am.’

I think this sort of thing is how many of the viewers interpret Bailey's argument, because there are a lot of people who emphasize these sorts of things as being archetypal autogynephilia. This fits under a certain model of autogynephilia, where one imagines autogynephilia as a general factor that causes arousal to all sorts of scenarios involving being a woman; under this model, the "being a woman" element is itself understood to be the core causal factor that makes it erotic. But in my opinion, the examples given do not reflect typical autogynephilic male sexuality; instead, typical autogynephilic male sexuality involves fantasies about engaging in sexual activities as a woman. So I think if one interpreted Bailey's argument in this latter sense, then yes he is right that my items don't assess this, but I also think Blanchard's items don't assess it either, and I don't think this is the relevant thing to assess for this debate.

And rather than arguing about what exactly "autogynephilia" Really Means, everyone involved should be looking for questions that (unlike the Blanchard/Bailey ones, according to tailcalled) can distinguish "X is a thing that trans women, specifically, have, which distinguishes them from cis women and cis men" from "X is a thing that women, generally, have, but our questions trying to find it will fail to see it in cis women because they focus on experiences that X will cause in trans women but not in cis women"; but that (unlike tailcalled's questions, according to Bailey) don't introduce extra elements that would be arousing to cis women for reasons separate from the picturing-oneself-as-female aspect.

It seems possible that actually there are no such questions. For instance, it might be that (1) many people, regardless of sex or gender or trans-ness, find some sort of satisfaction in thinking about themselves-as-having-their-preferred-sort-of-body, but that (2) this only becomes outright arousing if it goes beyond what they experience every day from actually having their preferred sort of body, so that (3) you can't distinguish "many trans women get turned on by thinking of themselves as having female bodies, and so would many cis women if transplanted into male bodies" (which would suggest that "autogynephilia" is a consequence rather than a cause of trans-ness) from "many trans women get turned on by thinking of themselves as having female bodies, and no one else does or would" (which would suggest that "autogynephilia" might indeed be a cause).

In my opinion, it's even more difficult than this.

I think the ideal questions would be getting at the "phenomenology" of autogynephilia (or sexuality more generally). By phenomenology I mean, they would be asking about what sorts of feelings, thoughts, actions, and other concrete experiences people are engaging in, with respect to these topics. Similar to what Zack described, except ideally even more concretely and detailed. The reason we should be measuring the phenomenology is because this is the "native" aspect of human experience, so anything on top of the phenomenology is an abstraction.

But I think a core problem for this approach is that even if autogynephilia exists in cis women, the phenomenology of its expression would probably be different from that of when it exists in cis men. In fact, because most cis male autogynephilic fantasies are similar to standard cis female sexual activities, it is not even guaranteed that we could measure autogynephilia in women as distinct from female sexuality. So the first task is to find differences in phenomenology.

The most promising possibility seems to me to be in what is called "autosexual AGP", which is what my items in the OP intended to assess. By "autosexual AGP", I mean the phenomenon where many autogynephilic men are sexually aroused by the thought of being women and treating their own female bodies as a target of sexual interest, such as by looking at their own female bodies, or by masturbating as women. One might hypothesize that for cis women, equivalent autosexuality becomes erotic. For instance, in one survey where I intended to get at autogynephilia (using a totally different measure), a cis woman wrote:

Sometimes when I look in the mirror after shower, or when I have a good day, or I am just aroused – then I like to look at my naked body, my waist, breasts, just like this. And on top of that I especially love my hair, they are beautiful, brown, golden, auburn. And my beautiful blue eyes. Then I feel like a goddess. And it is arousing.

One challenge with autosexual AGP is that it's not actually clear it would present in the above way among trans women. I find it rare for trans women to report autosexual AGP after transitioning, and Blanchardians have mostly disregarded autosexual AGP, indicating that they don't really find it to be a thing either. Some people suggest that some sort of habituation explains it; that it is less arousing to simply have a female body once one gets used to it. I don't know whether this is true; I had hoped the ACX survey would enlighten me, but actually trans women didn't report much drop in autosexual AGP (labelled "Autosexual FEF fantasies" - admittedly this doesn't ask about direct arousal about one's own body for consistency) over time:

So I don't know what to make about autosexual AGP, but assuming it persists, it seems like pretty much the sole phenomenal difference that is guaranteed to be there.

Next, the question is, how to assess autosexual AGP? An ideal question would:

• Be clear and unambiguous in meaning for all groups (trans women, cis women, cis men), referring to phenomenology that they can all either map to their own experiences, or accurately reject as not being present in their own experiences.
• Be invariant across groups, e.g. neither having a male body nor having a female/feminized male body should cause it to decrease; which can probably most easily be tested by checking whether it is consistent across transition.

I think these criteria makes it impossible to measure autosexual AGP through actions, as the different groups are very different in terms of what actions they could take to express autosexual AGP. Instead, this is why I focus on sexual fantasies, as these seem like they could (maybe!) be expressed evenly across the groups.

The best approach might include having a paragraph of text describing the sexual fantasy, as that could make it more crisp in the respondent's minds. But that makes it much longer, and also I suck at writing erotica. One time I started looking into hiring people to write erotica for me for this exact purpose, but the transaction didn't go through because I got distracted. Now that we've got LLMs, it might be worth revisiting if one can find an uncensored LLM to query.

Though even with erotica, it is unclear how meaningful of a comparison one can make. Male and female sexuality is very different in lots of other ways. Still it feels like it is worth a shot.

All of this assumes that the dissenting parties are all genuinely trying, in good faith, to figure out what's going on, rather than (e.g.) {gleefully grasping at / desperately denying} anything that might make trans people look like perverts. I'm pretty confident that that's so for tailcalled. I'm not so convinced in Bailey's case.

Personally, I often find that Bailey does an investigation in a biased way (think stuff like substituting highly active members of online erotic AGP communities for trans women). One could imagine that this is just an innocent mistake because he hasn't been thinking deeply about it, but in that case I would expect him to be interested in information about what biases there might be, so that he could collect data in unbiased ways. This is not what I find; when I do give such critiques, he tends to ignore them, and when I ask him for justifications for why he does it in the ways that he does, he doesn't tend to have any reasons.

This is clearly a rejection of rational discourse about these topics. It seems plausible that the reason he rejects rational discourse is because he feels certain that something like Blanchardianism is right, and he just wants to convince the world of this, rather than having to deal with a bunch of bureaucracy and bothersome activists, so that the world will stop threatening him with accusations of transphobia for endorsing Blanchardianism. Furthermore, I think the reason that he finds Blanchardianism so important to talk about, even though trans women generally oppose it, is that it provides a counternarrative against feminine essence theories, where AGPTSs and HSTSs are supposed to both share a feminization condition that immutably causes transness.

That is, rather than being a good-faith truth seeker who is trying to figure out what is going on, he is trying to make propaganda to counteract other propaganda (which in turn was created in response to other propaganda, in a seemingly endless cycle of propaganda wars). Doing so benefits from obscurity about what is going on, so rational discussion with its tendency to make things crisp and clear becomes an enemy.

Added disclosure that I am autogynephilic to the beginning of my post.

Also, since you consider people's positionality important, what is your relationship to this? You write like an HSTS attempting to sound scientific; is that true, and if so, why didn't you disclose that you were HSTS? If you are not HSTS, what is your background? Sex, trans status, autogynephilia, sexual orientation, political views?

If an autogynephilic man launches a study on autogynephlia, and he finds himself free of socially undesirable traits, we as rationalists... accept his favorable findings about himself without skepticism? God, I hope not.

What study and socially undesirable traits do you have in mind?

The author of this post, tailcalled, is self-admittedly autogynephilic. (See: https://surveyanon.wordpress.com/about/). Whatever pretenses of scientific merit his study and his findings may have, he failed to disclose his conflict of interest when presenting his results. He has demonstrated gross scientific negligence.

Your argument that I am self-admittedly autogynephilic is a link to a page on my research blog where I admit to being autogynephilic. This seems like disclosure to me? Is there any place where you would like me to add additional disclosure?

tailcalled inventing his own questions smelled a little funny. It's a rudimentary element of epistemology to know that, despite your best efforts to remain impartial, you will always be interpreting the world around you with your thumb on the scale in your own favor. This is why we go to great lengths to create double-blind studies.

If you have issues with my questions, I would be open to adding questions that you prefer so we can compare the results of them. Beyond the case of questions, unlike Blanchardians I generally make my data available, so if you have issues with the analyses/interpretations, I would be ready to share my data with you so you can give your own interpretations to it.

The fact that tailcalled, and to a lesser extent Scott Alexander (who publicized and brought significant attention to tailcalled results), failed to disclose tailcalled's conflict of interest is shameful. The truth, and the methods to arrive at the truth, must be held sacrosanct at lesswrong, or we're wasting our time.

Scott Alexander did not publish my results. Scott Alexander did his own study using methods that deviated from my recommendations in order to produce his own results.

Also, insofar as Scott Alexander has an error here, I think it is broader than not representing my situation fully. I can't even get Scott Alexander to pay enough attention to my position to realize that I think autogynephilia matters for trans topics and that autogynephilia in cis women doesn't change that fact. Scott Alexander probably should do better to disclose that he is basically not paying attention to this stuff.

Additionally, all publications surrounding tailcalled results should be amended with a disclosure. If you're pissed that you had to scroll to the bottom of this post to find out that tailcalled is himself autogynephilic and on HRT, you should be.

I can add a disclosure of this to this post. Are there any other posts where you think it matters?

↑ comment by unmotivated · 2023-08-31T01:47:32.512Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

For the purpose of reading my tone, I'm grateful that you added the disclosure. My priors have been adjusted, and you're alright in my book.

(I've been welcomed into the LessWrong community, after my high effort comment, with negative karma and the inability to even vote, but I'd otherwise give you an upvote.)

I think disclosures of conflicts of interest are important when you're authoritatively presenting conclusions, or when you're authoritatively rebutting scientific conclusions. We don't need to know our personal details when we're just talking to each other, and not standing on a metaphorical stage making proclamations. Nevertheless, to reciprocate, I'm not a HSTS. (For the audience, HSTS = homosexual transsexual, a transwoman who is attracted to men. For further context, sometimes HSTS's believe that AGP's aren't "true" transsexuals, hence tailcalled's guess.) 

I'm a straight, cis-male, registered Democrat. In terms of bias, I think Blanchard is brilliant; he's poured much of his life into this stuff, and I don't like people glibly taking shots at his work. Regardless of what Twitter would have you believe, Blanchard is highly respected in the scientific community.

What study ... do you have in mind?

The following study, for which you are credited, has its conclusion in the title: "Autogenderphilia Is Common And Not Especially Related To Transgender" (https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/02/10/autogenderphilia-is-common-and-not-especially-related-to-transgender)

 I am suggesting that there is a conflict of interest that hasn't been disclosed for this study. Scott Alexander apparently didn't work with you for the analysis/conclusion, so the bias may be strictly limited to the methods: the questions on the survey. (Unless, as I've read, Scott Alexander is romantically involved with a trans person, which makes the whole study highly suspect.)

I believe you in that you had little to do with it, other than coming up with the AGP questions. Nevertheless, in science, if you believe that a study is erroneous, it is standard to request that your name be removed from authorship, so as to not tar your career. The extent to which we stray from that standard is the extent to which our community loses credibility.

What ... socially undesirable traits do you have in mind?

Everyday sexualities, like homosexuality or fetishes like BDSM, are increasingly acceptable to society. Strange sexualities, however, make even progressives uncomfortable. Adult diaper people, for instance, struggle to find friends. But if your sexuality is normal, if most humans have a considerable degree of AGP, (as is concluded by the study that bears your name), then you can expect to be embraced in the kumbaya circle of circle. We all have AGP, let's hold hands!

On the other hand, if AGP is as Blanchard and Bailey understand it, then you're in for (greater) social difficulty. Blanchard and Bailey believe that AGP is analogous to apotemnophilics, also called "transabled" people. These folks are aroused by the idea of getting their limbs amputated. If Blanchard and Bailey are correct, both AGP's and apotemnophilics are consequences of an erotic target location error (ETLE).

Foot fetishists are another example of ETLE, and they're probably the most socially accepted ETLE. Many of us don't care if a friend has a foot thing, as long as he keeps it to himself and doesn't publicly ogle feet. Transabled people, meanwhile, are freaky to almost all of us. Having a sexual desire to chop off parts of your body would fit in a horror movie: an unacceptable sexuality to most.

I think AGP people would fall somewhere between foot fetishists and transabled people, were Blanchard AGP theory widely understood and accepted as valid.

Thus, what's on the table: whether your sexuality is normal or an oddity. And consequently, whether your sexuality is acceptable or highly uncomfortable. The latter would push you (deeper) into the social margins.

The specter of ostracization is a powerful source of bias — a lot is at stake for you! I believe that you have scientific integrity, but as I said in my previous comment, the odds are stacked against you on this topic. Your mind is going to try to find a way to believe the favorable thing and to reject the highly unfavorable thing. To compensate for that inevitable bias, the standards of your work in the field must be higher. It's a pragmatic consideration, not a judgmental one (as long as disclosures are provided!)

I cannot comment on flaws in your questions, as I'm not an expert in the field. I can tell you, though, that Bailey is a warm guy, and he's more accessible than you might expect. If Scott Alexander has slighted you, and it sounds like he has, you could probably steal his thunder. Beat him to a follow-up study done in conjunction with Bailey. I think Bailey might be happy for the chance to make a scientific convert.

For what it's worth, I'm sorry you got a shitty set of cards in the sexuality department. I hope you're able to find a satisfying way to get your kicks and be happy.

Replies from: tailcalled

↑ comment by tailcalled · 2023-08-31T19:43:04.807Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

(I've been welcomed into the LessWrong community, after my high effort comment, with negative karma and the inability to even vote, but I'd otherwise give you an upvote.)

Your original comment may have been high effort, but it was high effort put into covering up the overall badness of the comment. It contained no substantive object-level argument, and just meta-level sneering about "bias".

I think disclosures of conflicts of interest are important when you're authoritatively presenting conclusions, or when you're authoritatively rebutting scientific conclusions. We don't need to know our personal details when we're just talking to each other, and not standing on a metaphorical stage making proclamations.

Why? It sounds to me like you have some special model for something "authoritative" that isn't as central to my model? Can you expand?

My view is that if you think there is something wrong with my rebuttal, you can just criticize it and show what's wrong, so there's not much need to worry about bias. 

For further context, sometimes HSTS's believe that AGP's aren't "true" transsexuals, hence tailcalled's guess.

(My guess was more based on having seen one or two HSTSs use grammatical constructions like "tailcalled results", and on some HSTS's primary reaction to a lot of this discourse being to ignore object-level arguments and just make fun of their interlocutors for being AGP.)

I'm a straight, cis-male, registered Democrat. In terms of bias, I think Blanchard is brilliant; he's poured much of his life into this stuff, and I don't like people glibly taking shots at his work.

Something about this doesn't add up to me. How does a person like this get deeply involved with Blanchard? Parent of gender dysphoric kid? Some supersexual/TiA type thing? Via racism? Secretly AGP?

 I am suggesting that there is a conflict of interest that hasn't been disclosed for this study. Scott Alexander apparently didn't work with you for the analysis/conclusion, so the bias may be strictly limited to the methods: the questions on the survey.

At this point it feels like you're advocating severe cancel culture. This isn't "be extra skeptical about scientists who sit on the board of a tobacco company", it's "be extra skeptical about scientists who have talked with tobacco companies about research". It's like you are treating the mere act of receiving information from AGPs as a danger.

I believe you in that you had little to do with it, other than coming up with the AGP questions. Nevertheless, in science, if you believe that a study is erroneous, it is standard to request that your name be removed from authorship, so as to not tar your career. The extent to which we stray from that standard is the extent to which our community loses credibility.

I mean first of all, this is literally false; I've read a bunch of social science and discussions between social scientists, and they often admit to changing their minds without retracting the papers. (This isn't the only literally false thing you've said. The points about science requiring sexual minorities who study their sexual interests to disclose and having extra high standards towards their research is incorrect, at least after the influence of wokeness, where the perception is often reversed, that it is majorities who are suspicious.)

[A giant block of text that basically boils down to implying that it is only OK to be AGP if a lot of other people are AGP, and that otherwise Some People You Know About are going to ostracize me from society, and therefore I would be biased to avoid ostracism and thus not credible.]

First, I reject the claim that common=OK. Second, I have regularly argued against most people being AGP, e.g. Contra Serano and Lehmiller on Autogynephilia Prevalence. Third, I think it is gaslighty (in a bad way) for Society to make bullshit dismissals of my work (as Bailey does) and then threaten me with ostracism (as you are doing) and then argue that I only disagree because I am irrationally biased. Just make an actual good object-level argument.

If Scott Alexander has slighted you, and it sounds like he has, you could probably steal his thunder.

Scott Alexander hasn't really slighted me that much, he's just inattentive. I can just correct him in the comments and in discussions.

I cannot comment on flaws in your questions, as I'm not an expert in the field. I can tell you, though, that Bailey is a warm guy, and he's more accessible than you might expect. [...] I think Bailey might be happy for the chance to make a scientific convert.

I used to moderate a subreddit about Blanchardianism, often focused on my research, and this lead to Michael Bailey adding me to SEXNET, and sometimes sharing some research work with me. However, when I asked questions I generally found him dismissive, but to some extent I assumed that at least sometimes he had some deeper reasons that he was hinting at. At the time I was talking a lot about autoandrophilia, bringing it up as an alternate model to ROGD, and doing research partly based on my own ideas and partly inspired by various critiques and takes by Bailey & co. A lot of my research was pretty bad, and some of the things I said at the time were over the line, but mostly Bailey didn't seem to mind.

A major turning point came with Meta-attraction cannot account for all autogynephiles’ interest in men, where I found a major claim made by Blanchardianism to be false. Bailey's response was superficially encouraging, saying that it is good I am doing the work and claiming that he'd be willing to test subjects phallometrically for me if I send them to his lab, but ultimately his response was also dismissive, saying that it is not believable because the androphilic AGPs probably lied about their arousal, and claiming my title is far too certain about the result.

At the time he also made statements like this about me:

Anyway, that this major claim about meta-attraction was wrong reduced my trust in Blanchardians, and so I went in reinvestigating some claims that I had been too quick to accept, leading to a stream of critical posts, such as:

• The mathematical consequences of a toy model of gender transition
• Age of onset as the origin of discrete types of gender dysphoria?
• Contra Blanchard and Dreger on Autogynephilia in Cis Women
• Contra James Cantor on desistance
• Controlling for the general factor of paraphilia / Autogynephilia and masochism: A tale of two assessment biases

Furthermore, gradually throughout the time, I had been leveling up my psychometrics, statistics and causal inference skills.

Eventually, it reached the point where we had some disagreements where I had unambiguous proof that I was right. However, he kept writing brief dismissals, despite me writing pages of explanation of the statistics as well as simulation studies showing the result. I took this as proof that he was bullshitting. (Unfortunately it was about a secret project that I have promised not to tell anyone the details about, so I can't give you the proof yet. He is supposedly gonna publish soon though, and I plan on writing up my proof immediately after that.)

Michael Bailey has a tendency to complain about ideological bias and insist that people should be truthseekers like him. To try to pressure him into not bullshitting, I started responding to such cases by calling him out on his bullshit. I think this was very embarrassing/annoying for him, and he demanded I stopped.

I accepted to pause the public comments on him while we sorted out who was in the right or in the wrong, but I had interpreted the pause to not cover a semi-private discord server with some of my friends, so I discussed what was happening with people in there. But he had someone in the discord server who sent him the discussion, and he decided I had broken our deal and therefore banned/blocked me wherever he could.

This also lead to him cancelling the previous promise about being willing to physiologically test putative androphilic AGPs.

Later, in response to Michael Bailey's critiques of my items, Scott Alexander suggested that Bailey and I should do an adversarial collaboration to evaluate my items. I explained that I wasn't totally opposed to it, but it would be hard because we can't stand each other because I believe that discussions should be founded on rational argument and justifiable evidence, while Bailey believes they should be founded on civility. Bailey declined, on the basis that he didn't like me because I questioned his integrity as a scientist, and suggested to Scott Alexander that I might have a Cluster B personality disorder.

(I don't have a Cluster B personality disorder, at least not in the sense that personality disorders are usually defined, of being enduring, unstoppable, pervasive maladaptive patterns of behavior. Yes I have a conflict with Michael Bailey that I have fanned into a bunch of drama, which is superficially like Cluster B, but it is not pervasive as it is limited to Michael Bailey and maybe some adjacent trans/research-topics, and it is not unstoppable as I could choose to stop whenever I want.)

So no, it is not a good idea to work with Michael Bailey. His reasoning procedure seems to consist of pointing out that progressive stuff doesn't at up, vaguely gesturing that he knows some deep truths, and then dismissing those who have results that contradict his preconceptions. He does not seem to engage in rational argument.

Replies from: unmotivated

↑ comment by unmotivated · 2023-09-01T17:56:48.983Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Apparently both Bailey and I agree about your bias. Accounting for (and making disclosures of conflict of interest about) biases isn't "meta-level sneering". It's a fundamental part of science.

Per Disclosure of conflict of interest in scientific publications (2020):

Taking appropriate measures to avoid bias and maintain transparency in the execution, reporting, and publication process improves scientific objectivity, integrity, and credibility of research findings.

....

Internationally, most scientific journals (over 90%) have adopted policies that mandate “disclosure of COI for authors"

[Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7819374/]

Failing to disclose COI's relegates research to the bottom 10% of scientific publications: shit-tier, quack-adjacent "science". (And yes, wokeness / Social Justice Fundamentalism has infected that bottom 10% of shit-tier publications, and yes, it's cancerously eating up more of the social sciences. As you've suggested, many circles in social science won't mind if you're publishing papers that surreptitiously promote your own agenda. What they're engaged in is no longer science.)

Outside of woke corruption, and for deeper context, modern science cares about bias, because it's been repeatedly burned by it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinded_experiment

So, if you care about science, and you're not just play-acting at it, then I'm afraid that you have to care about bias.

Unrelatedly, I'm now downvoted to oblivion, and LessWrong has elected to time-limit my ability to make comments. I've been issued a dunce cap and put in the corner. This treatment is rather beneath my sense of my own dignity, so this is my last message here.

Foreign body removed: purification of the echo chamber complete.

Replies from: tailcalled, tailcalled, Zack_M_Davis

↑ comment by tailcalled · 2023-09-01T19:57:05.735Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Accounting for (and making disclosures of conflict of interest about) biases isn't "meta-level sneering". It's a fundamental part of science.

Studying a subject is the most important part of science. If a research area degenerates into pure accusations of bias and nonsense arguments (as distinct things; yes I agree that bias can be relevant as long as it's not the only topic), then it is pretty worthless.

↑ comment by tailcalled · 2023-09-01T19:53:55.607Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Let's take a concrete example of a journal with a conflict of interest disclosure policy, namely Archives of Sexual Behavior, the main journal Blanchardians use. One autogynephilic trans woman who has published papers about autogynephilia in ASB is Anne Lawrence, but I don't think she tended to declare a conflict of interest. For instance, skimming through Veale's (2014) Critique of Blanchard's Typology Was Invalid, I don't immediately see any dislosures by Lawrence that she is autogynephilic or transgender.

I don't know why she didn't disclose. One possibility is that the disclosure policy doesn't obligate her to. I'm not sure though as it was quite vague:

Authors are requested to disclose interests that are directly or indirectly related to the work submitted for publication. Interests within the last 3 years of beginning the work (conducting the research and preparing the work for submission) should be reported. Interests outside the 3-year time frame must be disclosed if they could reasonably be perceived as influencing the submitted work. Disclosure of interests provides a complete and transparent process and helps readers form their own judgments of potential bias. This is not meant to imply that a financial relationship with an organization that sponsored the research or compensation received for consultancy work is inappropriate.

[...]

Interests that should be considered and disclosed but are not limited to the following:

Funding: Research grants from funding agencies (please give the research funder and the grant number) and/or research support (including salaries, equipment, supplies, reimbursement for attending symposia, and other expenses) by organizations that may gain or lose financially through publication of this manuscript.

Employment: Recent (while engaged in the research project), present or anticipated employment by any organization that may gain or lose financially through publication of this manuscript. This includes multiple affiliations (if applicable).

Financial interests: Stocks or shares in companies (including holdings of spouse and/or children) that may gain or lose financially through publication of this manuscript; consultation fees or other forms of remuneration from organizations that may gain or lose financially; patents or patent applications whose value may be affected by publication of this manuscript.

It is difficult to specify a threshold at which a financial interest becomes significant, any such figure is necessarily arbitrary, so one possible practical guideline is the following: "Any undeclared financial interest that could embarrass the author were it to become publicly known after the work was published."

Non-financial interests: In addition, authors are requested to disclose interests that go beyond financial interests that could impart bias on the work submitted for publication such as professional interests, personal relationships or personal beliefs (amongst others). Examples include, but are not limited to: position on editorial board, advisory board or board of directors or other type of management relationships; writing and/or consulting for educational purposes; expert witness; mentoring relations; and so forth.

Primary research articles require a disclosure statement. Review articles present an expert synthesis of evidence and may be treated as an authoritative work on a subject. Review articles therefore require a disclosure statement. Other article types such as editorials, book reviews, comments (amongst others) may, dependent on their content, require a disclosure statement. If you are unclear whether your article type requires a disclosure statement, please contact the Editor-in-Chief.

Please note that, in addition to the above requirements, funding information (given that funding is a potential competing interest (as mentioned above)) needs to be disclosed upon submission of the manuscript in the peer review system. This information will automatically be added to the Record of CrossMark, however it is not added to the manuscript itself. Under ‘summary of requirements’ (see below) funding information should be included in the ‘Declarations’ section.

I don't see any explicit mention of demographic membership, though, so probably it isn't required?

↑ comment by Zack_M_Davis · 2023-09-01T19:22:27.191Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I'm now downvoted to oblivion

But all of your comments currently have positive karma? (The left number is karma; the right number is agree/disagree voting, which exists precisely to express disagreement without it being a rebuke.)

I disagree strongly and think we should accelerate almost all forms of scientific progress and inquiry, even when it might find truths that are politically inconvenient. For all the parochial reasons why progress and truth are good (better models of the world, higher standards of living, more slack, all via better tech, like better medicine, even when not explicitly searching for it...).  And for those of us who believe the world is in peril, all the more reason to take on risk.

Also it is bad game-theory to give into threats, including hypothetical future threats. Respectability politics saves oppressors from having to do the work of oppressing and instead outsources it onto the oppressed group. This makes it cheaper to oppress trans people.

Also am skeptical of the strategy. If trans people don't do the science, then cis people will. Unless trans people pressure our cis allies not to, in which case the haters will do the science or make stuff up, which I think is worse.

there is a massive media apparatus currently laser-focused on decrying people like me

What? The media is pretty much completely positive towards trans. At least any media with a budget.

I think the study of autogynephilia and similar is often used as a proxy for normalizing talking about certain issues, such as the difficulties women can face if their partners decide to transition in middle-age, or similar.

I think a Pareto improvement would be to move the scientific research to these issues, rather than focusing on autogynephilia, which people mostly don't care about anyway.

If you compare how European countries handled abortion and how the US handled it one important contrast is that while the US decided in Roe vs. Wade for an extreme position, European countries mostly tried to find a middle way where abortion is allowed provided certain regulations are followed. That process took a lot of charge out of political fights over abortion given that everyone was okay with the consensus that was written down in the law.

If you push for public policy regarding how to handle trans-people that are disliked by a majority of the population that strengthens people who would want to push extreme policies against trans-people. Opposing scientific investigation gives a lot of fuel to conservatives who want to fight against trans-people.