Survey measured Democratic Party affiliation rather than authoritarianism, researchers say
The report, which was not published by a scientific journal and did not undergo peer review, takes aim at medical organizations offering guidelines on gender-affirming care and links people who say they support trans individuals with supporting authoritarianism and political violence. In an online survey of 1,208 people, “gender ideology” was measured by statements such as “People should be supported in expressing their transgender identity” and “Parents should support their children’s transgender exploration.”
Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, an epidemiologist at the University of Sydney, said the work was “a very poorly done piece of research.” He added: “It was nakedly political. I think this is probably the most obviously political study that I’ve come across.”
Daniel Aaron, an associate professor at the University of Utah’s SJ Quinney College of Law, described the report as “quite an abnormal document with a number of oddities.” He said it likely violates federal law because it was not peer-reviewed, which could mean it violates the Information Quality Bulletin, a federal regulation that requires peer review for influential scientific information disseminated by the US government.
The HHS did not respond by press time to the Guardian’s questions about whether the report was commissioned by the agency and whether it complied with federal regulations. Aaron said the report would not survive peer review and questioned why a political-science report was published by the health agency. “It’s actually not even health-related, so I don’t understand why this is related to HHS’s mission,” he said. HHS, he added, is tasked with protecting the health and wellbeing of all Americans. “It’s not happening here,” he said.
Craig Konnoth, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law who coauthored a perspective on gender-affirming care policy for the New England Journal of Medicine with Aaron, characterized the report as an attempt to undermine mainstream health and science organizations including the American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. “By that standard, any medical recommendation becomes ‘authoritarian’. Any standard set by any licensing board becomes ‘authoritarian’,” Konnoth said. “What we’re seeing is this broadside attack on the scientific establishment more generally, and trans rights are being used as the vehicle to do this.”
Colin Wright, an author of the report and a fellow at the conservative think tank Manhattan Institute, said the study was published by HHS quickly because a draft had been leaked to the public. He said the researchers are planning to release the survey numbers and submit the study to an unnamed journal for publication. “It was kind of a surprise to us that it dropped when it did, and so we didn’t have plans beforehand,” Wright said. “We probably could have tightened the language a little bit more.”
Wright disputed that the study was an attempt to link support for trans people with political authoritarianism and violence, though the report itself states: “These findings suggest that gender ideology is associated with LWA [left-wing authoritarianism] and willingness to justify political violence.” Wright said the study examines the guidance offered by medical organizations and is “in many ways geared to make people sort of have a more extreme reaction to it, and to kind of fuel somewhat authoritarian tendencies of trying to silence people” on gender-affirming care.
Meyerowitz-Katz said the political ideology portion of the survey essentially measured whether a respondent was a Democrat. “I don’t think anyone would think this is a good measure of authoritarianism,” he said. He also said the questions on political violence focused only on violence against conservative figures or institutions. Had the survey included violence against other targets, he said, “you would almost certainly see the opposite correlation,” rendering the questionnaire an unreliable predictor of support for political violence. Meyerowitz-Katz added that, in his reading of the research, approximately 75 to 80 percent of deaths from terrorist attacks in the United States come from people on the far right and that rightwing attacks are more lethal than leftwing ones.
Meyerowitz-Katz said it was difficult to parse the relationships the report claims because the researchers have not yet released any of the survey numbers: “The only thing they report in that paper is correlations.” Konnoth, who studies the link between opposition to LGBT rights and authoritarianism, said the report overlooks significant research in the field. “They don’t cite and engage in the data that goes against that thesis,” he said.
Typically, HHS publishes issue briefs and synthesized information, but this is “an extremely weird” case of the agency appearing to adopt a study as its own report, Aaron said. He compared the report with recent federal actions on vaccines that, he said, depart from scientific evidence and reshape vaccine infrastructure. “I think we can draw parallels with this consistent anti-science production of information by the federal government,” he said.
Konnoth called the report an attempt to create an “alternate scientific narrative” that affects all Americans. “There’s a targeting of these mainstream fundamental organizations that put out research that doesn’t just involve trans rights, but involves broader claims about science,” he said. “If we buy into their attempt to discredit the medical establishment, then we are in deep trouble … It’s life-and-death for massive swathes of the American population.”