Seen the “98% of studies were ignored!” one doing the rounds on social media. The editorial in the BMJ put it in much better terms:

“One emerging criticism of the Cass review is that it set the methodological bar too high for research to be included in its analysis and discarded too many studies on the basis of quality. In fact, the reality is different: studies in gender medicine fall woefully short in terms of methodological rigour; the methodological bar for gender medicine studies was set too low, generating research findings that are therefore hard to interpret.”

  • Cogency@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    So you don’t know what you are talking about. Gotcha.

    Synthesis reports in a scientific study when presenting data, are the parts of the report where you explain why you are dismissing data, so in this case ~98% of the data or studies. So what you just said is ~98% of the data was included in the synthesis report. that’s not inclusion of the data. That’s selective inclusion to support a conclusion. A normal scientific study can’t dismiss 98% of available data. That reveals bias.

      • Cogency@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Read it. Their only inclusion in the report is to half explain why the were discluded, exactly what I said. Most of the dismissals are unscientific, not supported by a statistical analysis of why it was discluded. Data doesn’t become unreliable just because it is incomplete.

        That report is absolutely rife with white washing and selection bias, I’d expect a scientific review of trans literature and studies to be a book at this point not 32 pages dismissing 98% of the data. It’s frankly insulting to anyone that’s read or written any number of scientific studies.

          • Cogency@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Putting 98% of the relevant available data in a supplementary table like 4 is not including the data.

            • streetlights@lemmy.worldOP
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              7 months ago

              Supplementary Table 4 (from the first review) is a list of each of the 53 studies included in the review and how they were scored based on the Newcastle-Ottawa scale.

              The “data” is in supplementary tables 3, 5, 6 and 7. Only studies that were scored as low quality were excluded from the synthesis.

              “They dismissed 98% of data” is a lie.

              • Cogency@lemmy.world
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                7 months ago

                No it’s not. None of the dismissals are statistically/ scientifically supported, and the data they present is blurbed and incompletely presented in a way that isn’t inclusive of what those studies actually say.

                • streetlights@lemmy.worldOP
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                  7 months ago

                  Nothing was dismissed at all (and “statistics” has nothing to do with it so curious to mention it).

                  Studies were scored for quality on the well established Newcastle-Ottawa Score. High and Moderate quality studies were included in the synthesis. Low quality studies were not, but their outcomes are still reported.

                  Outcomes from each study were included in tables 3, 5, 6 and 7.

                  'They dismissed 98% of the data" remains a lie.

                  • Cogency@lemmy.world
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                    7 months ago

                    You can’t remove a study from a scientific paper without having statistical analysis to back it up. Each of those removed studies all had a statistical analysis of how confident they remained in their data even with the gaps. Because there aren’t completed 100% studies in science it just doesn’t happen so you use the data you have and test it for a confidence value you obtain using statistics. And the idea that some trans people don’t make it to the completion of a study due to personal reasons or even suicide isn’t that rare. Not using 98% of the data because of that would be stupid.