In a feminised society it is inevitable that feelings will start to overwhelm any other concerns. Men learned over time to handle their much larger force and aggression with impartially applied laws and rules, generating our enormous wealth. However, where empathy is crucial for the private sphere, it is pathological for the reasons you describe in the public sphere. Women must learn to check their emotional incontinence before they enter the workplace or they will destroy our wealth generating institutions through ethic committees.
In fact, Bailey asked his IRB at Northwestern University if they would require approval for secondary use of anonymized data. They responded that they do not. This is common for IRBs in North America and Europe. Secondary use of anonymized data is beyond the control of the participant and does not place any participants into risk, specifically because the data are anonymized (i.e., no one can be identified as having participated). So, essentially, Baily had IRB approval to publish secondary use of anonymized data. It is not clear what Diaz' website requirements were for parents to upload their data (which was used not only by Bailey, but by Diaz herself in conferences that she attended). But the website was a forum for parents of ROGD kids, and to my knowledge, NO PARTICIPANT COMPLAINED about Diaz or Bailey using their anonymized data. Instead, the "complaints" came from special interest groups and people opposed to ROGD. The publisher (and NOT the journal editor) decided to cave in and retract the paper. In fact, the Editor-in-Chief was allowed to make a discretionary call on publishing a paper with secondary use of data. So, again, the overwhelming majority of complaints came from special interest groups opposed to the concept of ROGD. Some complaints came from members and executives of the International Academy of Sex Research (the parent organization associated with the Archives of Sexual Behavior), and one in particular pointed out that the IRB at his university would never allow secondary use of data without IRB approval. An editor of a sister journal from a different publisher also added that they would not publish any data that had not received full IRB approval. I suspect this is where the Archives publisher (Springer Nature) got the idea to base their forced (and post-hoc) retraction on. It is beyond shameful and definitely not legitimate given that Bailey had done due diligence by asking his IRB if he needed approval. University IRBs in North America operate on rules typically set up by Ethics Councils funded by granting agencies. Other IRBs are independent (e.g., for industry), but still operate on the same rules. For the past decade, something known as "mission creep" has been spreading across IRBs, in which their role in protecting research participants expands to protecting the university's "brand" from research that might be "risky" or leave a bad impression in the minds of the public. I am sure you all can imagine how sex research in general, and research on gender that runs afoul of certain special interest groups in particular, might get handled. A million "what-if" scenarios are often conjured up, with the researcher having to answer how those potential scenarios will be dealt with, no matter how utterly unlikely or downright ridiculous they are. And don't expect to get them all at once. They will be added to each iteration of the ethics review, sometimes for years which makes it impossible to actually do any research. And as if the "what-ifs" aren't enough, the mission creep can often decide that the ethics committee must review the protocol for "scientific validity"! This can apply to grants that have already been approved by grant selection committees of scientific granting agencies! AS IF the members of the IRB have the expertise to review the scientific merit or validity of experiments outside their domain! I know of a colleague in the US whose IRB NEVER allowed her to show porn in her lab, despite that being part of an approved NIH grant to stimulate sexual arousal! And why? Because they didn't think it was proper science (in addition to all the what-ifs, like WHAT IF a participant doesn't get an erection and then sues the university and researcher for causing erectile dysfunction).
So, between mission creep, current "ethical" sensibilities (and lack of sense), and the type of identity politics that makes everyone who is anyone a victim, it is difficult as hell to do sex research. The Diaz and Bailey retraction is as deplorable as it is nescient.
Hey just a head's up. My school's Gender and Sexual Diversity Pride Center recently gave a presentation in which they defined gender dysphoria as follows: "Gender dysphoria is described as distress as a result of one's gender not being affirmed."
Note that this shifts the CAUSE of gender discomfort from realities about the self to actions by other people. Try to keep up! =P
Also, I don't have access to the source article but I see that it cites Christian Smith's "The Sacred Project of American Sociology", which I read a couple months ago and would strongly recommend to anyone interested in this post.
Cogent analysis. But to add: the pressure to retract the article and punish the editor was not plausibly about the consent/IRB issue. It was about ROGD. See this letter by activists, who pressured both IASR and Springer (both of which may have leaned activist anyway): https://asbopenletter.com
How do we arrange the complaint and wthdrawal process for thousands of papers? We should do that. The messing around will not cease until there are consequences.
In a feminised society it is inevitable that feelings will start to overwhelm any other concerns. Men learned over time to handle their much larger force and aggression with impartially applied laws and rules, generating our enormous wealth. However, where empathy is crucial for the private sphere, it is pathological for the reasons you describe in the public sphere. Women must learn to check their emotional incontinence before they enter the workplace or they will destroy our wealth generating institutions through ethic committees.
In fact, Bailey asked his IRB at Northwestern University if they would require approval for secondary use of anonymized data. They responded that they do not. This is common for IRBs in North America and Europe. Secondary use of anonymized data is beyond the control of the participant and does not place any participants into risk, specifically because the data are anonymized (i.e., no one can be identified as having participated). So, essentially, Baily had IRB approval to publish secondary use of anonymized data. It is not clear what Diaz' website requirements were for parents to upload their data (which was used not only by Bailey, but by Diaz herself in conferences that she attended). But the website was a forum for parents of ROGD kids, and to my knowledge, NO PARTICIPANT COMPLAINED about Diaz or Bailey using their anonymized data. Instead, the "complaints" came from special interest groups and people opposed to ROGD. The publisher (and NOT the journal editor) decided to cave in and retract the paper. In fact, the Editor-in-Chief was allowed to make a discretionary call on publishing a paper with secondary use of data. So, again, the overwhelming majority of complaints came from special interest groups opposed to the concept of ROGD. Some complaints came from members and executives of the International Academy of Sex Research (the parent organization associated with the Archives of Sexual Behavior), and one in particular pointed out that the IRB at his university would never allow secondary use of data without IRB approval. An editor of a sister journal from a different publisher also added that they would not publish any data that had not received full IRB approval. I suspect this is where the Archives publisher (Springer Nature) got the idea to base their forced (and post-hoc) retraction on. It is beyond shameful and definitely not legitimate given that Bailey had done due diligence by asking his IRB if he needed approval. University IRBs in North America operate on rules typically set up by Ethics Councils funded by granting agencies. Other IRBs are independent (e.g., for industry), but still operate on the same rules. For the past decade, something known as "mission creep" has been spreading across IRBs, in which their role in protecting research participants expands to protecting the university's "brand" from research that might be "risky" or leave a bad impression in the minds of the public. I am sure you all can imagine how sex research in general, and research on gender that runs afoul of certain special interest groups in particular, might get handled. A million "what-if" scenarios are often conjured up, with the researcher having to answer how those potential scenarios will be dealt with, no matter how utterly unlikely or downright ridiculous they are. And don't expect to get them all at once. They will be added to each iteration of the ethics review, sometimes for years which makes it impossible to actually do any research. And as if the "what-ifs" aren't enough, the mission creep can often decide that the ethics committee must review the protocol for "scientific validity"! This can apply to grants that have already been approved by grant selection committees of scientific granting agencies! AS IF the members of the IRB have the expertise to review the scientific merit or validity of experiments outside their domain! I know of a colleague in the US whose IRB NEVER allowed her to show porn in her lab, despite that being part of an approved NIH grant to stimulate sexual arousal! And why? Because they didn't think it was proper science (in addition to all the what-ifs, like WHAT IF a participant doesn't get an erection and then sues the university and researcher for causing erectile dysfunction).
So, between mission creep, current "ethical" sensibilities (and lack of sense), and the type of identity politics that makes everyone who is anyone a victim, it is difficult as hell to do sex research. The Diaz and Bailey retraction is as deplorable as it is nescient.
Hey just a head's up. My school's Gender and Sexual Diversity Pride Center recently gave a presentation in which they defined gender dysphoria as follows: "Gender dysphoria is described as distress as a result of one's gender not being affirmed."
Note that this shifts the CAUSE of gender discomfort from realities about the self to actions by other people. Try to keep up! =P
Also, I don't have access to the source article but I see that it cites Christian Smith's "The Sacred Project of American Sociology", which I read a couple months ago and would strongly recommend to anyone interested in this post.
Cogent analysis. But to add: the pressure to retract the article and punish the editor was not plausibly about the consent/IRB issue. It was about ROGD. See this letter by activists, who pressured both IASR and Springer (both of which may have leaned activist anyway): https://asbopenletter.com
Scott Alexander in 2014: Beware Isolated Demands for Rigor
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-demands-for-rigor/
How do we arrange the complaint and wthdrawal process for thousands of papers? We should do that. The messing around will not cease until there are consequences.