Hacker News Reader

Comment by thathndude | Hacker News Reader

I'm not speaking to the veracity of any of this, but Dr. Shanna Swan has researched this pretty extensively (and written papers).

What we're seeing since the beginning of petrochemical use in the US (50's) are clear physiology changes (specifically in males) where we're seeing a reduction in physical traits associated with being a biological male of the species.

View on HN

"But a new study says that even if they don't contain BPA, most plastic products release estrogenic chemicals. Most plastic products, from sippy cups to food wraps, can release chemicals that act like the sex hormone estrogen, according to a study in Environmental Health Perspectives." [1]

[1] https://www.npr.org/2011/03/02/134196209/study-most-plastics...

Well, let's think about this. If estrogens or xenoestrogens were at levels in food and drink that they were changing the bodies of young men, what you would see is distress as their body shifts away from their assigned gender. I do not see what about that would lead them to think they are transgender.

Far from distress, the rate of dissatisfaction trans people after hormonal transition is very low and is most often driven by external factors. https://www.gendergp.com/detransition-facts/

I do not see how plastics are a convincing explanation for current social trends.

Why would there be distress? If you went through a microplastic influenced childhood and puberty you would never know if your masculine traits were as pronounced as they could have been, as you only have your self to compare to.

Also, these sorts of studies generally look at changes at the population level - an individual won't suddenly wake up with a gender crisis from plastic exposure.

“ What’s surprising, in light of all these quotes, is that the kids who took puberty blockers or hormones experienced no statistically significant mental health improvement during the study. The claim that they did improve, which was presented to the public in the study itself, in publicity materials, and on social media (repeatedly) by one of the authors, is false.”

See https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/researchers-found-puberty...

I don't have the time to dive deep into this article, but I would not be surprised if there were wasn't enough evidence at 12 months. It's a process which takes years, as with puberty itself.

The TLDR is that there are several issues with the study methods which are apparent from available materials (and probably even more apparent from the actual study data which has been withheld by the authors). The cohort that received gender affirming care over the twelve months showed no improvement over baseline, while the control cohort deteriorated into even higher levels of depression/anxiety/suicidality. Instead of looking at the treatment group and saying "there has been no improvement", they compared it to the control and said "they haven't deteriorated like these people have."

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the control cohort simply stopped responding to the survey over 12 months, so there is no end to potential confounding factors causing children (who for all we know elected not to receive gender affirming care to begin with) to stop responding to a survey issued by a gender clinic, or the confounding factors that caused the others not receiving treatment to remain in the study.

I've seen this argument many times and these same sets of studies referenced, yet never is it mentioned that the recorded results are absolutely not single variable measurable items. There are nearly infinite alternative explanations for both sides of the argument, if you are clever enough to break free of the desired outcome bias.

The article touches a little bit about how responses to a 0-27 point depression questionnaire are coded as 0 or 1, 1 being "has moderate to severe depression" and 0 being "does not have moderate to severe depression" at a threshold of 10 points or higher. Similar situation for suicidality. Instead of tracking the actual point changes across the 12 months, they just tracked the pooled percentages of 0 vs. 1.

I looked at a few of the surveys cited, and they all questioned transgendered people, which automatically omits those who detransitioned and stay detransitioned:

https://somenuanceplease.substack.com/p/is-detransition-the-...

>>The way this question is written makes it very clear that they were primarily expecting to get answers related to “pressure” and what are sometimes called “external factors.” Of the options given, only one option is clearly an internal factor (“I realized that gender transition was not for me”).

>>However, the primary reason that this survey cannot be used to draw conclusions about the number of people detransitioning and their motives is because the 2015 US Transgender Survey was distributed amongst the trans community. It didn’t seek responses from people who detransitioned and never reidentified as transgender.

Yes, it seems many preservatives decrease testosterone. Along with this, there is a steady decline in testosterone in the last 60 years. [0]

I suspect it will be a serious issue in another 20, due to not sustaining population, and then we will ban parabens.

It's alex-johns level sounding crazy but it seems true.

[0] https://www.healio.com/news/endocrinology/20120325/generatio...

I’m happy to read a study that has real data, but any conclusions we draw from things like this has to also explain the fact that in a vast array of areas where we have access to objective metrics like strength, speed, and general athleticism, records are set most years and there’s no sign of a “dead ball” era in sports across the board. This includes sports where people are heavily tested. Cycling is maybe the one example, but that’s probably as much the absence of doping (or less effective doping) as it is a diminishing innate biological capability.

Only a subset of the population is athletic. Those that are breaking records have been training for a significant amount of time.

Also I think we’re rediscovering the power of breath work on performance - as exemplified in the constant record beating times occurring particularly in swimming competitions.

This one is from a study with real data:

"In 1985, men ages 20-24 had an average right-handed grip of 121 pounds and left-handed grip of 105 pounds. Today, men that age had grips of only 101 and 99 pounds, the study found. Men 25-29 posted losses of 26 and 19 pounds."

source: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/13/4815909... and: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26869476/

Does this mean Alex Jones was right all along..?

Even if Alex Jones is right, even if he was right all along, people are conditioned by the media to believe a narrative. Because the presenter of the information is not presenting the information in an appealing way, the information (false or true) is assigned the status of “unappealing”.

Don’t have faith in anyone admitting anyone is right or wrong.

Unless your Copernicus!

Is there a pop sci accessible version of the work that details the physiological changes?

Please use caution when exploring far right rabbit holes based on dubious correlations.

I'm approaching this subject from a place of ignorance. A cursory Google of Shanna Swan, and a glance through her Wiki page, don't suggest a relationship to "far-right rabbit holes", just a lot of coverage of her work on left-leaning sites such as GQ, The Guardian, NYTimes, etc.. I also tend to observe that many (especially older) far-right folk are very pro-petrochemical, whereas she appears to be strongly the opposite.

I guess I'm just having trouble squaring your comment away; can you elaborate/clarify your caution as it applies to Swan?

Theories about "decline of maleness", great replacement theory, "decline of western civilization", are all very linked to this sort of stuff. Granted, that is very possibly not a goal of Swan's work, but these are the type of people who often cite it.

Swan's work is dubious on other scientific grounds, however. [0]

[0]: https://www.science20.com/gregory_bond/just_a_dud_swan_book_...

Ah, yeah, I'd forgot about those areas having strong right-wing links. Appreciate the link and the perspective, thank you. :)

Edit: I don't care about my comment score, but what about thanking someone for their response and providing perspective is worth downvoting? Asking in the interest of continuing to foster discussion.

The thanking part will generally get a downvote: it's polite in a normal conversation, but it's just clutter. An upvote is sufficient. The real issue (imo) is this:

> Ah, yeah, I'd forgot about those areas having strong right-wing links.

This is taken to mean that, if there is an idea or conclusion that 'right-wing' people agree with, it is therefore wrong. And you not only think that, but you're thanking someone for reminding you to not actually look at the information objectively, but dismiss it out of hand because the _wrong people_ think it.

It's really revolting behavior.

Is it actually incorrect or just associated with things that are incorrect?

Hence the point of my second comment - not incorrect per se, but not really any evidence suggesting that it is correct, on a number of different fronts.

The point of the first part of my comment was to answer the question posed.

Sure, but you immediately cast a shadow on it by saying "oh, you know those bad people with their bad thoughts? This is one of their bad thoughts"

What? The person directly asked how this research might be used by people on the "far right," I was merely responding.

This is lazy reasoning - you're imputing on me arguments that I didn't make and even if I had made them, they wouldn't impact the veracity of the other claim I was making.

Translation: "Crimethink is forbidden!"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com