New York Times Reporter Bemoans “Lack of Viewpoints” in Major Medical Journals
Jeremy Peters took to the comments on his recent article to signal his agreement with a far-right conspiracy theory that major medical journals have been ideologically captured. The theory seeks to explain the overwhelming evidence in favor of gender-affirming treatments.
Opinion, by Evan Urquhart
What is the purpose of medical research? Scientists would say the purpose is to investigate medical questions and evaluate treatments, creating a robust, peer reviewed body of evidence on which to base decisions on patient care. In comments posted to the discussion alongside a published story on Trump administration efforts to pressure medical organizations to disavow youth gender medicine, reporter Jeremy Peters seemed to endorse a different understanding, one which holds that the legitimacy of medical evidence is undermined if it fails to include multiple “viewpoints.”
“The integrity of academic journals is a major issue here,” Peters wrote, agreeing with a commenter who claimed an “ideological vanguard” had distorted the evidence on gender affirming care using “emotional manipulation.”
“It's not something specific to gender medicine, though certainly the lack of viewpoints published on the subject hasn't helped,” Peters continued. “The problems here are twofold. First, there's the one-sidedness of most of the published articles. It's much easier to get something published in JAMA or the New England Journal of Medicine if it's supportive of gender-affirming care. Second, there have been some major problems with some of the studies published on this subject. In some cases, bad outcomes for patients were overlooked. That's what the evidence reviews have found. And that doesn't inspire a lot of confidence from the public.”
In his comments, Peters echoes the sentiments of conservative activists such as Manhattan Institute fellow Colin Wright, who claimed in an opinion piece for City Journal in 2023 that the abundant medical evidence supporting gender affirming care, and the paucity of evidence opposing it, was the result of ideological capture.
“Findings that contradict the prevailing “gender-affirming” model of care for transgender-identifying youth, or offer even mild critiques,” Wright wrote, “have become nearly impossible to publish.”
Wright’s essay was written in response to the retraction of a survey of parental attitudes that had purported to find 1655 “possible cases” of socially-induced gender dysphoria after surveying parents frequenting websites that promoted the idea that gender dysphoria was often socially-induced. Survey participants’ consent to participate in research had not been properly secured by the website’s owner, resulting in the retraction. The retracted paper’s methods recapitulated an earlier online survey of parental attitudes in a similar cohort. It’s publication broke no new ground and added nothing of significance to the study of gender medicine.
More rigorous papers have looked at the possibility of a distinct cohort of young people whose trans identity develops suddenly due to social factors, finding no evidence for the phenomena.
No reported stories support these activists belief that major medical journals have suppressed evidence on youth trans care. When US courts have evaluated the claims of experts on each side, they’ve found the medical evidence is clear, and clearly favors youth gender medicine practitioners. (In fact, one notable aspect of the Supreme Court’s decision in Skrmetti allowing US states to ban affirming care was that the majority rejected the idea that independent evaluations of evidence by the judiciary should constrain states from banning medical treatments.)
While it’s true that there can be trends and reversals in scientific research, there is no reason for any unbiased observer to conclude that this has happened in youth gender medicine. Rather than postulating a conspiracy in academic journals, more measured critics of trans care point to what they believe is weakness in the published evidence. Oft left unstated in this particular critique is the fact that the evidence we do have largely points in one direction, favoring care, however strongly or weakly.
In contrast, there is no evidence for any alternative treatment for youth gender dysphoria, no evidence of widespread harms, no evidence of inappropriate or hasty treatment, and no evidence of increased regret among transgender young people. While at least one international review found evidence for treatment lacking (a review Peters references positively in a subsequent comment), a review commissioned by the Utah legislature reported that the evidence was plentiful, and consistently favored interventions such as hormone therapy and puberty blockers.
As an education and free speech reporter, Peters may simply lack the scientific knowledge to evaluate the claims of activists, allowing his biases and affinity for one side of the debate to cloud his judgement. It is troubling, however, to find conspiratorial thinking in the comments of a New York Times reporter. Readers of the paper deserve reporters who can accurately understand and weigh the medical evidence that exists, not conjure up fantasies of other, better evidence, evidence that would support their preconceptions, if only medical journals stopped suppressing certain viewpoints.
Authors’ Note: I offered Peters the chance to clarify his comments shortly as I was drafting this essay. While an opinion piece with no reporting apart from public statements doesn’t strictly require it, here is the comment I received from Danielle Rhoades Ha, the New York Times’ Senior Vice President of External Communications:
Our story chronicled previously unreported details of a meeting with Mehmet Oz and leaders of U.S. medical associations to discuss medical care for trans teens. This story is of great interest to our readers, as you can see in the comments.
Many of our reporters engage directly with our readers on article pages. That conversation in the comment section is ongoing, and Jeremy has included context from earlier Times reporting that showed how medical societies addressed internal doubts about evidence reliability.
Rhoades Ha did not specify which previous reporting Peters was referencing in his comment.
Evan Urquhart is the founder of Assigned Media.