Institutional On the same day that PLOS One announced its review, Brown University took down a press release it had earlier posted about the paper. Responding to critics, Brown University president Christina Paxson and Provost Richard M. Locke said they had not infringed on academic freedom and stated that Brown's commitment to only "publicize research that unassailably meets the highest standards of excellence" required Brown to retract the press release after PLOS One opened an investigation on the paper in question. They said that "given the concerns raised about research design and methods, the most responsible course of action was to stop publicizing the work published in this particular instance. We would have done this regardless of the topic of the article." Social and political commentary Several critiques of sociological aspects of the study have been published in peer-reviewed journals. In a 2020 paper published in The Sociological Review, bioethicist Florence Ashley described the study as an attempt to circumvent existing research supporting<unk> -affirming care. Sociologists Natacha Kennedy and Victoria Pitts-Taylor, in two separate 2020 publications in the Journal of LGBT Youth and Sexualities, described ROGD as a moral panic and argued that trans youth are often aware of their identity long before coming out to their parents. Publications such as The Conversation and Slate condemned what they saw as politicization of science by social conservatives, while Madeleine Kearns, a contributing writer at National Review, called for further study into the proposed phenomenon. Writer and transgender advocate Liz Duck-Chong described the hypothesized condition as "a poisonous lie used to discredit trans people" in the op-ed section of The Guardian, while Abigail Shrier, who later published the<unk> al book Irreversible Damage about the concept, called it an explanation for the experiences of parents in the op-ed section of The Wall Street Journal. In a Psychology Today opinion piece, Rutgers University psychology professor Lee Jussim described the PLOS-mandated rewrite of the paper as an "Orwellian correction" involving some additions and minor changes where no errors had existed. Jeffrey Flier, a former dean of Harvard Medical School, said that Brown was valuing diversity over academic freedom and called the retraction a "cautionary tale" about pressure from social media, calling for a movement to support academics conducting<unk> al research. Academic Shortly after PLOS One published the corrected study, a critique of the original study's methodology appeared in Archives of Sexual Behavior. The author, Arjee Restar, argued that Littman's study was fatally methodologically flawed, beginning with the choice to sample exclusively from users of three websites "known for telling parents not to believe their child is transgender," with the result that three-quarters of those surveyed had rejected their child's<unk>  identity; 91 percent of respondents were white, 82 percent were women, and 66 percent were between the ages of 46 and 60. She wrote that the study was mostly composed of "white mothers who have strong oppositional beliefs about their children’s trans identification" and that there was very little evidence that Littman's survey responses were representative of trans youth and young adults as a whole. In a letter to the editor, Littman responded by arguing that her methodologies were consistent with those that had been used, without<unk> , in widely-cited studies supporting<unk>  identity affirmation health care. Some clinicians state that an increasing prevalence of trans youth first presenting in early adolescence, as described in Littman's research, is consistent with their patient population, though they are uncertain as to causes or implications for clinical treatment. In a 2020 commentary in Pediatrics, citing Littman's paper among others, Annelou de Vries wrote that<unk>  identity development was diverse and called for more research into this demographic cohort. Professional commentary Following publication of the original report in PLOS One, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) released a position paper on the proposed term<unk><unk><unk><unk> " and the research, stating that the term is not recognized by any professional association, nor listed in the DSM or ICD lists of disorders and diseases. They said in summary "it is nothing more than an acronym created to describe a proposed clinical phenomenon that may or may not warrant further peer-reviewed scientific investigation." They affirmed the need for academic freedom and scientific exploration without censorship, and that much is still unknown about the factors contributing to the development of<unk>  identity in young people, and said it was "premature and inappropriate" to use "official-sounding labels" that might influence professionals or the public to reach conclusions about how or when adolescents decide to come out as transgender. WPATH concluded by warning against the use of any term intended to cause fear about an adolescent's possible transgender status with the goal of avoiding or deterring them from accessing the appropriate treatment, in line with the standards of care appropriate for the situation. The<unk><unk>  Affirmative Working Group (GDA) of 44 professionals involved in transgender health wrote an open letter to Psychology Today calling the study "methodologically flawed and unethical", saying it proceeded from "an overt ideological bias", and citing previously published criticism of the study stating that it had multiple biases and flaws in its methodology. They said the survey drew subjects from "websites openly hostile to transgender youth", and failed to account for this bias, instead basing its conclusions on the beliefs of surveyed parents who presupposed the existence of ROGD. Noting that Littman had not interviewed the teens, and had no experience working with transgender youth, the GDA criticized conclusions in the initial publication of the study about how teens arrived at a trans identity, saying<unk>  may only have been<unk> " from parents' point of view because teens often delay coming out in hostile environments or when fearing criticism. The Pediatric and Adolescent<unk><unk>  (GD) Working Group, a group of 20 professionals said that ROGD warranted further study. The group pointed to an increase in the number of teenagers coming out as transgender "without any significant prior history of<unk><unk> " and to both anecdotal reports and research indicating that many of them suffered from mental health disorders. In 2021, the Coalition for the Advancement and Application of Psychological Science released a statement calling for the elimination of the concept of ROGD from clinical and diagnostic use, as "there are no sound empirical studies of ROGD and it has not been subjected to rigorous peer-review processes that are standard for clinical science." The statement also states that the term "ROGD" is likely to stigmatize and cause harm to transgender people, and that misinformation surrounding ROGD is used to justify laws suppressing the rights of transgender youth. The statement was cosigned by the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the Society of Behavioral Medicine, the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, and the National Association of School Psychologists.
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