Brown University and PLoS ONE: Defend academic freedom and scientific inquiry

I am a retired Professor and Dean. I strongly support academic freedom.

I am an Associate Professor and human sexuality research who strongly supports academic freedom and the de-politicalization of scientific inquiry.

This topic deserves study and coverage from all perspectives! How can you suppress test results (not to mention, discussion and debate) when peoples' health from a lifetime of hormones, drugs, and surgeries could be at risk?? C'mon academia, do your job!

Career researcher and academic freedom supporter

I support this research because it has potential to inform our interventions with young people who are struggling. I abhor attempts to silence debates around these issues.

I support research to provide better options for youth presenting with gender dysphoria.

Dr. Littman is cutting edge, and Brown wants to silence her?

My daughter was 14 now 15 when she announced she was trans after heavy online use and peer influence. Always presented as female and used all the online jargon to announce to parents she was trans. Her high school group of females are all presenting as male. All using binders and wanting to use T. Spoke to parents and all have anxiety, ADHD, body dysphoria. Social contagion. Mental illness and suicidal ideation soon followed.

Scientific data isn't supposed to have a political agenda. Your uni. pulling this article because it might is disrupt a group's social and political agenda is, frankly, disturbing.

Academic study can only further the lives of all young people. Study is just that: study. Academia must not be stifled by hysteria and political bullying.

I wasn't one of the parents who contributed to this study but I could easily have been. My child indentified as trans two years ago, very suddenly at age 12, and despite us not feeling it to be authentic, we have been very supportive while refusing any irreversible procedures. I have been constantly shocked that anything other than wholesale agreement with the prevailing narrative is treated as transphobic. It is a shutting down of debate, and seems based on a Trump-like belief that those who shout loudest must be right. Thoughtful, unbiased studies into why there has been such a spike in the figures is essential to help inform young people - trans and not - and their parents.

Not a parent in the study, but a former unhappy, geeky girl subject to the social contagion of the time (now a CS professor), who fears she might have fallen prey to ROGD had it existed at the time. It needs researching.

I’m a detransitioned woman, and research like this is a critical first step to empirical knowledge about experiences like mine. Academic research should not be suppressed because of pressure to affirm one group’s agenda. My great hope is that by looking at a wider range of experiences of trans identity and gender dysphoria, there will be evidence to support professional resources for treating dysphoria without medical intervention, and to better understand the specific health needs of desisters and detransitioners.

The University is not responsible for the good feelings of its students. It is responsible for training them to have more capable faculties of reason and a deep knowledge of their chosen field of study. Medical doctors have an obligation to first do no harm. Doctors who prescribe hormone therapy and surgeries to an objectively healthy anatomy are committing grossly unethical malpractice.

Those damn right wing science deniers......oh wait.....what was that? Brown University? An institution that is supposed to support academic freedom and research? Naaaah get out!

I agree wholeheartedly. More research needs to done. Acceptance is fine, blind acceptance is not.

We need more research. It scares me that if I was a child now I would have been told I was really a boy.

Young lesbians are pressured to transition.

More studies are alwaya better than less studies...

Iam disgusted and appalled by the action taken by Brown University (of lower learning) against Lisa Littman....so when Brown University doesn’t like the direction of findings in research, cut it off at the pass and apologize for it on top of it??!!??!!....have Universities lost their minds??- the answer is Yes-that’s right they don’t want people to be challenged, think, question, or explore, unless it supports their bias. Dr Littman hang tough!!! Susan Powers