Important Research Articles & Investigations
Throughout Fake ID, a number of studies, articles, interviews, and conversations are referenced. This section gives you direct access to many of those sources, along with additional material that may be helpful if you want to dig deeper.
Important AI Research & Resources
Microsoft Research in Partnership with Carnegie Mellon University – “The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers.” This study suggests that “higher confidence in GenAI is associated with less critical thinking, while higher self-confidence is associated with more critical thinking.” In other words, critical thinking atrophies when we trust and rely on AI to discern the truth for us.
OpenAI and MIT Media Lab research on AI & Emotions – “Investigating Affective Use and Emotional Well-being on ChatGPT.” This study found that “very high usage correlates with increased self-reported indicators of dependence.” The increase of affective use of the model (a model created to seem more human, and users responding to the model more relationally rather than utilitarianly) in this study correlated with higher levels of loneliness in users. What is unclear is if the model creates loneliness, exacerbates loneliness, merely attracts the lonely, or some combination of all three. Elsewhere the authors state clearly that “overall, higher daily usage–across all modalities and conversation types–correlated with higher loneliness, dependence, and problematic use, and lower socialization.” This was especially true in those “with stronger emotional attachment tendencies and higher trust in the AI chatbot.”
Aza Raskin and Tristan Harris present on “The A.I. Dilemma.” Co-founders of the Center for Humane Technology, these two have raised the alarm on not only potential but current and ongoing misuses and abuses of AI technology for the degrading of humanity. They also coined an important term that Abdu used in Fake ID: “Reality Collapse.”
Important Gender Research & Resources
The Cass Review – An independent UK review of medical and social approaches to treating gender distress in children and adolescents. The report questions prevailing clinical assumptions, finds the evidence base for some interventions to be weak, and calls for a more cautious, holistic model of care that takes psychological, developmental, and social factors seriously rather than relying on affirming pathways alone.
The New York Times exposé on unpublished gender research – “U.S. Study on Puberty Blockers Goes Unpublished Because of Politics, Doctor Says.” Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy intentionally withheld results of her research (part of a multimillion dollar NIH study) that looked at the effects of puberty blocers on children. Dr. Olson-Kennedy apparently was hoping to find that puberty blockers improved well-being in children participating in gender-affirming care (with the assumption that refusing gender care and living in the “wrong body” increases depression, and so the opposite should decrease it). Her responses to the controversy were contradictory and only increased skepticism toward her motives. This prompted U.S. Senators to write to then-Director of the NIH (National Institutes of Health), Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, demanding answers. We have been unable to locate any public response from Dr. Bertagnolli or the NIH.
Dr. Lisa Littman’s original research on “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria” (ROGD) – Dr. Littman was one of the first to identify the social context surrounding a spike in transgender identity among young people, which surprisingly included a group previously largely unaffected by gender dysphoria: adolescent girls. Specifically, she received reports from parents who noted their children’s sudden and extreme identification with another gender (something that was typically persistent from much earlier ages). ROGD also notes that this new type of gender dysphoria appeared in particular clustered peer groups with heavy social media exposure and possibly underlying anxiety and depression. Other studies have noted co-morbid (and often undiagnosed) autism spectrum traits, borderline personality disorder, and/or major depressive disorder. Littman applies the term “social contagion” to what she observed in her study. Due to social/political backlash, the publishing journal republished Dr. Littman’s article with a preamble on the limitations of Dr. Littman’s research. Other trans-affirming professionals criticised Dr. Littman, as well. However, Dr. Littman stood her ground as far as her methodology was concerned, noting that she followed standard protocols for this type of study, which is not rare in the field. Furthermore, in a letter to the editor, Littman, Leor Sapir, and Michael Biggs found that a study used to discredit the ROGD hypothesis instead supported it.
Abdu’s full interview with detransitioner Chloe Cole
Abdu’s full interview with detransitioner Kyla Gillespie, Part 1
Abdu’s full interview with detransitioner Kyla Gillespie, Part 2
Related Topics
Matt Ridley on “Science fiction: the crisis in research” for The Spectator – Ridley looks at fraud and fabrication in scientific research. He not only exposes flaws in the research itself, noting the now famous finding from Nature that 70% of studies in Biology alone could not be replicated, but something far more insidious with the flawed system: “The real scandal in science is not the criminal frauds, of which there are always a small number, nor the data dredging and fire-hose publishing, but the gate-keeping, groupthink and bias that politicises some fields of science, turning it into the dogma known as ‘the science.'” This not only stops good albeit heterodox science from being published (or even funded), but it ushers in bad science that is accepted not so much because of the quality of the study but because of the desire to agree with its conclusions. If this is true in the hard sciences, one would expect it to be even worse in the social sciences. This was one of the truths exposed in the so-called “Grievance Studies Affair” concoted by James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose, and Peter Boghossian. This should have been a clear sign that something was “rotten in the state of Denmark,” yet reactions from the academic world were mixed. Additionally, Dr. Laura Favaro had her research dismissed as “dangerous” because it dared to ask if women in academia felt safe expressing their actual views (or concerns) on transgender issues. Former darlings of the scientific and skeptical world, such as Richard Dawkins and Michael Shermer, have even been cancelled for questioning the new cultural dogmas, as well. In the last two years, thanks to the work of some of the people above along with whistleblowers, journalists like Abigail Shrier who were willing to face the public backlash, and above all the brave detransitioners who have told of their own harrowing experiences in the gender affirming care pipeline, the tide has begun to turn, according to Bari Weiss’ The Free Press.
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