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Looks like it's time to #FactCheckJack again. Turban has a history of ignoring all criticism and pretending it isn't there, but for the paper "Pubertal Suppression for Transgender Youth and Risk of Suicidal Ideation", the authors did choose to respond to a comment.
This is all available at https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/145/2/e20191725/tab-e-letters, the two I will discuss are the two most recent ones as of now, from January 2nd and 11th 2021.
The problem is that none of the findings can be called statistically significant, for a number of reasons including two that will be discussed later. However, this is a fair response: "in our broken system, that was not significant". An internally consistent answer, if wrong.
This part of the response is mindblowing. "He does not clarify this comment".
There's a citation in the initial comment. To a paper the author of the comment co-authored. With a breakdown of a myriad of ways in which the sample is biased. All the clarification you could ever need.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10508-020-01844-2#Sec1
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10508-020-01844-2#Sec1
That Dr. Clarke "does not clarify this comment" is an outright falsehood from Jack. I do not believe this is an honest mistake. It is not possible to miss this citation in the original comment when writing a response.
Either Jack was negligent and incompetent or he lied.
Either Jack was negligent and incompetent or he lied.
There are some small, ugly, tricks being played as well. For example, Jack cites Dr. Clarke as saying "USTS respondents demonstrably did not know what puberty blockers were.", and said that "it is not clear what this assertion was based upon".
Jack even says "we would like to reiterate that our analyses excluded respondents who...", coyly admitting that he knows exactly what the comment is in reference to.
If we actually look at the original comment, we find that Jack trimmed off all the context that actually shows where he has gone wrong. The claim is that simply excluding these confused people from one side of the scale but not the other skews the data.
If we look at the original USTS report, which was produced along with the data, we find that this is something well known. For Jack to say "it is not clear what this assertion was based upon" is dishonest and ugly.
At least he has started adding some (just a few) of his many conflicts of interests to his writing.
In conclusion, Jacks response to fair criticism was to dodge three out of four points while attempting to lay a smoke screen to obscure that he did not have a legitimate response to the last one either.
