Transgender Community News
Published by The Renaissance Transgender Association
October 2003
 
Junk Science And Michael Bailey
By Nick Sauer
 
 
 
 
 
 
[scanned version - see also text version, below]
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
[text version]
 
Transgender Community News
Published by The Renaissance Transgender Association
October 2003
 
Junk Science And Michael Bailey
By Nick Sauer
 
 
One of the more interesting aspects of working as a scientist is that I regularly get asked by people with non-scientific backgrounds to evaluate the scientific merit of a book or video that presents itself as science. So, when Michael Bailey's book The Man Who Would be Queen began generating controversey I immediately took an interest in looking at the book myself. Much like I enjoy watching bad movies, I find reading or watching bad science to be similarly entertaining.
 
Bailey's book is subtitled "the science of gender bending and transexualism". The book is broken into three parts. While the first part follows one case study, the second part is devoted to the gender bending comment above. It has nothing to do with transexualism but, is instead an interesting study of gender identity and sexual preferences in male homosexual populations. There is a large amount of original research data on male homosexuals and it is cross referenced with data from the same surveys conducted on male and female heterosexuals. This has nothing to do with transexualism but, I found this part of the book to be interesting in that Bailey's data seems to contradict previous studies on sexuality I have encountered with regards to bisexuality in the (American) male population. This, in itself, would have been an excellent follow-up to the data presented and could easily be a topic for a doctoral dissertation.
 
I'll note at this point that while I personally found this interesting, Bailey's presentation of the data is hardly scientific. In a true research paper, the actual numerical results of each survey would have been presented along with standard deviation bars to account for statistical error within the data. At the very least this data should have been included in an appendix.
 
Bailey then goes into section three discussing transgenderism and attempts to apply the data from the previous section to trangendered individuals. The first, and most jarring, change upon reading part three is the complete lack of surveys and data to support his claims. This immediately moves section three of his book out of the scientific arena and into Bailey's personal opinions. While I feel that he is certainly entitled to present his opinions, he is doing so under the mis-representation that they are science when, in fact, they are not. This is one of the reasons that some people have reacted in such a hostile manor to Bailey's book and I can't say I blame them.
 
Even though section three of the book falls outside of the realm of being "deeply rooted in the scientific method" as the cover flap claims, we can still use it to illustrate some examples of bad science.
What Bailey does give us is some first hand accounts from post SRS transgendered individuals. Unfortunately, the individuals Bailey seems to focus on are the transgendered individuals that he has met through contact in gay bars or who work in the sex-trade. He then goes on to make pronouncements about all transexuals based upon observations of these individuals. This is what statisticians refer to as biased data. In order for data of a group to be valid there has to be a lot of individuals in the study group and the group has to be statistically random. Since we don't know how many individuals where in Bailey's study group (he never gives a number) we can not address whether his sample size is large enough to be statistically significant. However, it is rather obvious that his group is not very random. Now, to cut Bailey a little slack it would be all but impossible to do a truely random survey of the transgendered community due to the obvious fact that most members prefer to seek anonymity. The problem is that Bailey didn't seem to make any kind of serious effort to look for transgendered individuals outside of his regular contacts. As a basis of compairison, this would be like me conducting a study of theAfrican-American population by visiting the slums of Newark, New Jersey and then making pronouncements about all African-Americans based upon these contacts alone. Such a prejudiced view of this population would be attacked, and rightfully so, as it would be easily viewed as border-line hate literature. This is another reason why many people have taken offense to Bailey's book and one that I am completely in agreement on.
 
Another thing that I find distasteful on a more personal level about this is that Bailey presents this under the guise of science -- when it isn't. As a scientist I tend to be more sensitive to how we portray ourselves to the public than most of my colleagues. The problem is that the very powerful images created by literature such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Frankenstein have done little to give people a positive outlook on scientists.My concern is that Bailey's book is going to contribute to the public's already jaded view of scientists and that really irritates me on a professional level.
 
Another thing that Bailey does is use the model of transexuals developed by Ray Blanchard that basically categorizes transexuals into two groups labelled homosexual and autogynephilic. About the most diplomatic thing that can be said about this categorization scheme is that it is controversial. It is certainly not a universally accepted concept. However, this doesn't stop Bailey from using it as the only accepted model and then forcing every subject in his book into one of these two categories. What is interesting is that Bailey is so locked into this theory that he can not see outside of it to realize that maybe it isn't as all inclusive as he believes. He actually mentions in the beginning of his further reading section for chapters 8 and 9 that the popular literature completely ignores this two category model. One thing that was pounded into my head by my work associates was to keep an open mind with respect to theories and their application to real world results. The fact that a large percentage of the transgender literature ignores Blanchard's theories should have caused Bailey to reconsider its applicability. At the very least I feel he should have pointed out that Blanchard's theories are potentially dated and not universally accepted by the psychological community.
 
A side point that goes along with this is that Bailey doesn't footnote his book at all. In the above case it is less of an issue in that he actually gives author credit so, an individual can go and find the source material for themselves. However, throughout the book, Bailey will quote numbers without stating where he got them from. As an example, on page 207, he discusses how 80% of male-to-female SRS subjects are considered to have successfully transitioned and even mentions that the methods of measuring success vary from study to study without ever mentioning at least one source for these studies. Ironically, the book I interrupted to read Bailey's is the excellent book by Stephen Ambrose titled Citizen Soldiers. This is an historical book as opposed to a scientific one and it has tons of footnotes provided throughout each chapter.
 
Another artifact created by Bailey from the homosexual/autogynephilic typing concept is a cute little survey to differentiate transsexuals into which category they belong. Bailey then admits that this survey is completely untested! My question to him is what was the point of publishing it then? This is about as far removed from science as one can get. Regardless of this, I had my wife take the survey. I would also note at this point that a number of the questions where ambiguously worded. The number she came up with was one. This falls outside of the scale Bailey gives so, what does this mean? Does it mean she isn't a transexual? As a post SRS transexual I would find this hard to believe but, Bailey doesn't address what happens to individuals who fall through the cracks of his survey. As a side note, I came in as a one also. I know I am not a transexual but, any sort of survey should have a statistical double blind of a random population sample to see where the average person would fall.
 
Of course, the above two data points are a statistically insignificant sample (way too small). However, I think that a scientific examination of Bailey's book can be done by just about anyone reading this article. A good starting point would be doing a large study of the transexual community using Bailey's survey. It would be interesting to see just how many transexuals fall outside of Blanchard's two types. I would personally be willing to bet a large enough number to be statistically significant.
 
There is also a lot more research that the individual reader can do on their own. Thanks to the world wide web, any reader can hop into any search engine and type in the word transsexual and recieve a wealth of data to look at and decide for themselves what is accurate and what isin't. You may even find yourself buying books to read from eBay, Amazon, or any number of other web stores. Eventually, you may even experience the excitement of finding data that contradicts something you have previously read. You will then have to go back and compare notes and try to find which set of data you feel is more accurate. You may even find that you can not decide and will then have to design your own experiment to explore even further. The main point to keep in mind is that you may have to accept an answer for something that contradicts your personal feelings on the topic. That is a big part of what becoming a scientist is all about.
 
For those who want to see further critical commentary on Bailey's book, the websites of Andrea James (www.tsroadmap.com) and Lynn Conway (www.lynnconway.com) feature some articles. Also, both sites contain excellent bibliographies, with follow-up commentary in some cases, that would be an excellent starting point for anyone wishing to pursue their own research
.
-TCN-
 
Nick Sauer is not only a scientist but he is the husband of Renaissance Board Chair Diane Hutchinson

 

 
 
 

 


 
This page is part of Lynn Conway's
"Investigative report into the publication of
J. Michael Bailey's book on transsexualism
by the National Academies"