Open letter to the President of the APA regarding 'An attempted whitewash of the APA’s publication of falsified results for GID prevalence' [PDF]
December 31, 2008
To: Alan E. Kazdin, Ph.D., President, American Psychological Association
Cc: Alice M. Young, PhD, Chair, Board of Scientific Affairs;
Peter Ornstein, Chair, Publications and Communications Board;
Gilbert H. Newman, PhD, Chair, Board of Educational Affairs;
Margaret Schneider, Ph.D., Chair, Task Force on Gender Identity and Gender Variance;
APA Division 44 officers, committee chairs and task force chairs
Clinton W. Anderson, Ph.D., Director, LGBT Concerns Office
Subject: Cover-letter for ‘An attempted whitewash of the APA’s publication of falsified results for GID prevalence’ (Please see the attached report [1]).
Dear Dr. Kazdin:
On September 5, 2008 I wrote to you regarding publication of falsified results for GID prevalence by the APA Task Force on Gender Identity and Gender Variance. A copy is attached [2].
As discussed in that letter, the Task Force failed to respond to alerts about errors in their results. They apparently failed to read the key paper in question (Bakker, et al [3], attached), thus failing to check for the errors themselves. Unaware that they were not reporting what their primary reference study had actually measured, they published long-held assumptions about what that old paper said, while failing to mention peer-reviewed papers that conflicted with those assumptions.
On September 25, 2008, Clinton Anderson, Ph.D., the Director of the APA’s LGBT Concern’s Office, responded on your behalf to my letter to you. I have attached a scan of his letter [4].
Unfortunately, Dr. Anderson did not acknowledge the Task Force’s failure to correct the false results. He instead attempted to whitewash those false results, as discussed in the attached report.
We realize that any admission that the APA had published false GID prevalence numbers would be a great embarrassment for all involved. However, all scientists have a professional duty to admit mistakes in published data, calculations or analyses. To do otherwise leads to further falsifications and denials – and only delays the inevitable exposure of the errors.
Sincerely,
Lynn Conway
Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Emerita
3640 CSE Building
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
Member, National Academy of Engineering
http://www.lynnconway.com
Attachments:
Investigative Report by Lynn Conway: “An attempted whitewash of the APA’s publication of falsified results for GID prevalence”, LynnConway.com, December 31, 2008.
Lynn Conway, “Open letter to the President of the APA re Falsification of GID prevalence results by the APA Task Force on Gender Identity and Gender Variance”, LynnConway.com, September 5, 2008.
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Prevalence/APA/APA%20Letter%209-05-08.html
A. Bakker, P.J.M. van Kesteren, L.J.G. Gooren, and P.D. Bezemer, "The prevalence
of transsexualism in the Netherlands," Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, vol.87, pp.237-238, 1993.
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Prevalence/Reports/REFs/bakker1993.pdf
Clinton Anderson, Ph.D., Letter to Lynn Conway on behalf of Alan E. Kazdin, Ph.D., President, American Psychological Association, September 25, 2008.
Note: This open letter and its
attachments are accessible online at:
Lynn Conway, “Cover letter for ‘An
attempted whitewash of the APA’s publication of falsified results for GID
prevalence’”, LynnConway.com, December 31, 2008.
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