This article is actually a big deal, and it's okay if you don't understand why.

[impossible_phd@hachyderm.io]

This article is actually a big deal, and it's okay if you don't understand why. What's going on is a whole lot of academic insider baseball.

But the simplest version is that the guy who defined what evidence-based medicine *is* just said SEGM is extremist and pseudoscientific.

Let me explain.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/09/guyatt-transgender-care-youth-medicine-evidence-segm/

[impossible_phd@hachyderm.io]

So there's a couple of things that You Do Not Do in academia. And like, number one on that list?

You don't EVER accuse another researcher categorically of not practicing good science. Ever. You eviscerate the work, sure, but not the org or the person.

SEGM has relied on that principle to operate.

Now, why does it matter that this guy in particular did it?

Well, SEGM's whole argument--it's whole thing, up to and including being in front of the Supreme Court--is that they're doing evidence-based science, and are just a competing organization. Classic climate denier obfuscation.

In support of that, this guy once spoke at one of SEGM's little faux-conferences, and once accepted research funding from them. They've used his name and his standards of evidence in research as a huuuuuge weapon to cast doubt on transition medicine, and especially youth transition medicine.

[impossible_phd@hachyderm.io]

So, when Guyatt comes out and says, and I'm quoting here, "As far as I am concerned, you are not evidence-based," *period*, is kind of the equivalent of Stephen Hawking saying "you are not a physicist." It has massive weight.

But wait, there's more.

Not only did Guyatt pull the rug out from SEGM's justification for, like, existing at all, he's come out a full-throatedly in support both of youth transition medicine, but also of much more research on it.

Like, “It is clear to me, anyway, what should be done is not banning the care,” clear.

AND FURTHER THAN THAT

He says that he was so deeply affected by SEGM that it's made him reconsider as a whole what the role of a good scientist even *should be*, at the most fundamental level.

This is one of the most damning condemnations I've ever read of one academic to another. It's brutal.