The “death of expertise”

One of the more reliable principles of political life is this: Stakeholders in a particular ideology who avoid publicly debating it do so because they know they likely won’t win.

There is a strong—though not infallible—connection between the quality of thinking and confidence that such thinking can hold up to close scrutiny. It’s the reason political candidates feel compelled to participate in debates. It’s the reason parents insist on transparency from their children’s teachers and doctors. Truth tends to be resilient; it is lies that often need to be sheltered.

Recently, The New York Times reported that Johanna Olson-Kennedy, an influential California-based physician and professor, admitted that she was sheltering the results of a landmark 2015 study on children and gender. Olson-Kennedy told the Times that, whereas she had expected the study to endorse giving children with gender dysphoria puberty blockers, the research did not support that conclusion. She told the Times that puberty blockers did not improve mental health because, at the beginning of the study, the kids were already all right.

But the Times reported that Olson-Kennedy’s answer “seemed to contradict an earlier description of the group.” Indeed, a news release from the National Institutes of Health from August 2015 described the children receiving treatment as needing to “alleviate gender dysphoria and its associated negative effects, including anxiety, depression and substance abuse.” Why? Because, according to Olson-Kennedy, the results of the research might be “weaponized.”

In other words, puberty blockers did not do what Olson-Kennedy and her team expected them to do. And rather than allowing government officials, doctors, and the public to draw conclusions for themselves, she believed the results of the study should be suppressed.

Somewhere, in an alternative universe, this kind of thing would be a shocking bombshell. It would be a scandalous confession that could undo the reputation of a prestigious medical professional and mobilize scientific and political inquiries. But this is not that universe.

Instead, there likely will be little fallout. Why? Because what Olson-Kennedy confessed to is little more than what many know already happens. Transgender activism is shot through with an authoritarian, evidence-burying impulse. Few public conversations have been so jaundiced by apathy toward evidence and antipathy toward those who question predetermined narratives.

Consider Hillary Cass, the British doctor and author of a revelatory medical paper that led to a ban in the U.K. on non-prescription puberty blockers for minors. In the days after publishing her study, in which she found that such medications did not improve mental health outcomes, Cass was slandered and threatened in public.

Elsewhere, Andrew Sullivan has documented how the World Professional Association for Transgender Health colluded with Rachel Levine, the Biden-Harris administration’s transgender assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. When WPATH’s response to the Cass report included some skepticism about puberty blockers and other forms of care, Levine’s office insisted that it not acknowledge the data. Sullivan’s post, which is drawn from an amicus brief filed by the state of Alabama in the Supreme Court case United States v. Skrmetti about these issues, is a revelatory summation of just how far transgender activists will go to project unfounded confidence to the public.

A lot can happen in nine years. In 2015, trans activism was a majority report among nearly all elite medical and media institutions. Olson-Kennedy took charge of her study likely confident that nothing could possibly happen to shake her presuppositions or, failing that, that certainly no reputable journalist would ever point it out. But 2015 was a long time ago. Since then, the idea that minors stand to benefit from permanent bodily and chemical transformation, based on little more than “love is love” theology, has been on the losing side again and again. Its champions have only two choices: They can change their minds or they can change their rules. So far, it’s clear which strategy is happening.

Count me among those who mourn the “death of expertise.” There is much value in credentialed leaders and institutions making the investment in knowledge that most ordinary people simply cannot undertake. There are real dangers with the fragmenting of the digital age and the loss of trust. But not all deaths are natural. Expertise and public trust did not just pass away quietly in their sleep—they were found murdered in the email inboxes of the elite.