University PR and media touted a clinic cohort study as proof that puberty blockers/hormones cut teen depression and suicidality over time. The critique shows the study’s own time‑series data and modeling don’t demonstrate those reductions, conflating association with improvement.
— It highlights how institutional communications can misstate evidence in politicized medicine, skewing policy, journalism, and public understanding.
2025.10.07
100% relevant
UW press release quotes ('dramatically reduces depression,' 'caused rates…to plummet') about Tordoff et al. (2022) versus the study’s non‑causal observational design and survey waves.
2023.10.07
83% relevant
This NEJM 2023 observational cohort study (Chen et al.) is frequently cited to claim hormones reduce depression/suicidality in transgender youth; it exemplifies the broader issue that media and institutional PR often present associative findings as causal, a point raised in the 'Causal Spin' idea.
2022.10.07
90% relevant
This PubMed record is the Tordoff et al. Seattle Children’s prospective cohort often promoted as showing reduced depression/suicidality after PB/GAH; it underlies the critique that media and institutional PR presented causal claims from an observational design and that later notes (e.g., data‑table errors) complicate straightforward inferences.
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