Research methodology requires you to not do this, and think in a very analogue, slow and methodical way, but it's the only way to get at the actual truth.
It's why you see Tony, Rhys etc who have degrees not in proper sciences constantly misinterpret research, they jump to conclusions. I'd put good money down @Geranium works with statistics and research design a lot
absolutely. Tony thinks he does what
@Geranium actually does, when succinctly and clearly explaining the papers cited in Tony's misinformation.
i absolutely agree with your description of how research methodology should work. but i want to clarify that the same approach should be taken to reading research.
there are many, many reasons why researchers can misrepresent things in thier papers. the pressure to publish or perish (leading to massaging shitty results), politics at their institutions, conflicts of interest (such as Turbans undeclared $15k gift from a pharmaceutical company), the cuthroat nature of academia, not wanting other research groups to beat you to lucrative IP. for example, shitty methods, cherry picked data, and unstated, important assumptions can get past peer reviewers pretty easily if they are decorated in the right way.
i'm not saying don't trust any research. there is much high quality, intellectually honest research with sound study design and analysis. just try to apply critical thought when reading. this is difficult with the high level of specialisation in most fields, its impossible to know everything necessary to fully interpret a paper unless you are a researcher in a related field. but i believe that most people can at least look at a graph or a table and figure out if the presented data is described accurately by a paper, and supports the stated conclusions.
There's a couple I've seen before this, but really they all follow the same script so the troons can pick whoever they like, point to some gender-nonconforming behaviour, and say that they were trans.
most of them totally ignore the societal pressures that might lead them to present as the opposite sex. the oppression of women gave many a motivation to pretend to be a man. Margaret Bulkley/James Barry was required to present as male to get a medical degree, i've not seen any claims that she thought she was a man. Isabel Eberhardt pretended to be a man to enter all-male Sufi sects. Sporus was a slave forced to present as a Nero's deceased ex wife. Elagabalus was just a nut job as far as i recall, maybe he wanted to be a woman but he's not a shining example you'd want for your cause.
their desperatation to make it appear like troonism has existed forever results in their willingness, whether conscious or not, to completely ignore pertinent evidence and contextual information.
but its also completely unneeded. apparently builimia barely existed until a paper was published about it. i'm not sure how true that is, as obviously it existed for a paper to be written about it. my point is, it became much more widespread in popular culture. just because we can't point to ancient bulimics (apart from maybe the classical nobles and their vomitoria) and its continuous history, doesn't mean bulimia doesn't exist. that would be a ridiculous claim.
so i just don't see the point in these types of arguments. historical precedent is not a necessary condition for validity.
