Pamela Paul Shows NYT Opinion’s Lack of Accountability to the Truth

The New York Times does not hold opinion writers to standards of factual accuracy, balance, or unbiased reporting. But will readers understand that Pamela Paul’s 4500+ words on gender-affirming care don’t represent the truth?

There is no corrections process for opinion pieces in the New York Times. Their official corrections page directs readers to the letters section in the event that information in an opinion column is false. This lack of accountability for opinion writers who spread misinformation has led to controversy before, as when the NYT published an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton that repeated false claims about rioting in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd. Cotton used this misinformation to argue for military violence to quell protests. Misinformation has also frequently featured in the opinion columns of Bret Stephens, who has misled readers about the science behind climate change and whether masking reduced transmission of COVID 19. Stephens most egregious falsehoods have occasionally led to small corrections, such as the time the NYT removed a link to a eugenicist in a column arguing that Jewish people are smarter than other ethnic and racial groups. However, most of the time Stephens is allowed to lie and mislead readers under the banner of ideological diversity in opinion writing at the NYT.

Today, the NYT Opinion section continues its practice of allowing its opinion writers to present false and misleading claims as true with an over 4500-word opinion essay by staff writer Pamela Paul, endorsing the discredited, pseudoscientific theory of “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria” to argue against gender-affirming care for youth. Again, this is not a news story, it’s a longform presentation of a writer’s opinions on transgender people, who she believes are largely illegitimate and should be discouraged from transitioning rather than affirmed.

Will readers understand Paul’s work is not bound by the same requirements to limit herself to accurate, balanced, factual information that the news reporters at the NYT must uphold? Probably not.

Paul’s column includes many of the trappings of a real news story, which is likely to lead readers to a false confidence that what she says is true and that the links she represents as sources for her information are legit. However, reading the column with a journalistic eye it’s clear that Paul repeatedly presents her opinions as facts and includes links that fail to back her claims. This would never fly in the news section of the paper, but in opinion this sort of sleezy misleading behavior is allowed.

For example, in more than one place Paul claims that “transgender activists” have had a negative impact on the debate over trans issues, but without providing any information about which activists she means or what, exactly they’re supposed to have done. “Trans activists have fought hard to suppress any discussion of rapid onset gender dysphoria,” Paul writes in one entirely unsourced claim. “Transgender activists have pushed their own ideological extremism,” goes another. These are just Paul’s opinions about what “transgender activists” are like and what they do, but they’re not clearly presented as opinion, placed as they are in the middle of paragraphs dense with links suggesting a legitimate, well-researched piece.

screenshot from the New York Times

And, oh, those links. Whoo. Boy.

While it can be difficult to ascribe intent to the sort of shoddy, ideologically inflected opinion writing Paul trades in, there are multiple places in the column where we can state unequivocally that her intent in this piece is to mislead. Again and again, Paul uses hyperlinks to suggest her opinions are backed up by real evidence, and again and again if you actually follow the link it either fails to support or actively undermines Paul’s claim.

This false-link problem is found throughout the story, but we’ll highlight just a few examples of now.

In the screenshot below, Paul is discussing “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria,” the theory that a new form of gender-dysphoria arose in recent years, leading people to transition who didn’t need to and would be harmed by doing so. Legitimate research has been undertaken to explore whether this ROGD phenomenon actually exists, but every single attempt to find evidence for it in data about transgender people or trans youth has failed. The only studies that claim to have found evidence for it have been online surveys of parental attitudes from anti-trans websites, with all other studies showing no evidence that this phenomenon exists.

Here’s how Paul summarizes this field:

screenshot from the New York Times

This paragraph claims many researchers are have provided evidence that ROGD exists, although professional associations say there’s a lack of quality research. It is filled with links, suggesting Paul’s sources support this view.

The first link, on “some controversy” goes to a retracted paper by researcher Michael Bailey. The authors failed to secure informed consent from survey participants as the journal’s ethics policy required.

The second link, on “tween and teenage girls” goes to a Reuters story about the tiny number of trans boys have accessed top surgery (under 300 per year in the US), which mentions an increase in referrals to gender clinics for transgender boys.

The third link, on “professional associations” goes to a statement by the Coalition for the Advancement and Application of Psychological Science which says, in part, “There are no sound empirical studies of ROGD and it has not been subjected to rigorous peer-review processes that are standard for clinical science.”

The fourth, fifth, and sixth links are on “several” “researchers” and “have documented.” Link 4 goes to the website of Lisa Littman, one of two fringe researchers pushing the theory of ROGD. Link 5 goes to the same retracted paper from the first link, in its eventual home at a journal with a less stringent ethical policy. Link 6 goes to a study of 100 detransitioners by… Lisa Littman.

None of the links support Paul’s claims in the way a reader would expect a linked citation to do, except the link on “professional associations” which undermines her entire thrust. Some of the links intentionally mislead the audience, presenting two researchers as “several” and reusing the same retracted paper in two spots.

The whole column is like this. Factual claims are supported by links to activist organizations that agree with Paul. Few include anything resembling evidence that her claims are true.

The dodgy links aren’t all. Paul also repeatedly quotes anti-trans activists as if they were reputable, impartial sources. For example, at one point she focuses on Stephanie Winn, a therapist who works with parents who hope to stop their children from being trans. Winn once winkingly encouraged parents to stick their children with needles, among other humiliating “thought experiments,” all of which had the sole goal of coercing the child to stop identifying as trans. Paul presents Winn’s story in a flattering, and deeply misleading, way.

screenshot from the New York Times

Describing anti-trans activists as merely concerned question-askers and trans people as activists has become par for the course among propagandists pushing anti-trans views, but Paul is particularly egregious in her repeated promotion of some of the most toxic activists, including one (a transgender man) who trades in antisemitic conspiracy theories for Genspect.

These are just a smattering of the bad-faith tactics Paul employs to try and give her opinions more legitimacy than they deserve. In a 4500+ word story, as you might imagine, it’s impossible to go over every instance, but I encourage readers who want to investigate this for themselves to follow the links in any of Paul’s paragraphs and decide for themselves whether Paul’s claims are adequately backed up by the citations Paul includes.

Other trans writers will also pull out different threads. We’ll link to some of them below as they come out:

• Erin Reed: Debunked: Misleading NYT Anti-Trans Article By Pamela Paul Relies On Pseudoscience

• Jules Gill-Peterson: Detransition is a Mythology

Opinion writing, when backed by rigorous sourcing, can be a powerful and persuasive mode of public discourse. Many opinion writers, for the NYT and elsewhere, maintain the highest standards in the evidence and sourcing they present while making a persuasive case. However, what Paul is doing here undermines and brings into question the entire form. If opinion writers aren’t held to the same standards of evidence and citation as other writers, it devalues the entire field. Even more concerningly, if readers are unaware that NYT Opinion isn’t being held to the same basic ethical standards as other reporters of including legitimate sourcing for their claims it allows unscrupulous actors to misinform the public while cloaked in the legitimacy of the NYT.